Improving Social Relations

Welcome to Nurit Shnabel’s Lab!
Broadly speaking, I am interested in understanding the social psychological processes involved in improving (or harming) social relations, whether it is between individuals or between groups. Within this broad topic, I have two major lines of research.
The first line examines the processes that facilitate or hinder reconciliation, such as the conflicting parties’ tendency to engage in competition over the victim status. I study these processes within the theoretical perspective of the needs-based model – about which you can read here.
The second line examines the social psychological processes that characterize the relations between men and women. For example, I study why some people endorse the belief that "nice guys finish last" or that women's sexuality and nurturance are mutually exclusive. You can read more about this work here.

Meet the Team

The Team

Head of the lab shnabeln@tauex.tau.ac.il

Alumni

Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli, PhD

Senior Lecturer, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University
ilanitsn@tauex.tau.ac.il

Meet Our Team

Latest Publications

Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations: Between the Age of Apology and Victimhood Culture

This new Annual Review of Psychology paper (Shnabel & Ullrich, 2025) suggests that in the optimistic post cold-war era the representation of minority groups underwent a transformation: from 'deviants' to 'victims'. This transformation gave rise to new identity needs, such that members of historical victim group became motivated to restore their agentic identity, whereas members of historical perpetrator groups became motivated to restore their moral identity. These emerging needs led to groups' engagement in restorative justice efforts (e.g. through offering public apologies for historical injustices), but also to groups' competition over the victim status ("competitive victimhood"). The paper reviews the social psychological research on these topics and discusses ways to move forward from the so-called 'victim culture' in light of the changing zeitgeist. Download paper.

A needs-based level of construal: Members of perceived victim and perpetrator groups prefer to represent transgressions at different levels of abstraction

This new Journal of Personality and Social Psychology paper (Pesin-Michael, Shnabel, Steffens & Wolf, 2025) revealed, using diverse methods and contexts, that historical victim group members' need for agency translates into a preference for more concrete representations of the transgression, whereas historical perpetrator group members' need for morality translates into a preference for more abstract representations. Implications for reconciliation efforts are examined and discussed. Download paper.

Read about this research on the Israeli Science Foundation's website (Hayadan: in Hebrew).