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

Abstract

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.

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

“…To do so, we curated readily available media content with the intervention tournament method gaining prominence in the biological and psychological sciences (see ref. 62 for review).…”

“…Therefore, we took a result-oriented, bottom-up approach, focusing on developing an effective intervention in the most timely and efficient manner possible 62 . To do so, we leveraged the rich media content at our fingertips by searching open-access online repositories (e.g., YouTube, Vimeo) for videos that humanized Russian soldiers.…”

“…We tested the efficacy of these interventions with an intervention tournament: a study that simultaneously compares several different interventions against the same control condition on a set of standardized outcome measures 62,73 . This approach has been gaining prominence in the biological and psychological sciences as an efficient means to identify effective strategies for intervening in pressing social issues 57,[73][74][75][76][77][78] (see ref.…”

“…This approach has been gaining prominence in the biological and psychological sciences as an efficient means to identify effective strategies for intervening in pressing social issues 57,[73][74][75][76][77][78] (see ref. 62 for review). We randomly assigned participants (N = 406) to receive one of the six interventions or to an empty control condition where they proceeded directly to our outcome measures: dehumanization and war crime support.…”

Putting science to work for peace: A special issue in honor of Emile Bruneau.

“…For instance, he worked with filmmakers in Colombia to develop media interventions aimed at combating stereotypes and misperceptions about ex-FARC Colombians in order to help reintegrate them into Colombian society (Bruneau et al, 2022). As another example, he worked with Muslim rights advocates and nonprofits in both the United States and abroad to help them improve and assess their ongoing programs (e.g., Bruneau et al, 2021), as well as identify and test media interventions aimed at reducing Islamophobia that are commonly used in the civil society (Bruneau, Kteily, & Urbiola, 2020; Bruneau, Kteily, & Falk, 2018; Gallardo et al, 2021; Moore-Berg, Hameiri, Falk, & Bruneau, 2022) using a novel intervention tournament design (Hameiri & Moore-Berg, 2022). Emile recognized that no intervention would work for everyone simply because people are motivated to engage in conflict for different reasons.…”