Building Intergroup Trust through Personal Transfers in Post-war Liberia

• In Event: Lightning Round: Research Design

Abstract

Ethnic warfare breaks inter-ethnic social ties resulting in ethnic parochialism and outgroup prejudice. The erosion of intergroup relations in war-torn societies has high behavioral stakes, leading to harmful behaviors ranging from outgroup avoidance to discrimination to physical attacks. Urgent policy responses are required to overturn these patterns. Scholars across social and psychological sciences have long investigated the effectiveness of various interventions aimed at reducing ethnic prejudice and discrimination. The vast majority of these interventions fall under three major categories: (a) Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, (b) Community-Driven Development programs; and (c) Contact-based interventions. Despite the vast research on each of these mechanisms, significant questions remain on the psychological harm imposed on victims, their context-dependence, the small magnitude of the effects, the dearth of evidence using ethnic groups, their scalability, and their uncertain long-term effectiveness.

In this project, we offer a novel approach. We theorize that a fundamental mechanism that underlies cooperation across individuals and groups is positive reciprocity. Ethnic wars disrupt mechanisms of intergroup reciprocal trust by making individuals wary and suspicious of outgroup members, reinforcing patterns of intergroup prejudice and discrimination. Thus, we hypothesize that interventions that aim at shaping people's beliefs about the cooperative preferences of outgroup members are likely to be effective at building trust and cooperation across members of opposed ethnic groups in postwar settings. For this purpose, we design and evaluate the effectiveness of a novel kind of intervention in reducing group-based prejudice in postwar in Liberia: inter-ethnic personal transfers. i.e., cash transfers between individuals of different ethnic groups.

In collaboration with the NGO Educate Children, we will conduct a real-world intervention in Liberia whereby the NGO would support vulnerable children to attend school through a sponsorship program for one academic year. In this program, all participants will receive a cash transfer equivalent to the annual school tuition. However, participants will randomly receive a cash transfer from either a fellow co-ethnic or a non-co-ethnic sponsor. In total, the sample size will consist of 500 students from various slum communities in Monrovia and Nimba county. We hypothesize that participants who receive a personal transfer from a non-co-ethnic will positively update the cooperative beliefs of members of the outgroup, leading to a reduction of ethnic prejudice and discrimination. We will conduct baseline surveys, midline, and endline surveys to measure changes in intergroup attitudes and discriminative behavior throughout the program. We hope that the results of this intervention will inform policy-making in building societal cohesion in postwar settings.

Authors

• Joan Barcelo, New York University Abu Dhabi

• Sekou Jabateh, New York University - Abu Dhabi