Levy Jonathan, Influs Moran, Masalha Shafiq, Goldstein Abraham, Feldman Ruth
Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University, 8 Ha'universita Street, Herzliya 4610101, Israel.
Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University, 02150 Espoo, Finland.
PNAS Nexus. 2022 Oct 14;1(5):pgac236. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac236. eCollection 2022 Nov.
Humans' dependence on group living has led to the formation of tenacious, often nonconscious negative perceptions of other social groups, a phenomenon termed "intergroup bias" that sustains one of the world's most imminent problem: intergroup conflicts. Adolescents' participation in intergroup conflicts has been continuously on the rise, rendering the need to devise interventions that can mitigate some of their deleterious effects on youth an urgent societal priority. Framed within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and targeting youth, we implemented a dialogue-enhancing intervention for adolescents (16 to 18 years) reared amidst intractable conflict that builds on social synchrony and the neurobiology of affiliation. Implementing a randomized controlled trial design, before and after the 8-week intervention adolescents underwent magnetoencephalography to assess a neural marker of implicit prejudice and interviewed on their attitudes toward the conflict. Adolescents who received the intervention showed attenuation of the neural prejudice response, as indexed by sustained occipital alpha that was significantly reduced at post-intervention and adopted attitudes of peacemaking. Change in the neural prejudice response predicted attitudes of compromise and support in peacebuilding 7 years later, when young adults can already engage in active civil duties and responsibilities. These results underscore adolescence as a window of opportunity for enhancing inter-group dialogue and demonstrate the long-term associations between the neural evaluation of prejudice and self-reported measures of proclivity for compromise and peace in the context of an intractable century-long conflict.
人类对群体生活的依赖导致了对其他社会群体形成顽固的、往往是无意识的负面认知，这种现象被称为“群体间偏见”，它助长了世界上最紧迫的问题之一：群体间冲突。青少年参与群体间冲突的情况一直在持续上升，这使得设计能够减轻其对青少年一些有害影响的干预措施成为社会的当务之急。以巴以冲突为背景并以青少年为目标，我们为在棘手冲突中成长的青少年（16至18岁）实施了一种基于社会同步性和归属神经生物学的增强对话干预措施。采用随机对照试验设计，在为期8周的干预前后，青少年接受了脑磁图检查，以评估隐性偏见的神经标志物，并就他们对冲突的态度进行了访谈。接受干预的青少年表现出神经偏见反应的减弱，以持续枕叶阿尔法波为指标，干预后该指标显著降低，并且他们采取了促成和平的态度。神经偏见反应的变化预测了7年后在建设和平中妥协和支持的态度，那时年轻人已经能够承担积极的公民义务和责任。这些结果强调了青春期是增强群体间对话的机会之窗，并证明了在长达一个世纪的棘手冲突背景下，对偏见的神经评估与自我报告的妥协与和平倾向测量之间的长期关联。
