Moral-Exemplar Intervention: A New Paradigm for Conflict Resolution and Intergroup Reconciliation

Abstract

Conflict resolution and intergroup reconciliation are difficult to achieve because of many social and psychological obstacles, such as people’s belief that members of a social group that is an adversary of their own group are mostly bad and essentially all the same. In this article, we introduce a novel intervention aimed at challenging these beliefs by exposing people to stories about individuals who have risked some important aspects of their lives to save the lives of other social groups’ members (moral exemplars). The effects of this moral-exemplar intervention have been tested with field experiments in several postconflict contexts using members of real antagonistic groups. We discuss the results of these studies and three specific and important aspects of the moral-exemplar intervention: (a) its comparative advantage over existing social-psychological interventions aimed at conflict resolution and intergroup reconciliation, (b) its content and conditions, and (c) implications for future theorizing and research targeting prosocial changes in attitudes and intergroup behavior.