An integrated social psychological investigation of politically-motivated violence in Northern Ireland

The project was intended to develop an understanding of the social psychological processes associated with involvement in, and support for, political violence in Northern Ireland, to suggest a potential explanation for why intergroup hostility in the region appears so resistant to change, and to evaluate the utility of Breakwell’s (1993) Integrated Paradigm (IP) as an explanatory tool in terms of both the Northern Ireland conflict, and social psychology more generally.

Study one investigated the lived experience of former republican prisoners using in-depth life-history and IPA interviews. It found that participants’ perceptions of historical events coloured their interpretations of the present, and were a key factor in their decision to adopt the republican identity, which in turn was crucial in motivating their behaviour. Study two made use of a web-based questionnaire to investigate this link between perceptions of the past, identity, and behaviour among samples taken from both communities in present day Northern Ireland.