Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Youth Identity, Peace and Conflict: Insights from Conflict and Diverse Settings
    Many of today’s youth are growing up and developing their sense of self in settings where identities are contested. Such identity dynamics play a key role in societal functioning, with group conflict often arising and being maintained due to competing social identities. Understanding how youth develop these social identities, and the consequences for peaceful and violent behaviours is of urgent importance in order to design appropriate policies and interventions. Much of the social psychological research on identity is based on social identity theory, which posits that we divide our world into social categories and define ourselves in terms of group belonging. The expressions of these social identities can be both positive and negative in how they are manifested in conflict and diverse settings. Whilst research often focuses on the negative side of identification (e.g., prejudice), identities can also be a source of peace; fostering individual belonging in society and under certain conditions, collective identities can also bring together groups in conflict. In this chapter, we briefly review the development of adolescent ethnic identity and then focus on the impact of identity for youth in conflict and diverse settings, highlighting positive and negative effects. This includes a consideration of the consequences of identity for peaceful and non-peaceful behaviours in Northern Ireland as well as how identity develops for ethnic minority youth in England. We conclude by providing suggestions for policy, practice and future research, arguing that a comprehensive account of the role of youth in society cannot be complete without understanding the development and consequences of identity processes.
      277
  • Publication
    Conducting Field Research Amid Violence: Experiences from Colombia
    Conducting research in violent environments poses particular challenges for researchers and participants. The current chapter explores factors that influence field research in Colombia prior to and immediately following the peace accord in 2016, which formally ended the country's 50-year conflict between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (after its Spanish abbreviation FARC). The authors include Colombian and international researchers, practitioners, and academics and offers three proposals. First, working in violent contexts demands that the research is flexible and responds to the participants’ voices and needs. This type of research may be particularly coherent with Participatory Action Research (PAR), which explicitly recognizes the power and agency of local actors who navigate conflict issues on a daily basis. Second, we demonstrate how ongoing violence poses obstacles, offers opportunities, and shapes each phase of investigation, such as research design and data collection. For example, we discuss how to select regions to study that are safe for the team and for participants to engage in research. Relatedly, a strong, local network is essential to research on sensitive social issues relating to on-going conflict dynamics. Third, the inclusion of emerging researchers, particularly from the conflict setting, in the team may increase local capacity as well as the longevity of the project. We reflect on the challenges and opportunities to including emerging researchers and conclude the chapter by suggesting how these issues may apply to other conflict and post-agreement settings.
      193
  • Publication
    Helping Kids! Cross-Cultural Research on Children’s Prosocial Behavior in Societies Transitioning to Peace
    Intrastate conflicts dominate the twenty-first century. Understanding the psychological mechanisms necessary to transform such settings into more peaceful societies is essential. Toward that end, Helping Kids! is a cross-cultural project that focuses on children in conflict-affected contexts. Moving away from the conceptualization of youth as perpetrators or powerless victims, Helping Kids! recognizes that children can foster a peaceful future, despite growing up in the shadow of war. This chapter approaches peace holistically and understands it as not merely the absence of violence, exploring a conceptualization of positive peace. In line with this understanding, Helping Kids! goes beyond reducing prejudice to focus on intergroup prosocial acts. The chapter first outlines how outgroup prosociality can be understood as an antecedent of peacebuilding, then presents evidence from elementary school-aged children in five different contexts of intergroup conflict (Northern Ireland, Croatia, Kosovo, Republic of North Macedonia, and Israel) to reflect both the complexity and diversity of this area of research. We highlight both the common characteristics as well as differences across the Helping Kids! contexts and how children can contribute to a transition to peace. The chapter concludes with recommendations for future research and practice.
      27
  • Publication
    Promoting Prosocial Behavior Toward Refugees: Exploring the Empathy-Attitude-Action Model in Middle Childhood
    Given the current global “refugee crisis,” there is a need for research investigating methods to promote positive intergroup relationships in host communities. This chapter will explore how empathy can be used to encourage host-society children to develop positive attitudes and engage in helping and prosocial behaviors toward refugees. The focus will be on middle childhood, a period when youth acquire advanced forms of perspective taking and an increased understanding of intergroup dynamics. This chapter extends prior research in adult populations by applying the empathy-attitudes-action model as an intervention for preparing children to engage positively toward incoming refugee children. This model outlines that inducing empathy toward a member of a stigmatized group may improve out-group attitudes as a whole, and in turn, increase prosocial behavior toward that collective out-group. Furthermore, the chapter recognizes the agency of children in establishing harmonious intergroup relations and in creating peaceful and inclusive societies. This chapter concludes with a call to action, advocating for the implementation of preventative programs that prepare children to engage meaningfully with their new peers.
      330