Interventions to change well‐anchored attitudes in the context of intergroup conflict

How Can Debiasing Research Aid Efforts to Reduce Discrimination?

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

Scientists studying intergroup biases are often concerned with lessening discrimination (unequal treatment of one social group versus another), but many interventions for reducing such biased behavior have weak or limited evidence. In this review article, we argue one productive avenue for reducing discrimination comes from adapting interventions in a separate field-judgment and decision-making-that has historically studied "debiasing": the ways people can lessen the unwanted influence of irrelevant information on decision-making. While debiasing research shares several commonalities with research on reducing intergroup discrimination, many debiasing interventions have relied on methods that differ from those deployed in the intergroup bias literature. We review several instances where debiasing principles have been successfully applied toward reducing intergroup biases in behavior and introduce other debiasing techniques that may be well-suited for future efforts in lessening discrimination.

Neural alignment during outgroup intervention predicts future change of affect towards outgroup

While social psychology studies have shown that paradoxical thinking intervention has a moderating effect on negative attitudes toward members from rival social groups (i.e. outgroup), the neural underpinnings of the intervention have not been studied. Here, we investigate this by examining neural alignment across individuals at different phases during the intervention regarding Covid-19 vaccine-supporters' attitudes against vaccine-opposers. We raise two questions: Whether neural alignment varies during the intervention, and whether it predicts a change in outgroup attitudes measured via a survey 2 days after the intervention and compared to baseline. We test the neural alignment using magnetoencephalography-recorded neural oscillations and multiset canonical correlation analysis. We find a build-up of neural alignment which emerges at the final phase of the paradoxical thinking intervention in the precuneus-a hub of mentalizing; there was no such effect in the control conditions. In parallel, we find a behavioral build-up of dissent to the interventional stimuli. These neural and behavioral patterns predict a prosocial future change in affect and actions toward the outgroup. Together, these findings reveal a new operational pattern of mentalizing on the outgroup, which can change the way individuals may feel and behave toward members of that outgroup.

Communicating with ethnic minorities during COVID-19: An experimental test of the effect of self-, ingroup-, and intergroup-focused messages

Developing messaging to encourage minorities to adhere to health recommendations has been a complex task for governments worldwide during the COVID-19 crisis. Here, we propose and tests a new typology of messages among minorities that can be used to mobilize compliance and engagement. This typology comprises three messaging treatments emphasizing personal, ingroup, and intergroup benefits. We examine, via an experimental field study, whether there is a difference in the effect of these messages on two policy outcomes, social distancing and vaccine hesitancy, among the Arab minority living in Israel. The findings suggest that social messages, i.e., ingroup and intergroup messages, positively affect social distancing, while self-messaging harms social distancing compliance. Regarding vaccine intake, within the social messages tested, intergroup-focused messages were more effective than ingroup-focused messages for vaccination intentions only among citizens with low trust in the government. We discuss the findings in detail and propose new avenues in theory and practice to foster health policy compliance among minorities.

Perceived respect from the adversary group can improve intergroup attitudes in a context of intractable conflict

Respect has been found to play a crucial role in human relationships including intergroup relations. Its presence has a significant positive influence in shaping the character of all relationship interactions. In intractable violent conflicts, there is almost no space for gestures of respect between adversarial parties, and the prevailing phenomenon is a mutual disrespect that fuels the conflict. This study examines a novel and challenging intervention that aims to induce in laboratory experiments, for the first time, perceptions of respect from adversary group members in the context of intractable intergroup conflict. In addition, this research examines the effect of perceived respect from the adversary on attitudes and perceptions towards the adversary group and the conflict. In three experimental studies (N = 1261) in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we manipulated expressions of respect from the Palestinian adversary group members and presented them to Jewish Israelis. Results revealed that, a group involved in a prolonged violent conflict may perceive respect from its adversary outgroup, and the perceived respect from the adversary in turn predicts improvement in attitudes and perceptions towards the adversary group and the conflict. These findings underline the important role of respect in intergroup conflict and its role in mitigating the conflict.

Effects of experimentally induced self-affirmation on the openness to meat reduction and alternative protein sources

Introduction

Consumption of animals entails disregarding the pain of sentient beings, and acknowledging this can threaten an individual's image of oneself as a moral person. Also, abstaining from meat in a meat-eating culture can threaten an individual's valued group identity. Previous research on inter-group relations suggests that self-affirmation, affirmation of personally or collectively important values, can help individuals alleviate self-threats since it enhances one's global self-image and decreases threat perceptions.

Methods

We tested for potential effects of self-affirmation on openness toward reducing meat consumption in an experimental study. Participants (N = 277) were randomized into an individual affirmation, group affirmation, or a control condition. Individual affirmation participants ranked a list of values and then wrote a short paragraph about their first-ranked value. Group affirmation participants did a similar task, focusing on the values of their ethnic group, while participants in the control condition had an unrelated task of ranking their color preferences. Participants then read a persuasive message presenting health risks related to meat consumption and the health benefits of reducing meat. Finally, they indicated their openness toward reducing meat consumption and acceptability of plant-based alternatives and lab-grown meat.

Results and Discussion

Results show that affirmed participants expressed more readiness to reconsider their meat consumption habits, reduced perceptions of vegetarianism as a threat to the local culture, and more positive perceptions of the idea of lab-grown meat. However, self-esteem and frequency of meat consumption pose important limitations to the experimental effects. We discuss the findings from the perspective of self-and collective identity threats and the potential of self-affirmations to create a more open debate about animal product consumption.

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.

The Informative Process Model as a New Intervention for Attitude Change in Intractable Conflicts: Theory and Empirical Evidence

Peacemaking is especially challenging in situations of intractable conflict. Collective narratives in this context contribute to coping with challenges societies face, but also fuel conflict continuation. We introduce the Informative Process Model (IPM), proposing that informing individuals about the socio-psychological processes through which conflict-supporting narratives develop, and suggesting that they can change via comparison to similar conflicts resolved peacefully, can facilitate unfreezing and change in attitudes. Study 1 established associations between awareness of conflict costs and conflict-supporting narratives, belief in the possibility of resolving the conflict peacefully and support for pursuing peace among Israeli-Jews and Palestinians. Studies 2 and 3 found that exposure to IPM-based original videos (vs. control) led Israeli-Jews to deliberation of the information presented, predicting acceptance of the IPM-based message, which, in turn, predicted support for negotiations. Study 3 also found similar effects across IPM-based messages focusing on different conflict-supporting themes. We discuss the implications to attitude change in intractable conflicts.

Ideological passion and violent activism: The moderating role of the significance quest

This research examines how the relationship between passion for an ideology and violent activism is magnified by the personal (vs. collective) loss of significance. In Study 1 (N = 238), the relationship between obsessive (but not harmonious) passion for the Republican Party and violent activism was moderated by personal (but not collective) loss of significance. Study 2 (N = 612) replicated these findings with an experimental manipulation of personal and collective loss of significance in a sample of Black Lives Matter supporters. In Study 3 (N = 416), we set out to attenuate the obsessive passion-violent activism relationship by experimentally manipulating personal and collective significance gain. Echoing the results of Studies 1 and 2, the manipulation of personal (but not collective) significance gain reduced the relationship between obsessive passion for the environmental cause and violent activism. Furthermore, Study 3 examined the psychological mechanism at play by incorporating a measure of goal-shielding - a factor of theoretical relevance to explain extreme behaviour. Personal significance gain reduced individuals' proclivity to inhibit goals unrelated to their ideological pursuit, which in turn reduced their support for violent activism. These findings reveal psychological factors relevant to detecting at-risk individuals and implementing cost-effective prevention programmes against ideological violence.

Reducing Islamophobia: An assessment of psychological mechanisms that underlie anti-Islamophobia media interventions

Western countries have witnessed increased hostility towards Muslims among individuals, and structurally in the ways that the media covers stories related to Islam/Muslims and in policies that infringe on the rights of Muslim communities. In response, practitioners have created media interventions that aim to reduce Islamophobia. However, it is unclear what causal effects these interventions have on reducing Islamophobia. Here, we test the effects of 11 media interventions developed by practitioners with an intervention tournament among U.S. samples. In Study 1, we identified three videos that most effectively reduced Islamophobia both immediately after watching and 1 month later. In Studies 2–4, we examined the psychological mechanisms of these successful videos and found an indirect effect of the interventions on reduced support for anti-Muslim policies through recognition of media bias against Muslims. This research highlights that drawing attention to structural biases, including biased media coverage of Muslims, is one potential strategy for ameliorating Islamophobia.

Outgroup prosocial behaviour among children and adolescents in conflict settings

More than 420 million children live amid political conflict. In such settings, understanding the development of prosocial behaviours, specifically directed at outgroups, can provide opportunities for peacebuilding. Informed by research on intergroup competition and structural inequality, we focus on outgroup prosocial behaviour targeting conflict rivals. Already from a young age, children are politically socialised and show intergroup biases that dampen helping behaviours towards conflict rivals, which continue into adulthood. We review factors that shape youth's interpersonal helping and broader forms of prosociality, such as civic engagement, across group lines. We conceptualise outgroup prosocial behaviour along a continuum, ranging from interpersonal acts to broader structural and cultural constructive change. We conclude with directions for future research.

The collective praise intervention: A brief intervention highlighting prosocial behavior reduces hostility towards Muslims

Muslims are consistently the target of dehumanization and hostile policies. Previous research shows that interventions that highlight the hypocrisy wherein people collectively blame entire groups for the heinous acts of individual members of outgroups but not ingroups are effective in reducing animosity towards Muslims. However, these interventions rely on aversive materials (e.g., terrorist acts), which can hinder the scalability of interventions due to individuals’ tendency to resist/avoid challenging and aversive stimuli. In three preregistered studies (combined N = 2,635), we developed and tested a nonaversive, hypocrisy-based intervention that highlights the hypocrisy involved in attributing ingroup members’ prosocial acts to the entire ingroup (i.e., Christians) but not doing the same for outgroup members (i.e., Muslims). Results indicated that this collective praise intervention reliably reduces dehumanization of Muslims, anti-Muslim policy support, and collective blame of Muslims. We argue that the intervention’s use of nonaversive stimuli allows for both practical and scalable applications.

Current and Future Costs of Intractable Conflicts-Can They Create Attitude Change?

Members of societies involved in an intractable conflict usually consider costs that stem from the continuation of the conflict as unavoidable and even justify for their collective existence. This perception is well-anchored in widely shared conflict-supporting narratives that motivate them to avoid information that challenges their views about the conflict. However, since providing information about such major costs as a method for moderating conflict-related views has not been receiving much attention, in this research, we explore this venue. We examine 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. Study 1 (N = 255) revealed that interventions based on messages providing information on mental health cost, economic cost, and cost of the conflict to Israeli democracy had (almost) no significant effect on perceptions of the participants of these prices, openness to new information about the conflict, or support for conciliatory policies. However, the existing perceptions that participants had about the cost of the conflict to Israeli democracy were positively associated with openness to alternative information about the conflict and support for conciliatory policies. Therefore, in Study 2 (N = 255), we tested whether providing information about future potential costs to the two fundamental characteristics of Israel, a democracy or a Jewish state, created by the continuation of the conflict, will induce attitude change regarding the conflict. The results indicate that information on the future cost to the democratic identity of Israel significantly affected the attitude of the participants regarding the conflict, while the effect was moderated by the level of religiosity. For secular participants, this manipulation created more openness to alternative information about the conflict and increased support for conciliatory policies, but for religious participants, it backfired. We discuss implications for the role of information about losses and the relationship between religiosity and attitudes regarding democracy and conflict.