Intergroup Psychological Interventions: The Motivational Challenge

Abstract

Social scientists have increasingly applied insights from descriptive research to develop psychological interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations. These interventions have achieved marked success in lab and field studies—reducing prejudicial attitudes and affective polarization, fostering support for conciliatory social policies, and promoting peace-building behaviors. At the same time, intergroup conflict continues to rage in part because individuals often lack motivation to engage with these promising interventions. So far, much time and effort has been devoted to designing effective intervention content that produces psychological change, but less attention has been paid to this “motivational challenge.” We take a step toward addressing this imbalance by developing a conceptual framework of methods by which social scientists can deliver the core content of their intergroup interventions to an unmotivated target audience. Along with (a) directly motivating targets by getting them on board with the intervention’s ultimate aim, researchers can deliver the core intervention content by (b) tapping into other psychological motivations of the target audience, (c) embedding the core content in other attractive features of the intervention unrelated to the conflict, or (d) bypass motivational barriers entirely by delivering the intervention outside of targets’ conscious awareness. We define each method and use illustrative examples to organize them into a conceptual framework, before concluding with implications and future directions.

Harnessing Dehumanization Theory, Modern Media, and an Intervention Tournament to Reduce Support for Retributive War Crimes

“…Given motivations to maintain a consistent worldview (Kunda, 1990), it is questionable whether those who dehumanize Russians would willingly engage with this disconfirming information in the "real-world", absent such extrinsic incentives. This limitation confronts most intervention studies that rely on extrinsic incentives, so researchers should place greater focus on adapting or developing more scalable methods of implementing their psychological interventions (see Landry & Halperin, 2023).…”

A Social Network Intervention to Improve Adolescents’ Intergroup Tolerance Via Norms of Equality-Based Respect: The “Together for Tolerance” Feasibility Study

“…We also expected positive norm and behavioral changes to occur particularly among participants with initial low respect attitudes. Examining initial attitudes as a moderator can help refuting the suspicion that many diversity and anti-racism interventions end up preaching to the converted (e.g., Dobbin & Kalev, 2016), often due to lack of motivation to engage with the intervention among those who often need it the most (Landry & Halperin, 2023). In line with our theoretical assumptions, we suggested that perceived norms of equality-based respect are particularly beneficial for facilitating tolerant attitudes and behaviors toward different groups, which can coexist with negative outgroup attitudes or disagreement with outgroup's values or beliefs.…”

“…We suggest that network interventions may be particularly effective in the context of schools and in promoting positive intergroup relations compared to conventional approaches (Paluck et al, 2016;Pettigrew, 2011). Moreover, by focusing on social influence, network interventions are embed-ded in the school's natural environment, which may bypass motivational barriers facing many programs to improve intergroup relations (Landry & Halperin, 2023).…”