Anti-racist Actions: Using Skills- and Contact-based Interventions to Increase Palestinian-/Jewish-Israeli Intergroup Prosocial Bystander Responses

• In Event: How Intergroup-related and Social-cognitive Factors Shape Bystanders' Responses to Bias-based Bullying and Exclusion Across Three Countries

Abstract

Bias-based exclusion—a form of prejudice-based victimization that targets outgroup members (Cooley et al., 2016)—is a typical expression of protracted conflict in the Middle-East manifest in youths’ everyday lives (Bar-Tal et al., 2017). Prosocial bystander intervention (e.g., tell excluder it’s not fair), however, is highly effective in stopping such victimization and its myriad consequences (Salmivalli, 2014). It represents the anti-racist action of publicly rejecting outgroup victimization. Yet, some bystanders react passively (e.g., do nothing), an ambiguous display of non-racism where an individual feels unable to enact their non-racist beliefs publicly; other bystanders react negatively (e.g., support excluder/join in exclusion; Brewster & Tucker, 2016), where an individual actively joins in the racist discriminatory victimization of the outgroup. Social-emotional skills-based interventions increase youth’s prosocial bystander responses (BRs) (Espelage & Low, 2012), and interethnic contact increases prosocial attitudes toward victimized outgroup peers (Brenick & Killen, 2014), both increasing the potential for anti-racist actions. Moreover, youth’s evaluations of exclusion differ for same- versus cross-ethnic victimization and differ by context (e.g., with the peer group, with parents; Brenick & Halgunseth, 2017). Research has yet to explore whether either intervention strategy promotes prosocial and reduces passive and negative BRs in not just same-, but also cross-ethnic exclusion scenarios in which either peer or parent intergroup-norms are salient.
To assess whether 12-month-long skills- or contact-based interventions affected BRs, 148 Palestinian-Israeli and 154 Jewish-Israeli school-children (Mage=10.55) were assigned to the: 1) social-cognitive/emotional skills-based intervention (skills; e.g., empathy, perspective-taking); 2) combined skills and contact intervention (skills+contact; i.e., skills training and structured contact activities with ethnic outgroup peers); or 3) control group (control). At pre-test, post-test, and a 6-month follow-up, participants evaluated hypothetical scenarios in which they witnessed: a) parents not letting their child invite an outgroup peer to a sleepover (parent-context), and b) a friend not allowing an outgroup peer to join a group activity (peer-context). Participants were asked how they would respond to each; BRs were categorized as prosocial, passive, or negative.
Results from a 2 (gender: male/female) x 2 (ethnicity: Palestinian-Israeli/Jewish-Israeli) x 3 (group: skills/skills+contact/control) x 3 (BR: prosocial/passive/negative) x 2 (scenario: peer/home) x 3 (time: pre-test/post-test/follow-up) repeated measures ANOVA revealed significant main effects of time and context, which were qualified by several interaction effects (Table 1). Notably, a time x BR x group interaction showed that both treatment groups used significantly more prosocial and fewer passive and negative BRs over time. The control group showed the opposite effect and used significantly more passive BRs over time (see Figure 1a-c).
The results of our interventions showed increases in positive bystander responses--even in the midst of ongoing protracted conflict--youth were willing to bring forth anti-racist action and publicly confront discriminatory victimization of the outgroup at the hands of their peers and parents. These findings show great promise for the potential of anti-racist interventions with youth across the globe. Further applications and implications of these findings for culturally-sensitive school- and home-based bullying interventions will be discussed.

Authors

• Alaina Brenick, University of Connecticut
  Presenting Author

• Maisha Seraj, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rui Wu, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Malak Zureiqi, University of Connecticut
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rony Berger
  Non-Presenting Author