What is the special issue about?
Peace is a collective effort, cultivated over time. Partnerships between researchers and practitioners, with the line sometimes blurred between the two, have the potential to improve individual lives and promote social cohesion. A new special issue of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Studiesopens in new window documents and advances those efforts—where science meets the real world and practice informs inquiry.
The special issue presents global evidence of rigorous peace practice, gathered by researchers inspired by the memory of Emile Bruneau, founder of the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Labopens in new window at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, who devoted his life to “putting science to work for peace.” Through his work, endless curiosity, and fervent hope, Bruneau affected the lives of many researchers, practitioners, and individuals within society on both professional and interpersonal levels. On September 30, 2020, Bruneau passed away after a fight with brain cancer, but his vision lives on. This special issue of Peace and Conflict is one small piece of that living memory.
What is the significance of the issue?
When conducting scientific research intended to inform peace efforts, Bruneau partnered with peacebuilders and practitioners to focus on understanding and healing divisions between groups in conflict, such as Israelis and Palestinians (e.g., Bruneau & Saxe, 2010, 2012), Democrats and Republicans (e.g., Moore-Berg et al., 2020), Muslims and non-Muslims (e.g., Bruneau et al., 2017, 2018; Bruneau, Kteily, & Urbiola, 2020; Petsko et al., 2021), Hungarians and Roma (e.g., Bruneau, Szekeres, et al., 2020; Orosz et al., 2018), Colombians and ex-FARC Colombians (Bruneau et al., 2022), immigrants and nonimmigrants (Moore-Berg, Hameiri, & Bruneau, 2022), and many others. The articles in this special issue offer a snapshot of Bruneau’s legacy of not only understanding conflict but also working alongside those affected by it to transform lives and move societies along a path toward peace.
Tell us about a few key takeaways.
Following in Emile’s footsteps, a majority of the articles in this special issue explore different interventions aimed at reducing intergroup conflict. Some of these articles highlight collaborations between practitioners, peacebuilders, and scientists. For instance, Moore-Berg, Bernstein, et al. (2022) discussed ways to partner with practitioners to conduct translational science research. Building on this approach, Casas and Hameiri (2022) provided a behind-the-scenes account of engaging in translational science by describing the research planning and scientist–practitioner partnerships behind Bruneau et al.’s (2022) research in Colombia. McKeown et al. (2022) reported on their work with teachers to coproduce a theory-driven intervention aimed at improving intergroup relations among 11-year-old children in England. Mir and Bueno de Mesquita (2022) provided an overview of how peace psychology can be used on the ground by practitioners in areas of intractable conflict, such as Kashmir. Stefaniak et al. (2022) evaluated the efficacy of eight annual School of Dialogue programs developed by practitioners to improve Polish people’s attitudes about Jewish people. Dehrone et al. (2022) partnered with peacebuilding organizations to assess how survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders of the Rwandan genocide communicate their conflict experiences, and they developed a dialogue intervention program that facilitated this communication. Charalampidou and Psaltis (2022) worked with teachers to implement a contact intervention that used puppets representing Syrian refugee children to improve intergroup relations among Greek students. Finally, Burrows et al. (2022) examined how intergroup contact influenced intergroup relations in Bosnia-Herzegovina both correlationally and during a weeklong peace camp that brought together ethnically diverse youth from this region.
Other research published in this special issue took a more theoretical approach to understanding intergroup interactions but has far-reaching implications for interventions. For instance, Bareket-Shavit et al. (2022) examined how positive and negative norms affect intergroup interactions among 4- and 5-year-olds. As another example, Shamoa-Nir et al. (2022) conducted a qualitative study to assess how children perceive ethnoreligious differences in Israel.
Several authors continued Bruneau’s legacy by exploring the role of empathy in intergroup relations. Specifically, Noor and Quek (2022) examined perpetrators’ expectations for forgiveness and whether their social dominance orientation and the victims’ social status influenced these expectations. Štambuk et al. (2022) explored how intergroup apologies are interpreted and forgiveness is expressed in the aftermath of violent conflict. Finally, Soral et al. (2022) investigated how empathy-inducing contact interventions change the way majority group members respond to hate speech about marginalized group members.
Finally, two articles in this special issue are devoted to understanding dehumanization. The first is by Civitillo et al. (2022), who conducted a conceptual replication of Bruneau’s past research by examining how German preservice teachers’ affective prejudice toward and infrahumanization of Romani students affects their educational-track placement recommendations for the students. The second article, by Fourie et al. (2022), investigated how historical dehumanization of racialized groups in South Africa is still very present in postapartheid South Africa and how current dehumanization affects intergroup relations.
What are some practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
Like Bruneau’s work, the articles in this special issue show that science can do more than just promote theory: It can be used to tackle some of the world’s most pressing social issues. The articles offer concrete examples of research as a communal force—not owned by one particular person or group—aiming to achieve real change in the world and bringing together scientists, practitioners, storytellers, and media makers to unite their expertise and collaborate to understand and reduce conflict.
This article is in the Social Psychology and Social Processes topic area. View more articles in the Social Psychology and Social Processes topic area.