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

Intergroup psychological interventions highlighting commonalities can increase the perceived legitimacy of critical voices

With rising risks to democracy, the delegitimization of political actors that criticize state policies is increasing worldwide. Our research examines what intergroup psychological interventions can contribute to the (re)legitimization of these critical voices. We consider two approaches to legitimization, as a process involving the recategorization of a target from illegitimate to legitimate: (1) interventions encouraging recategorization of societal actors based on common preferences, values and/or the common ingroup identity; and (2) interventions highlighting inconsistencies between delegitimizing attitudes and ingroup identity, values or interest. An intervention tournament among 1691 Jewish Israelis tested several interventions, based on real information, against a generic Control condition. The results of a mixed-effects model revealed that two interventions, highlighting commonalities between the delegitimized group and mainstream attitudes and values, were effective in increasing the group's perceived legitimacy. These interventions, emphasizing common interests (e.g., supporting communities, reducing disparities in the provision of health services) and common values (e.g., human dignity, fair due process), can be applied to amplify and include critical voices as part of the effort to combat the harmful consequences of democratic backsliding.

Emotion regulation and attitudes toward FARC-EP ex-combatants and Venezuelan migrants: effects of a reappraisal training

Colombia faces the dual challenge of integrating into civil life two large segments of population; more than fourteen thousand FARC-EP ex-combatants, as part of the peace agreement to end the five-decade conflict between that armed group and the Colombian Government, and nearly two million Venezuelan migrants. Successful integration heavily depends on fostering public acceptance of these groups. Prior research by Halperin et al. (Psychol Sci 24:106-11, 2013) and Hurtado-Parrado et al. (Front Psychol 10: 1-9, 2019) demonstrated the effectiveness of reappraisal training, a brief emotion-regulation intervention, in reducing negative emotions (e.g., anger, irritability, fear) and aggressive attitudes (e.g., support for war or opposition to the peace process), while increasing conciliatory attitudes (e.g., support for humanitarian aid). The present study extended those findings via testing reappraisal training to promote positive attitudes towards FARC-EP ex-combatants (Experiment 1) and Venezuelan migrants (Experiment 2). In both experiments, reappraisal training reduced negative emotions and support for aggressive statements, while increasing support for conciliatory statements. In addition, negative emotions mediated the effect of reappraisal on both aggressive and conciliatory statements. Lastly, reappraisal training increased participants' willingness to donate, a measure of prosocial behavior tested for the first time in this line of research. These findings add to the evidence of the effectiveness and generalizability of reappraisal training across a wider range of social targets and prosocial behaviors, and its potential to inform public policy and promote larger-scale social integration efforts.

Virtual contact improves intergroup relations between non-Muslim American and Muslim students from the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia in a field quasi-experiment

Given the current polarized climate in many parts of the world, finding effective interventions to address psychological factors that drive conflict is critical. Direct, face-to-face contact has the demonstrated potential to stem the tide of intergroup antipathy. However, modern socio-political conflicts often span great physical distances, making direct contact difficult, costly and rare. Programs for "virtual contact" have emerged in recent years, combining text-based computer-mediated communication with live video to extend intergroup contact's benefits to broader audiences. While compelling, studies of such programs are typically conducted in laboratory settings, focusing only on change in outgroup attitudes. The current research tests how a semester-long virtual contact intervention that brings together non-Muslim US American students and Muslim students from the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia shapes varied intergroup processes, across two large-scale field quasi-experiments (combined N = 2886). Compared to before the intervention and a control group, participants who engaged in virtual contact showed greater self-outgroup overlap, improved outgroup attitudes, and less outgroup dehumanization and meta-dehumanization. This research provides evidence that virtual contact can be an effective tool for promoting better intergroup relations.

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.