Editorial.

Abstract

Violence comes in many different shapes and sizes. According to the Oxfam (2016) Davos Report, the 62 richest people in the world now own as much wealth as half of the world's population, about 3.5 billion people. Since 2010, the wealth of the poorest half of the world has declined by about 1 trillion U.S. dollars, whereas the wealth of the 62 richest people has increased by 1.76 trillion U.S. dollars, reflecting enormous and increasing inequality and injustice. This indirect form of violence reflects strong cultural and structural biases.The mass media and traditional academic research focus almost exclusively on only one form of violence, direct physical violence. Of course, direct physical violence can have tragic and widespread consequences. For example, consider the surge in refugee numbers, which reached around 65 million in 2015 (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2016) as people flee violent conflicts. But in addition to attending to direct physical violence, we must track and develop policies for dealing with the entire range and varieties of violence around the world, including structural and cultural violence. It is simple-minded and misleading to measure violence only by counting deaths caused by direct physical violence: Body bags are a measure of one narrow type of violence, but there are many other important types of violence we must take into consideration and confront.This issue of the journal includes nine major articles, seven brief research reports, and four book reviews, reflecting psychological processes underlying peace and conflict. The major research articles deal with three broad themes: intergroup perceptions, the enablement of violence and its consequences, and intergroup contact. The study by Gutenbrunner and Wagner (2016) serves two valuable functions: First, this is a rare and very welcome empirical assessment of mediation techniques; second, results highlight the key role that perspective-taking can play in conflict resolution. In conflict situations, subjective perceptions matter a great deal, and believing that one is being heard is of the highest practical importance. Perceptions are related to expectations, such as when victims of violence participate in a truth commission and have expectations about outcomes. Guthrey's (2016) study in the context of Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste shows the importance of managing expectations during the process of implementing a truth commission. One of the most effective strategies of influencing perceptions during intergroup conflict is to target and change categorization processes in the groups involved. Moss (2016) reports on a study conducted in Zanzibar, exploring the possibilities and difficulties of using recategorization as a method for influencing intergroup cooperation. We often think of teachers as neutral participants in programs, such as those designed to change how the young categorize themselves and others into "ingroup" and "outgroup." The study by Kuppens and Langer (2016) demonstrates that teachers can be highly ...