Simon Hug1 2 3, Sandra Penić4 ^, Cécile Richetta5, Sarah Zahreddine6 ^

First version: March 2026, this first incomplete draft: May 24, 2026
Paper prepared for a possilbe presentation at the  
Fragile Lives 2026/HiCN Conference
(Humboldt University, September 30-October 1, 2026)

Conflict events, cooperation and trust in an ongoing war

Conflict events, cooperation and trust in an ongoing war7

Abstract

While numerous studies assess how exposure to violence generally and conflict events particularly affect cooperation and in- and outgroup trust, few can assess the effects both in the short term of repeated events and the longer term ones of discrete events. Drawing on rolling-cross-section study carried out among Israeli-Jews during the war in Gaza we can assess how conflict events perpetrated by the outgroup as well as a ceasefire affect in- and outgroup trust as well as ingroup cooperation. While some conflict events have the expected effects on trust, the ceasefire of early 2025 appears to have led to a deterioration of trust. Preliminary results suggest that this effect was mediated by personal conflict-related emotions.

Footnotes:

1  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, email: simon.hug@unige.ch.
2 CefES research fellow, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
3 CISA, Université de Genève
4  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, email: sandra.penicjunge@unige.ch.
5  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve,1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, email: cecile.richetta@unige.ch.
6  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, email: sarah.zahreddine@unige.ch.
7Partial funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. TMAG-1_216066 / 1 (PI: SH) and Grant No. 10001G_219891 (PI: SP)) is gratefully acknowledged, as is the research assistance by Nitzan Attias and helpful conversations with Gerald Schneider and Andreas Wenger.


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