How to Get Along: Prosocial Intergroup Behavior Effects on Prosocial Intergroup Attitudes as a Potential Novel Pathway to Improve Intergroup Relations

With polarization across group divides on the rise worldwide, promoting intergroup cooperation is crucial for well functioning societies. This project will examine underexplored foundational mechanisms in intergroup processes and investigate newly developed methods for promoting intergroup cooperation. The methods researchers currently employ to promote prosociality between groups are limited in their effectiveness when applied to real-world situations. This is because researchers often target negative, resistant-tochange
attitudes towards the other group ('cause'), and believe prosocial intergroup behavior will follow ('effect'). This project suggests that in order to increase prosocial behavior,
interventions need to target behavior directly ('cause'), and prosocial attitudes will follow ('effect'). This research investigates this suggestion by examining intergroup attitude behavior causation both longitudinally and experimentally. The first study will use state of the art longitudinal statistical modeling and high frequency measurement bursts to address this long-neglected 'causal sequence' problem in intergroup attitude-behavior research within UK citizens as they go about their daily lives. The second study will experimentally investigate the causal sequence of intergroup attitudes and behavior, above and beyond the first, by seeing how the past behavior and attitudes of multiple participants affect their interactions during laboratory simulated conflict. The final study will test the processes above in a laboratory simulation of real-world conflict, involving multiple groups. This research is important because it addresses long-standing theoretical gaps in an important area of research and offers practical and easy to implement solutions for one of the most difficult and enduring problems of the modern world: encouraging people to get along.