Intergroup Conflict Research Articles

Changing minds about climate change in Indonesia through a TV drama

Drama has been shown to change attitudes and inspire action on topics as diverse as health, sanitation, intergroup conflict, and gender equality, but rarely have randomized trials assessed the influence of narrative entertainment programs focusing on climate change and environmental protection. We report the results of an experiment in which young Indonesian adults were sampled from five metropolitan areas. Participants were randomly assigned to watch a condensed two-hour version of a new award-winning TV drama series #CeritaKita (Our Story)—and accompanying social media discussion program Ngobrolin #CeritaKita (Chatter—Our Story)—as opposed to a placebo drama/discussion that lacked climate and environmental content. Outcomes were assessed via survey 1–7 days after exposure to the shows, and through a follow up survey after 5 months. We find that the treatment group became significantly more knowledgeable about environmental issues such as deforestation, an effect that persists long term. Other outcomes, such as motivation to participate in public discussion on climate change, willingness to follow influencers who post about environmental issues on social media, support for policies to address climate change and support for more media coverage of this issue, moved initially after viewing but subsided over time, possibly due to lack of continued exposure and other changes in context. This pattern of results suggests that ongoing/seasonal programming may be needed in order to sustain attitudinal and behavioral change. Draw media market investments, and change public narratives at scale when it matters change.

Prejudice toward the Xinyimin in Indonesia: testing the integrated threat model

ABSTRACT China’s Belt and Road Initiative has galvanized new Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. The presence of the new Chinese migrants (Xinyimin) has not gone without resistance in Indonesia. This study examines the effects of history of intergroup conflicts and contact on the formation of threat perceptions toward the Xinyimin in Indonesia. The findings revealed both history of conflicts and contact predict realistic threat and highlight the importance of open communication in mitigating intergroup biases.

Characterizing social conflict over wolf reintroduction in Colorado: A theoretical model of intergroup conflict

Abstract Context: Wolf restoration is a highly divisive issue in the American West, with stakeholder conflict driven by value and identity‐based disagreements. Research suggests that such conflicts require reconciliation to repair intergroup relations before negotiations to address the issue can begin, yet, in the conservation and natural resource management fields, stakeholder processes about divisive issues typically focus only on negotiations. There is a gap in the literature on how to identify and target the drivers of value and identity‐based conflicts. Approach: We interviewed stakeholders highly engaged in the issue of proposed wolf reintroduction in Colorado to gain insight on the drivers of the conflict and to inform reconciliation interventions. We pulled from conflict and peace‐building theories to frame our analysis, specifically suggestions that conflict is fueled by four categories of perceptions, including perceptions of: the group one is in conflict with, one's own social group, the relationship between groups, and the nature of the conflict. Key Findings: We found that all interviewees discussed perceptions that can fuel conflict within each of these four categories. However, interviewees who identified as 3rd parties to the conflict primarily discussed the relationships between those in conflict and engaged in thoughtful perspective‐taking, an activity that can help reduce conflict. Conversely, both those strongly in support of reintroduction and strongly opposed to reintroduction most commonly described negative perceptions about individuals they are in conflict with and positive perceptions about themselves and their social group. For example, when discussing others, both groups described each other as acting in unjust and unfair ways, as being incapable of or unwilling to change, and as misinformed. When describing positive perceptions of themselves, both those in support and those in opposition viewed their own goals as just and themselves as victims of outgroup members’ actions. Synthesis and applications: Based on our findings, we suggest various reconciliation interventions that may assist wildlife managers in reducing the conflict about wolf reintroduction in Colorado. These recommendations may also be applicable to wildlife managers working on other issues with high stakeholder conflict. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

The evolution of democratic peace in animal societies

A major goal in evolutionary biology is to elucidate common principles that drive human and other animal societies to adopt either a warlike or peaceful nature. One proposed explanation for the variation in aggression between human societies is the democratic peace hypothesis. According to this theory, autocracies are more warlike than democracies because autocratic leaders can pursue fights for private gain. However, autocratic and democratic decision-making processes are not unique to humans and are widely observed across a diverse range of non-human animal societies. We use evolutionary game theory to evaluate whether the logic of democratic peace may apply across taxa; specifically adapting the classic Hawk-Dove model to consider conflict decisions made by groups rather than individuals. We find support for the democratic peace hypothesis without mechanisms involving complex human institutions and discuss how these findings might be relevant to non-human animal societies. We suggest that the degree to which collective decisions are shared may explain variation in the intensity of intergroup conflict in nature.

Intergroup Conflicts and Investment Decisions in High-Risk Environments

Intergroup Conflicts and Investment Decisions in High-Risk Environments

Empowering the younger generation increases their willingness for intergenerational reconciliation in the context of climate change

Climate change can evoke intergenerational conflict. Structural inequalities and their unequal impact on generations can increase perceptions of collective victimhood among the younger generation (< 30 years) and bear the risk of social tensions between the young and the elderly. An experimental study (N = 434) showed that younger people perceived an increased risk of future victimhood. In line with a needs-based approach, the young reported an increased desire to pursue agentic intergroup goals, indicating a heightened need for agency. However, when the young received empowering messages that affirmed their ingroup agency, their willingness to reconcile with the old generation increased, whereas informing them about non-agentic ingroup behavior did not affect reconciliation (between-subjects manipulation). While empowering messages from the outgroup (“Grannies for Future”) that directly affirmed the young generations’ agency for climate change mitigation as well as empowering messages from the ingroup that indirectly affirmed ingroup agency in domains unrelated to climate change both addressed the need for agency, only outgroup empowerment promoted intergenerational reconciliation. However, empowerment did not affect support for collective climate action. We discuss empowerment as an avenue for resolving intergroup conflict in the context of climate change and possible consequences for climate action and social change.

Landscape of fear: indirect effects of conflict can account for large-scale population declines in non-state societies.

The impact of inter-group conflict on population dynamics has long been debated, especially for prehistoric and non-state societies. In this work, we consider that beyond direct battle casualties, conflicts can also create a 'landscape of fear' in which many non-combatants near theatres of conflict abandon their homes and migrate away. This process causes population decline in the abandoned regions and increased stress on local resources in better-protected areas that are targeted by refugees. By applying analytical and computational modelling, we demonstrate that these indirect effects of conflict are sufficient to produce substantial, long-term population boom-and-bust patterns in non-state societies, such as the case of Mid-Holocene Europe. We also demonstrate that greater availability of defensible locations act to protect and maintain the supply of combatants, increasing the permanence of the landscape of fear and the likelihood of endemic warfare.

The link between EU identification and responses to a war between non-EU countries over time.

The European Union (EU) is portrayed as a "normative power" that promotes democracy. How does identifying with the EU identity predict citizens' responses to a war between two non-EU countries, where one (Ukraine) appears as the victim (i.e., a nation suffering significant harm as a result of military aggression by another country) and the other (Russia) as the aggressor (i.e., a nation initiating military aggression against another country)? This study tested two contrasting, yet not mutually exclusive hypotheses. Based on the underlying idea that Ukraine is perceived to share similar (European) values while Russia is perceived to deviate from these values, the "humanitarian influence of the EU identity hypothesis" hypothesized that identification with the EU identity predicts increased support for the victim group (Ukraine) and condemnation of the aggressor group over time. Based on the "protective effect of EU identity hypothesis," however, a reverse temporal order was also hypothesized. We conducted a two two-wave study among Greek participants. Our findings provided full support for the first hypothesis and partial support for the second hypothesis. Identification with EU identity predicts increasingly stronger opposition to an intergroup conflict between non-EU countries.

Intergroup Conflict and Turnover Intention among Lecturers in Public Universities in Anambra State

Intergroup conflict has caused many employees to leave their jobs with ranging consequences on organizations’ operations. Based on this, the study examines the relationship that exists between intergroup conflict and turnover intention in Anambra State Universities, using Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka (UNIZIK) and Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU) as case studies. The Krejcie and Morgan formula was used to determine the sample size of 344. The data was analyzed using a simple regression model, while ANOVA was used to test the hypothesis. The results showed that in Anambra State’s public universities, intergroup conflict and turnover intention have a statistically significant and positive association. Thus, the analysis suggests that the Federal Government should always honor agreements made with Academic unions in order to forestall future occurrences of industrial action.

What distinguishes conspiracy from critical narratives? A computational analysis of oppositional discourse

AbstractThe current prevalence of conspiracy theories on the internet is a significant issue, tackled by many computational approaches. However, these approaches fail to recognize the relevance of distinguishing between texts which contain a conspiracy theory and texts which are simply critical and oppose mainstream narratives. Furthermore, little attention is usually paid to the role of inter‐group conflict in oppositional narratives. We contribute by proposing a novel topic‐agnostic annotation scheme that differentiates between conspiracies and critical texts, and that defines span‐level categories of inter‐group conflict. We also contribute with the multilingual XAI‐DisInfodemics corpus (English and Spanish), which contains a high‐quality annotation of Telegram messages related to COVID‐19 (5000 messages per language). We also demonstrate the feasibility of an NLP‐based automatization by performing a range of experiments that yield strong baseline solutions. Finally, we perform an analysis which demonstrates that the promotion of intergroup conflict and the presence of violence and anger are key aspects to distinguish between the two types of oppositional narratives, that is, conspiracy versus critical.

The motivations and reputational consequences of spreading conspiracy theories.

Some people deliberately spread conspiracy theories. What are the reputational benefits and costs of doing so? The Adaptive-Conspiracism hypothesis proposes that it pays to be vigilant against possible conspiracies, especially in case of intergroup threat. Those who spread conspiracy theories may therefore be seen as valuable group members. Few studies have focused on the reputational impact of spreading a conspiracy theory. We conducted five studies (NPilot = 303; NStudy1 = 388; NStudy2 = 560; NStudy3 = 391; NStudy4 = 373) where participants rated a conspiracy spreader (vs. a neutral person) on a range of personality traits in different intergroup contexts. The results indicated that conspiracy spreaders were consistently perceived as more dominant and less warm than people making non-conspiratorial claims about certain events. Moreover, intergroup conflict attenuated the negative effects of spreading conspiracy theories on competence and warmth. These findings support the notion that besides drawbacks, spreading conspiracy theories can have benefits for the spreader's reputation, particularly during an intergroup conflict.

Towards a resentment-driven model of intergroup conflict: using the incel phenomenon to conceptualize resentment as the driving factor for ideologically motivated extremism

ABSTRACT This article outlines a new model for the initiation of intergroup conflict, in which resentment is theorized as the motivating factor. This model – drawing from existing theories in social psychology and international relations – describes the process by which members of a group become willing to engage in violent conflict with a target group, beginning with feelings of resentment arising from a perceived experience of victimization. The model is then applied to the involuntary celibate (incel) ideology and the trend of mass shootings perpetrated by incels, with two case studies.

Detecting Offensive Language on Malay Social Media: A Zero-Shot, Cross-Language Transfer Approach Using Dual-Branch mBERT

Social media serves as a platform for netizens to stay informed and express their opinions through the Internet. Currently, the social media discourse environment faces a significant security threat—offensive comments. A group of users posts comments that are provocative, discriminatory, and objectionable, intending to disrupt online discussions, provoke others, and incite intergroup conflict. These comments undermine citizens’ legitimate rights, disrupt social order, and may even lead to real-world violent incidents. However, current automatic detection of offensive language primarily focuses on a few high-resource languages, leaving low-resource languages, such as Malay, with insufficient annotated corpora for effective detection. To address this, we propose a zero-shot, cross-language unsupervised offensive language detection (OLD) method using a dual-branch mBERT transfer approach. Firstly, using the multi-language BERT (mBERT) model as the foundational language model, the first network branch automatically extracts features from both source and target domain data. Subsequently, Sinkhorn distance is employed to measure the discrepancy between the source and target language feature representations. By estimating the Sinkhorn distance between the labeled source language (e.g., English) and the unlabeled target language (e.g., Malay) feature representations, the method minimizes the Sinkhorn distance adversarially to provide more stable gradients, thereby extracting effective domain-shared features. Finally, offensive pivot words from the source and target language training sets are identified. These pivot words are then removed from the training data in a second network branch, which employs the same architecture. This process constructs an auxiliary OLD task. By concealing offensive pivot words in the training data, the model reduces overfitting and enhances robustness to the target language. In the end-to-end framework training, the combination of cross-lingual shared features and independent features culminates in unsupervised detection of offensive speech in the target language. The experimental results demonstrate that employing cross-language model transfer learning can achieve unsupervised detection of offensive content in low-resource languages. The number of labeled samples in the source language is positively correlated with transfer performance, and a greater similarity between the source and target languages leads to better transfer effects. The proposed method achieves the best performance in OLD on the Malay dataset, achieving an F1 score of 80.7%. It accurately identifies features of offensive speech, such as sarcasm, mockery, and implicit expressions, and showcases strong generalization and excellent stability across different target languages.

Культурный код: определение понятия и практическая проблематика феномена: теоретический обзор

The aim of the study is to form a theoretical core of understanding of this phenomenon within the framework of theoretical review of modern concepts of cultural code. The article considers different definitional, structural and functional aspects of the cultural code, reveals its psychic roots and significance in human behavior, structure, sign-symbolic, figurative and value content, the role of a connecting element between the psyche and culture, the function of a communicative element and an interpreter of cultural texts and a cipher encapsulating the main meanings of culture. The significance of the cultural code in ethnic and national forms of human existence, in the construction of social and cultural identity is established. The key problems and risks associated with the defragmentation of the cultural code are outlined: standardization and unification of cultural codes within the framework of globalization, ideological and cultural wars and propaganda, excessive subordination of culture to market and materialistic principles, erosion of traditional values and meanings and at the same time imbalance between traditional and innovative principles in culture, conflictogenicity and disharmony of socio-cultural space as factors of intergroup and international conflicts, destructive processes, and the emergence of new cultural codes. Based on the generalization and synthesis of the obtained knowledge, a new theoretical and conceptual core of the cultural code is formulated as a structure that determines the image-symbolic and value content of culture, its ethnic and national peculiarities, the prospects of development of the sociocultural environment or the mechanisms slowing down this development, as well as the specificity of unconscious thinking and behavior of the people-expressor of the culture and its codes. In the framework of the proposed concept, the cultural code appears as a kind of “genome” of culture, laying the foundations of its development, determining the nature of interaction and human assimilation of its products, serves as a basic mechanism of specific cultural mastering and transformation of the world around people, as well as a decoder that allows (if correctly interpreted) to read the mental characteristics of social groups and influence them in the mental and behavioral sense.

Affective prediction errors in persistence and escalation of aggression.

People generally empathize with others and find harm aversive. Yet aggression, for example, between groups, abounds. How do people learn to overcome this aversion in order to aggress? Many models of learning emphasize outcome prediction errors-deviations from expected outcomes in the environment-but aggression may also be fueled by affective prediction errors (affective PEs)-deviations from how we expect to feel. Across five preregistered online experiments that hold outcome prediction errors constant (N = 4,607), participants choosing aggressive or nonaggressive actions aggressed more against disliked group members and often escalated or persisted in taking actions that felt better than expected (positive affective PE), especially when those actions were aggressive. Crucially, inducing incidental empathy toward the group of the target rendered affective PE signals sensitive to group identification-participants escalated aggression that felt better than expected relatively less toward liked versus disliked group members. That said, affective PEs did not always add explanatory power beyond levels of postoutcome affect alone; we discuss the importance and implications of these results. In summary, we reveal affective PE integration as a candidate algorithm facilitating exceptions to harm aversion in intergroup conflict. More broadly, we highlight for affective science and decision-making researchers the necessity of appropriately testing separable components of affective signals in predicting subsequent behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Diasporas during conflict: A mixed‐method analysis of attitudes of the Russian‐speaking community in Finland towards the Russia‐Ukraine war

AbstractThis mixed‐method study of 1,374 Russian‐speaking immigrants living in Finland investigated how different characteristics of their socio‐political integration are reflected in their attitudes towards supporting Ukraine during the war. The results of survey responses showed that trust in Finnish media and engagement with Finnish societal issues predicted stronger ‘pro‐Ukraine’ attitudes (i.e., support for Finland's aid for Ukraine and condemning of Russia's invasion), while experiences of increased hate speech or discrimination of Russian speakers in Finland were related to weaker ‘pro‐Ukraine’ attitudes. Next, person‐centred analysis identified three socio‐political integration clusters. High Integration cluster respondents highly supported Ukraine as compared to Critical and Low Integration clusters. Critical Integration respondents were somewhat more integrated than Low Integration respondents, except they felt that discrimination towards Russian speakers had increased due to the war. Analyses of open‐ended responses confirmed that Critical Integration respondents were most likely concerned with discrimination. Low integration respondents had ambivalent attitudes in that many were opposed to the war but felt that Western countries were also responsible. Our findings highlight the role of socio‐political integration – and especially perceived discrimination – in shaping immigrants' political views during political turmoil. Receiving societies should promote non‐discrimination and inclusiveness to mitigate intergroup conflicts in societies with significant diasporic communities. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Toward an Ethnoracial Ontology for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: The Case of African Americans and Black Immigrants in the United States

One of the central issues in the study of race and ethnicity is ontology. That is, after decades of scientific inquiry, we continue to debate definitions for race and ethnicity. Broadly speaking, the questions that frame this debate are: what is race, what is ethnicity, are they the same, or are they different? As this debate continues, many are using an amalgamated term— ethnoracial. However, there is yet no formal definition or ontology for this term. Indeed, most seem to use it to avoid getting entangled in the often contentious and still ongoing debate on ontologies for race and ethnicity. That is, most seem to use this term to avoid questions and concerns associated with the underlying ‘nature’ of these group formations and, instead, seek to focus the readers’ attention on their descriptions of and explanations for the associated intergroup identities, conflicts and disparities. Within this context, and given certain anomalies I have come across in my studies of the relative positioning of African Americans and Black immigrants in the United States, I am calling for the formal development of a new ontology for the study of race and ethnicity. The crux of my argument is that, since processes of racialization and/or ethnogenesis emerge in the wake of human migrations—to include international migration, internal migration, colonialism, and slavery—they yield a single underlying ontology— ethnoraciality.

The effect of intergroup competition outcome on ingroup cooperation: insights from the male warrior hypothesis

IntroductionThe Male Warrior Hypothesis (MWH) proposes that sex-specific selective pressures have promoted male cooperation with the ingroup members to outcompete rival groups. However, intergroup conflicts do not occur in isolation and the outcomes of previous competitions may influence group cooperativeness. Since this phenomenon is not well understood, we aimed to shed light on the effect of previous competition outcome on later cooperative behavior under intergroup conflicts. Based on the MWH, we hypothesized that repeated contests between groups could enhance ingroup cooperation, regardless of the outcome of the previous contest because status is at risk, but when competition is not present, participants would move to the symmetric equilibria.MethodsTo test this hypothesis, we recruited 246 individuals organized in groups of 6 and measured cooperation using a threshold public good game over two rounds, manipulating the outcome in the first round to create groups of winners and losers.ResultsOur results show that intergroup conflict scenarios promoted cooperation in both victory and defeat conditions, whereas, in the control scenario only losers increased their cooperation.DiscussionWe argue that winners under the presence of an external threat may enhance in-group cooperation in order to assure their status; whereas, losers may be attempting to regain it.

Out-Group Threat and Xenophobic Hate Crimes: Evidence of Local Intergroup Conflict Dynamics between Immigrants and Natives

Out-Group Threat and Xenophobic Hate Crimes: Evidence of Local Intergroup Conflict Dynamics between Immigrants and Natives

APPLICATION OF COMMUNICATION INFRASTRUCTURE THEORY IN EXPLORING THE VOICE OF COMMUNITY IN CONFLICT-PRONE AREAS

This research is motivated by conflicts in urban areas, which are escalating in frequency. Johar Baru District was selected due to the prevalence of inter-group conflicts, specifically in the form of brawls, which have become a daily occurrence in the area. The prevalence of this kind of conflict traumatizes the residents left behind in the area. Consequently, there is a pressing need to explore the voices of the community in conflict-prone areas that need to be explored. Communication infrastructure theory was chosen to support the analysis because this theory was developed to articulate problems in urban areas. The research method chosen is a case study. The research results show that the community expressed three essential things related to conflict: the dangers of drugs, peace, and providing employment opportunities. This research also shows that Communication Infrastructure Theory (CIT) is reliable for mapping conflict in urban areas as well as capturing the voices of communities that have been marginalized in conflict-prone areas.