ABSTRACT
This study focuses, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israel-Hamas war, on a specific pattern of news-consumption—avoidance of hyper-partisan right- wing news, while examining its consequences for perceptual-cognitive biases that constitute barriers to conflict resolution. Consistent with the reactive devaluation bias which demonstrates that support for peace plans varies according to the proposer’s identity, we hypothesized that this effect would extend to third-party mediators. We further hypothesized that the magnitude of this effect would depend on participants’ information environment, as shaped by the extent to which they avoid hyper-partisan right-wing news. Jewish-Israeli participants (N = 901) were randomly assigned to evaluate an identical peace agreement attributed to U.S. President Donald Trump or to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Analyses examined main effects of mediator identity and avoidance of Israeli right-wing news, as well as their interaction. Results supported both hypotheses. Our findings extend previous research on reactive devaluation by demonstrating that susceptibility to mediator identity bias varies according to individuals’ news avoidance patterns. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.