Doctoral Dissertation Research: Cooperative Economic Projects and Peacebuilding

摘要本研究探讨了减少暴力冲突中群体之间的暴力和偏见的机制。学者、政府和非政府组织（ngo）制定和实施旨在在冲突群体成员之间创造积极互动的战略，作为防止暴力的手段。然而，这些策略并没有在目前处于冲突中的群体中进行测试，这就阻碍了对特定策略可能产生的影响的深入了解——它们是否有助于防止暴力或使冲突升级。这个项目启动了两个冲突群体之间的经济合作，以研究群体间的接触如何减少群体间的偏见。为了做到这一点，本研究利用行为游戏作为手段来获得群体间偏见的测量。研究人员设计了一种新的方法，通过观察群体间互动中的利他或自私行为来衡量偏见，而不是更普遍的基于调查的方法。该项目是在一个建设和平的非政府组织的协助下在一个地区实施的，该地区的农民和牧民之间存在严重的群体间暴力，每年造成数千人死亡，粮食严重不安全，财产遭到严重破坏，家庭和社区流离失所。这项研究的结果将为学者和政策制定者提供有价值的见解，帮助他们了解防止群体间暴力的有效策略。技术摘要本研究的重点是减少冲突群体之间暴力的策略。特别是，它与一个建设和平的非政府组织项目合作，该项目根据“接触假设”制定了这样一种战略。这种方法认为，竞争群体成员之间有组织的互动是减少群体间偏见的最有效手段。许多研究证实，群体间的互动可以减少偏见。与外群体相处的经验已被证明可以消除负面的刻板印象，并允许有偏见的个人重新概念化外群体。然而，最近的研究也得出结论，卷入冲突的群体之间的社会接触并不总是减少偏见，甚至可能增加偏见。积极的互动并不总能推广到整个外群体，当这种积极的互动与个人强烈持有的偏见信念相冲突时，可能会增加偏见。本项目通过测试持续的经济合作是否以及如何减少冲突群体之间的偏见，有助于研究群体间接触和减少偏见。这个项目的一个额外的和同样重要的贡献是一个新的和新的程序来衡量该领域的偏见。偏见通常是通过调查结果来衡量的，这就引发了对测量可靠性的质疑。这项研究没有采用基于调查的方法，而是通过观察农民和牧民（参与暴力冲突的群体）之间的公共产品博弈中的行为，直接评估偏见。本项目提供了接触理论的经验检验，以减少冲突群体之间的偏见和偏见的新措施。它的研究结果将有利于学者、决策者和非政府组织评估其预防冲突和减少偏见战略的有效性。

General AbstractThis research investigates mechanisms that reduce violence and prejudice between groups currently involved in a violent conflict. Scholars, governments, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) develop and implement strategies designed to create positive interactions between members of conflicting groups as means to prevent violence. These strategies, however, are not tested among groups currently engaged in conflict, which prevents insight into possible effects of particular strategies -- whether they serve to prevent violence or escalate conflict. This project initiates economic collaboration between two conflicting groups to study how intergroup contact might reduce intergroup prejudice. To do so, this study utilizes a behavioral game as means to gain a measure of intergroup prejudice. The researcher devises a new way to measure prejudice through the observation altruistic or selfish behavior during structured intergroup interactions, instead of the more prevalent survey-based procedure. The project is implemented with the assistance of a peace-building NGO in an area marked by significant intergroup violence between farmers and animal herders, which results in thousands of deaths per year, high levels of food insecurity, significant property destruction, and the displacement of families and communities. Results from the study will provide valuable insight to inform scholars and policymakers about effective strategies to prevent violence between groups. Technical AbstractThis research focuses on strategies to reduce violence between conflicting groups. In particular, it works with a peace-building NGO program that developed such a strategy derived from a "contact hypothesis." This approach posits that structured interactions between members of competing groups is the most effective means of reducing intergroup prejudice. Numerous studies confirm that intergroup interactions can reduce prejudice. Experiences with outgroups has been shown to remove negative stereotypes and allow the prejudicial individual to re-conceptualize the outgroup. Recent studies, however, also conclude that social contact between groups involved in conflict does not always reduce prejudice, and may even increase it. Positive interactions do not always generalize to the entire outgroup, and can increase prejudice when such positive interaction conflicts with an individual's strongly held prejudicial beliefs. This project contributes to the research intergroup contact and prejudice reduction by testing if and how sustained economic collaboration might reduce prejudice between conflicting groups. An additional and equally important contribution of this project is a novel and new procedure to measure of prejudice in the field. Prejudice is typically measured via survey responses, which raises questions with respect to the reliability of the measure. Instead of a survey-based measure, this study evaluates prejudice directly by observing behavior in a public goods game played between farmers and animal herders, groups engaged in violent conflict. This project offers an empirical test of contact theory to reduce prejudice between conflicting groups and a novel measure of prejudice. Its findings will benefit scholars, policymakers, and NGOs in evaluating the effectiveness of their conflict prevention and prejudice reduction strategies.