Malleability Interventions in Intergroup Relations

One important characteristic of intergroup relations and conflicts is the fact that toxic or violent intergroup relations are often associated with fixed and stable perceptions of various entities, including the ingroup (stable and positive), the outgroup (stable and negative), and the conflict (as an irresolvable force of its own). One of the major challenges for interventions aimed at moderating tensions and improving intergroup relations is helping people understand that their adversary or the conflict itself can change in meaningful ways. We address this challenge by drawing on the well-established framework of implicit theories, applied to beliefs about the malleability of individuals, groups, and conflicts/context to improve intergroup relations. The cornerstone of the current framework is our premise that altering people’s general beliefs about malleability provides a means of decreasing negative emotions, attitudes, and behaviors in contentious intergroup contexts. By implementing these ideas through experimental designs implemented in a range of intergroup contexts, some of the most destructive intergroup attitudes can be changed, often without even mentioning the specific out-group or conflict. In this chapter, we present lab and field experiments demonstrating short and long term effects of malleability interventions on conflict-related emotions (e.g., hatred, hope) as well as intergroup attitudes and behaviors.