TY - JOUR A1 - Ditlmann, Ruth K. A1 - Samii, Cyrus T1 - Can intergroup contact affect ingroup dynamics? Insights from a field study with Jewish and Arab-Palestinian youth in Israel. JF - Journal of Peace Psychology N2 - How can intergroup contact programs affect conflict-ridden communities besides improving the outgroup attitudes of participating individuals? We address this question by examining the effects of an intergroup contact intervention on ingroup dynamics that may mitigate intergroup conflict. We also examine how outgroup attitudes and psychological resources mediate such effects. We present the results from a difference-in-differences design with 149 Jewish and Arab-Palestinian youth, some of whom participated in an intergroup contact and sports program operated by a nongovernmental organizations in Israel. Our main outcome is one’s tendency to censure ingroup members’ provocations toward the outgroup. As expected, we find a positive impact of the program on ingroup censuring. However, this result is only marginally significant. We find a positive effect of program participation on outgroup attitudes among Jewish youth as expected. To our surprise, among Arab-Palestinian youth, we find a negative effect on outgroup attitudes. Exploring the underlying processes and group-based differences further, we find that outgroup regard mediates the effect of intergroup contact on ingroup censuring for Jewish youth. We find no evidence for mediation among Arab-Palestinian youth but a positive association between ingroup censuring and psychological resources. These results suggest that the psychological conditions of ingroup censuring may differ by group. We discuss implications for peace-building interventions in societies with groups in conflict. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/pac0000217 VL - 22 IS - 4 SP - 380 EP - 392 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ditlmann, Ruth K. A1 - Samii, Cyrus A1 - Zeitzoff, Thomas T1 - Addressing intergroup conflict from the bottom-up? JF - Social Issues and Policy Review N2 - How might interventions that engage ordinary citizens in settings of violent conflict affect broader conflict dynamics? Given the volume of resources committed every year to citizen-oriented programs that attempt to promote peace, this is an important question. We develop a framework to analyze processes through which individual-level interventions could mitigate violent conflict escalation more broadly. Individual-level interventions may increase positive feelings toward the outgroup, as well as psychological, social, and material resources among participants. These have the potential to influence behaviors such as policing of the ingroup, public advocacy, and political action that can contribute to peace. Yet, the effectiveness of interventions to influence the conflict is moderated by contextual factors like groups’ access to material resources, their positions in society, and political institutions. We use this analytical framework to assess evidence from recent intervention studies. We find that the current evidence base is quite small, does not cover the diversity of relevant contexts, and gives too little attention to resources and capacities that enable people to engage in conflict mitigation behaviors. Researchers and policy makers should go beyond thinking only about improving attitudes to thinking about behavior, resources, and capacities for such behaviors, and contextual conditions that constrain behavior. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12027 VL - 11 IS - 1 SP - 38 EP - 77 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Asimovic, Nejla A1 - Ditlmann, Ruth K. A1 - Samii, Cyrus T1 - Estimating the effect of intergroup contact over years: evidence from a youth program in Israel JF - Political Science Research and Methods N2 - We study how an intervention combining youth intergroup contact and sports affects intergroup relations in the context of an active conflict. We first conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of one-year program exposure in Israel. To track effects of a multiyear exposure, we then use machine-learning techniques to fuse the RCT with the observational data gathered on multiyear participants. This analytical approach can help overcome frequent limitations of RCTs, such as modest sample sizes and short observation periods. Our evidence cannot affirm a one-year effect on outgroup regard and ingroup regulation, although we estimate benefits of multiyear exposure among Jewish-Israeli youth, particularly boys. We discuss implications for interventions in contexts of active conflict and group status asymmetry. KW - civil/domestic conflict, ethnicity and nationalism, experimental research, field experiments, quantitative methods Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2024.8 SN - 2049-8470 SP - 1 EP - 19 ER -