Exposure to a media intervention helps promote support for peace in Colombia

Improving intergroup relations with meta-perception correction interventions

We explore meta-perceptions (i.e., what we think others think about reality), their impact on intergroup conflict, and the interventions correcting these often-erroneous perceptions. We introduce a two (direct or indirect) by two (with or without framing) framework classifying these interventions, and we critically assess the benefits and constraints of these approaches.

The tendency to dehumanize, group malleability beliefs, and perceived threat from migrants in Hungary

Examining the humanness attributed to several groups in a comprehensive Hungarian sample (N = 505) at the height of the “European refugee crisis of 2015,” we found that Hungarians dehumanize Eastern ethnic groups more and Western ethnic groups less than they do to their own ethnic ingroup. Interestingly, we also found that a general tendency of dehumanization is expressed across all national groups. This general tendency of dehumanization was strongly associated with threat perceived from migrants, but the relationship was mediated by group malleability—the belief that human groups can change and are not set in their ways irreversibly. Malleability beliefs were negatively linked to dehumanization tendencies and threat perceived from migrants. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings that point to the critical role of fixed mindsets about groups in the mechanisms linked to prejudice in a highly xenophobic Hungarian context.

Intervention Tournaments: An Overview of Concept, Design, and Implementation

A large portion of research in the social sciences is devoted to using interventions to combat societal and social problems, such as prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup conflict. However, these interventions are often developed using the theories and/or intuitions of the individuals who developed them and evaluated in isolation without comparing their efficacy with other interventions. Here, we make the case for an experimental design that addresses such issues: an intervention tournament-that is, a study that compares several different interventions against a single control and uses the same standardized outcome measures during assessment and participants drawn from the same population. We begin by highlighting the utility of intervention tournaments as an approach that complements other, more commonly used approaches to addressing societal issues. We then describe various approaches to intervention tournaments, which include crowdsourced, curated, and in-house-developed intervention tournaments, and their unique characteristics. Finally, we discuss practical recommendations and key design insights for conducting such research, given the existing literature. These include considerations of intervention-tournament deployment, characteristics of included interventions, statistical analysis and reporting, study design, longitudinal and underlying psychological mechanism assessment, and theoretical ramifications.