The paper explored how to promote constructive intergroup relations among children and young people in a context of protracted conflict. Across two studies, the Empathy–Attitudes–Action model was examined in middle childhood and adolescence. More specifically, we tested the relations among dispositional empathy, out‐group attitudes, and prosocial behaviors for youth born after the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. In one correlational (Study 1: N = 132; 6–11 years old: M = 8.42 years, SD = 1.23) and one longitudinal design (Study 2: N = 466; 14–15 years old), bootstrapped mediation analyses revealed that empathy was associated with more positive attitudes toward the conflict‐related out‐group, which in turn, was related to higher out‐group prosocial behaviors, both self‐report and concrete actions. Given that out‐group prosocial acts in a setting of intergroup conflict may serve as the antecedents for peacebuilding among children and adolescents, this study has intervention implications.
Even after a peace agreement, children often grow up within societies characterized by division and simmering intergroup tensions. In Northern Ireland, segregated Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods occur side by side, separated by 'peace walls' or physical barriers that demarcate 'interface' areas, which have higher levels of violence compared to non-interface areas. The study explored the impact of living in interface and non-interface neighborhoods, the strength of ingroup identity, and outgroup attitudes on intergroup resource distributions of 88 children aged between 5 and 9 years old, growing up in Belfast. The findings revealed that compared to those in non-interface areas, children living in interface neighborhoods distributed more resources to an ingroup member than an outgroup member. This effect was accentuated for those children that more strongly identified with their community group, either Protestant or Catholic. At the same time, children with more positive outgroup attitudes distributed more resources to an outgroup member, but only in non-interface neighborhoods. By applying a framework that incorporates converging social and developmental processes, the study adds to a mounting body of research that aims to understand the impact of living in divided societies on children's intergroup attitudes and behaviors. The implications for promoting resource sharing across group lines within postaccord Northern Ireland are discussed.
Empathy for salient outgroups can promote positive intergroup attitudes and prosocial behaviours. Less is known about which factors may promote empathy, particularly among children, in contexts of intergroup conflict. Empathy may depend on underlying cognitions, such as social essentialist beliefs, that is, believing that certain social categories have an underlying essence that causes members to share observable and non‐observable properties. This study explored the influence of essentialist beliefs about ethno‐religious categories on outgroup‐directed empathy, attitudes and prosocial behaviours of children living in Northern Ireland (N = 88; M = 7.09, SD = 1.47 years old). Bootstrapped chain mediation found that lower essentialist beliefs predicted greater outgroup‐directed empathy, which was positively related to outgroup attitudes, which in turn, predicted more outgroup prosocial behaviours. The findings highlight the importance of essentialist beliefs as an underlying factor promoting empathy, with links to prosocial behaviours in settings of intergroup conflict. The intervention implications are discussed.
This chapter uses a developmental approach to understand how collective victimhood is transmitted from generation to generation, focusing on the role of the family and drawing on research examples from Vukovar, Croatia, and Northern Ireland. In these two postaccord and divided societies, ethnic socialization in families serves as a major mechanism through which children and youth learn about their group’s history of victimization. The narratives that are shared include both societal narratives of the group’s collective experiences of suffering and individual narratives of family members’ personal experiences. The chapter stresses the active, agentic role of youth in eliciting narratives of collective victimhood when they are often faced with silence. Through the process of developmental provocation, children can stimulate transmission by asking questions, often in response to information received through other socialization agents such as schools or the media.
Following the signing of peace agreements, post-accord societies often remain deeply divided across group lines. There is a need to identify antecedents of youth’s support for peace and establish more constructive intergroup relations. This article explored the effect of out-group trust, intergroup forgiveness, and social identity on support for the peace process among youth from the historic majority and minority communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The sample comprised 667 adolescents (49% male; M = 15.74, SD = 1.99 years old) across two time points. The results from the structural equation model suggested that out-group trust was related to intergroup forgiveness over time, while forgiveness related to later support for the peace process. Strength of in-group social identity differentially moderated how out-group trust and intergroup forgiveness related to later support for peace among youth from the conflict-related groups (i.e., Protestants and Catholics). Implications for consolidating peace in Northern Ireland are discussed, which may be relevant to other settings affected by intergroup conflict.
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