Nonviolence and Peace Psychology

Nonviolence is based on a range of theory and sound social science principles. People are familiar with the concept through the lives of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., but despite the success of each of their nonviolent social change movements, individuals are still reluctant to participate or even consider a nonviolent action as a means of pursuing goals. Most people still view nonviolence as ineffective in transforming social conditions. This work aims to remedy this thinking by demonstrating and providing examples of the effectiveness of nonviolent action in a broad number of contexts and in the past two decades. This interdisciplinary work will discuss theories and perspectives of nonviolence drawn from the fields of anthropology, political science, psychology, religious studies, and sociology -- written from the point of view of a psychologist. The author's psychological approach to nonviolence is distinguished from others because it emphasizes beliefs, motives, values, and other mainstream social psychological concepts in a manner that is informative to psychologists and understandable to non-psychologists.