Daniel Bar-Tal is Professor Emeritus at the School of Education, Tel Aviv University. His research interest is in political and social psychology studying socio-psychological foundations of intractable conflicts and peace making. Specifically, he studied the evolvement of the socio-psychological infrastructure in times of intractable conflict that consists of shared societal beliefs of ethos of conflict, of collective memory, and emotional collective orientations.

He examined their contents, acquisition, functions, societal mechanisms of their maintenance and institutionalization, as well as their contribution to the crystallization of social identity and development of culture of conflict during the conflict. In this framework, he also examined the required changes in this socio-psychological repertoire for conflict resolution and reconciliation. Specifically, he proposed a conceptual framework for the evolvement of reconciliation, for the development of peace education and eventually of peace culture as well as development of political understanding among children and peace education. Recently he extended his scope of research to the study of the deterioration of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. 

He has published over twenty books and over two hundred and fifty articles and chapters in major social and political psychological journals, books and encyclopedias. He served as a President of the International Society of Political Psychology and received various awards for his work, including the Alexander George Award of the International Society of Political Psychology for the best book in Political Psychology. In 2006 he also received Peace Scholar Award of the Peace and Justice Studies Association for great scholarship and hard work in studying conflicts and peacemaking. In 1991 and again in 2009, he was awarded the Otto Klineberg Intercultural and International Relations Prize of SPSSI Then he received the Lasswell Award and the Nevitt Sanford Award of the International Society of Political Psychology and the Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award of the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence (Div. 48 of APA). In 2017 he was elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences