Journal ArticleDOI
Addressing Violent Intergroup Conflict from the Bottom Up
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TLDR
In this paper, the authors develop a framework to analyze processes through which individual-level interventions could mitigate violent conflict escalation more broadly, and find that the current evidence base is quite small, does not cover the diversity of relevant contexts, and gives too little attention to resources and capacities that enable people to engage in conflict mitigation behaviors.Abstract:
How might interventions that engage ordinary citizens in settings of violent conflict affect broader conflict dynamics? Given the volume of resources committed every year to citizen-oriented programs that attempt to promote peace, this is an important question. We develop a framework to analyze processes through which individual-level interventions could mitigate violent conflict escalation more broadly. Individual-level interventions may increase positive feelings toward the outgroup, as well as psychological, social, and material resources among participants. These have the potential to influence behaviors such as policing of the ingroup, public advocacy, and political action that can contribute to peace. Yet, the effectiveness of interventions to influence the conflict is moderated by contextual factors like groups’ access to material resources, their positions in society, and political institutions. We use this analytical framework to assess evidence from recent intervention studies. We find that the current evidence base is quite small, does not cover the diversity of relevant contexts, and gives too little attention to resources and capacities that enable people to engage in conflict mitigation behaviors. Researchers and policy makers should go beyond thinking only aboutread more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Interventions to change well-anchored attitudes in the context of intergroup conflict
Journal ArticleDOI
Paradoxical Thinking Interventions: A Paradigm for Societal Change
Abstract: Social problems such as intergroup conflicts, prejudice, and discrimination have a significant effect on the world’s population. Often, to facilitate constructive solutions to these problems, fundamental attitude change is needed. However, changing the beliefs and attitudes to which people strongly adhere has proven to be difficult, as these individuals resist change. In this article, we offer a new and unconventional approach, termed paradoxical thinking, to promote the change of attitudes relevant to social realities. Paradoxical thinking refers to a process of exposing individuals to amplified, exaggerated, or even absurd messages that are still congruent with their held societal beliefs. In our research program, we focused on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and found that paradoxical thinking interventions led to attitude moderation among those who were the most adamant in their held attitudes and beliefs, even in the challenging context of a harsh and prolonged intergroup conflict. We then discuss how paradoxical thinking can be utilized to facilitate attitude change in this context and provide two brief examples as preliminary evidence that this approach might work in other important societal contexts, (i.e., attitudes toward refugees and asylum seekers, and gender-based discrimination), and conclude with policy recommendations.
Book ChapterDOI
Experiments in Post-Conflict Contexts
TL;DR: The authors examines the growing literature on experiments in post-conflict contexts to understand their contributions and limitations to our understanding of the dynamics in this period, and argues that work on post conflict contexts takes two different perspectives: a peace stabilization approach emphasizes special problems from civil conflict, including how to sustain peace agreements, while a peace consolidation approach emphasizes problems common to state-building, such as how to reconstruct communities.
Journal ArticleDOI
Psychological Barriers to Resolving Intergroup Conflict: An Extensive Review and Consolidation of the Literature
William Friend,Deepak Malhotra +1 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Current and Future Costs of Intractable Conflicts-Can They Create Attitude Change?
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined what kind of costs, and under what conditions, exposure to major costs of a conflict affects openness to information and conciliatory attitudes among Israeli Jews in the context of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
References
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Book
Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control
TL;DR: SelfSelf-Efficacy (SE) as discussed by the authors is a well-known concept in human behavior, which is defined as "belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments".
Journal ArticleDOI
Diffusion of innovations
TL;DR: Upon returning to the U.S., author Singhal’s Google search revealed the following: in January 2001, the impeachment trial against President Estrada was halted by senators who supported him and the government fell without a shot being fired.
Journal ArticleDOI
Threshold models of collective behavior.
TL;DR: This article developed models of collective behavior for situations where actors have two alternatives and the costs and/or benefits of each depend on how many other actors choose which alternative, and the key...
Journal ArticleDOI
Intergroup contact theory
TL;DR: The chapter proposes four processes: learning about the outgroup, changed behavior, affective ties, and ingroup reappraisal, and distinguishes between essential and facilitating factors, and emphasizes different outcomes for different stages of contact.