Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.
Harris School for Public Policy, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Oct 24;120(43):e2304882120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2304882120. Epub 2023 Oct 19.
Intergroup contact, originally designed as a tool for prejudice reduction, offers a promising means to resolve intergroup conflict. Evidence for contact-based interventions to improve intergroup relations is sparse, however, with most studies focusing only on the individuals who directly engage in contact. We test the ability of a contact-based intervention to promote peace between conflicting groups with a field experiment in Nigeria, where farmer and pastoralist communities are embroiled in a deadly conflict over land use. We examine the effectiveness of the contact intervention on the wider population-not just those directly engaged in contact-using surveys, direct observation of behavior in markets and social events, and a behavioral game. We find those who lived in the communities that received the intervention had more positive intergroup attitudes and feelings of physical security, as well as were more likely to engage in voluntary intergroup contact measured through self-reports and observed behavior in markets. Exploratory analyses show that those who directly participated in the program and those who were exposed to it by living in the communities where activities were taking place changed similarly with regard to attitudes and perceptions of security, but not with regard to behaviors, indicating the spread to the wider community was likely due to norm change. These results suggest that contact interventions can have wider societal change and reduce the barriers to peace between conflicting groups.
群体间接触最初被设计为减少偏见的工具，为解决群体间冲突提供了一种有前途的手段。然而，基于接触的干预措施来改善群体间关系的证据很少，大多数研究只关注直接参与接触的个人。我们在尼日利亚进行了一项实地实验，检验了基于接触的干预措施在促进冲突群体之间和平的能力，在那里农民和牧民社区因土地使用而陷入致命冲突。我们使用调查、市场和社会活动中的行为直接观察以及行为博弈，不仅考察了直接参与接触的人群，还考察了接触干预对更广泛人群的有效性。我们发现，那些生活在接受干预的社区的人对群体间的态度和身体安全的感觉更为积极，并且更有可能通过自我报告和市场行为观察来参与自愿的群体间接触。探索性分析表明，那些直接参与该计划的人和那些因生活在活动发生的社区而受到该计划影响的人，在态度和安全感知方面的变化相似，但在行为方面没有变化，这表明向更广泛的社区的传播可能是由于规范的改变。这些结果表明，接触干预措施可以带来更广泛的社会变革，减少冲突群体之间实现和平的障碍。
