While education is a key tool in peacebuilding, traditional education systems may push those who feel marginalized into extreme ideological shifts in response. Community-based peacebuilding education initiatives (PEIs) are an alternative to conventional educational institutions to promote peace and combat radicalization. This paper's conceptual framework utilizes experiential and transformative learning theories with educational displacement and replacement model to support the idea that PEIs could serve as a platform for transformation. Results were derived from data collected over a thirteen-month period from six PEIs located in Southeast Europe, primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina, using multi-sited ethnography, interviews, and a thrice-reiterated survey to identify changes in participants. This indicates that adopting targeted approaches in PEIs, alongside the opportunity for the participants to learn about each other and about the violent history, may trigger alterations in intergroup contact quality, and a general decline in unfavorable outgroup perception.

The decline in intergroup relations evident in myriad conflicts around the world has far-reaching implications: it erodes trust and cooperation at both the individual and societal levels, hinders effective societal functioning and threatens the well-being of individuals living in such contexts. In response, researchers have developed evidence-based interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations and cultivating societies that are more inclusive, tolerant and peaceful. However, a ‘one intervention fits all’ approach persists. In this Review, we consolidate research from four domains in social psychology (prejudice reduction, conflict resolution, intergroup reconciliation and affective polarization) to elucidate the critical features necessary for successful intergroup interventions. Specifically, we consider the importance of identifying meaningful intervention goals (what), crucial characteristics of intervention recipients (who) and key contextual features (where) for optimizing interventions. We also describe how motivation and conformity might present barriers to the successful implementation of intergroup interventions in the real world and we suggest ways to overcome these challenges. A thorough understanding of the features that influence intervention outcomes will enable effective personalization and contextualization of existing interventions and development of new ones.

Existing research examining the creation of positive and prosocial interpersonal relations has established moral elevation as an approach-oriented emotion to be associated with a range of positive and prosocial outcomes. In this article and with the goal to identify emotional mechanism for improving intergroup relations in contexts of conflict, we examined the effects of moral elevation on enhancing intergroup relations. Across four experimental studies (Ns = 1,131), conducted in four understudied countries directly affected or threatened by intergroup conflict, we demonstrated that induced moral elevation elicits important cognitive and emotional shifts toward adversarial groups, resulting in improved intergroup relations. Specifically, we show that inducing moral elevation through stories of outgroup moral exemplars (individuals who have risked their life to save the life of an outgroup member) enhanced perceptions of intergroup moral similarity and positive emotions toward the outgroup, consequently fostering greater approach and prosocial intergroup behaviors. This pattern proved consistent across four distinct contexts: nonconflict (Sweden), ongoing conflict (Pakistan), protracted conflict (Serbia), and postconflict (Bosnia and Herzegovina). This article advances existing theory on positive emotions by identifying a novel emotional mechanism conducive to improving intergroup relations in contexts of conflict and extends the impact of learning about exemplary moral behaviors performed by relevant others. Ultimately, this article underscores the relevance of moral elevation in mitigating intergroup conflicts using intergroup interventions.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is accompanied by horrific losses among civilians. This study investigates various individual (hope, optimism, resilience, post-traumatic growth, and coping strategies) and contextual predictors (experience of life under occupation, actively hostile home environment, and frequent moves) of subjective well-being among the youth living in Ukraine. A total sample of 593 students from several universities participated in the study using surveys that contained questions about sociodemographic characteristics, life satisfaction, hope, optimism, personal post-traumatic growth, resilience, and coping strategies. Data were analyzed using JAMOVI software. The level of dissatisfaction with their own lives was 34.7%; most of the respondents had a higher incidence of minimal/mild hopelessness (88.7%) and high/moderate level of optimism (60.9%). The majority of participants had moderate and high levels of post-traumatic growth (51.9% and 6.7%, respectively) and resilience (46.0% and 14.5%, respectively). Optimism, hope, resilience, post-traumatic growth, using emotional support, and life in occupation predicted life satisfaction among the study sample. 

In 1941, a Muslim woman, Zejneba Hardaga and her family, hid an entire Jewish family and helped them escaped the persecution in the Nazi-occupied Sarajevo. Despite notices on the street walls threatening those who would hide Jews with the death penalty, the Hardaga family welcomed the Kavilio family and told them “Our home is your home.” After the war was over, the Kavilio family immigrated to Israel. In 1984, they asked Yad Vashem to give the Hardaga family the recognition “Righteous Among the Nations.” According to Eli Tauber, the head of a Jewish cultural association in Sarajevo, Zejneba Hardaga is the first Muslim woman to be recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor awarded to non-Jews who helped Jews escape persecution in the Holocaust. Fifty years later, during the 1992–1995 siege of Sarajevo, Zajneba and her family were under imminent threat. The Kavilio family secured refuge and safety for Zejneba’s family by using fake Jewish identity cards. In February 1994, Zejneba Hardaga and her family fled to Israel and were welcomed by government officials, representatives of Yad Vashem and the Kavilios. They still live in Israel and Zejneba’s daughter, Sarah Pecanac, began working for Yad Vashem where stories of courageous and righteous non-Jews to save Jews during the Holocaust are kept alive. Rescues took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions, and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed (Yad Vashem 2023).

In March 2021, Serbia made the unprecedented announcement to offer free Covid-19 vaccination to citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and notably to Bosniaks, against whom three decades earlier Serbia had waged a bloody war. How was this policy appraised and, most importantly, did the policy appraisal impact reconciliation? We report here the results of a longitudinal investigation amid a representative sample of Bosniak youth (N = 450). Results suggest that a positive appraisal of this actual, state-level policy, predicted improvement on a series of intergroup reconciliation indicators (e.g., trust in the out-group, forgiveness for past violence, hope for future relationship), particularly so amid those who are strongly attached to their Bosniak in-group.

Information about ingroup moral violations against outgroups evoke defensiveness resulting in low support for reparations to be provided to members of these groups. Yet it remains unknown if reminders of ingroup harmdoings could also enhance moral engagement rather than disengagement. In this paper, we report experimental evidence from three studies (ns = 625) set in the context of historical atrocities committed against indigenous people in Sweden demonstrating that high importance of individuals’ moral identity led to increased prosocial behaviors benefiting the outgroup (reparations and outgroup monetary donation). The positive effects of moral identity on reparations and outgroup donation were independent and remained significant after controlling for group-based guilt, which is a known predictor of willingness to provide reparations. Furthermore, our research identified a pathway of affirming individuals’ moral identity through stories of ingroup moral exemplars. Participants who learned about morally admirable behaviors performed by their ingroup fellows were more likely to endorse and engage in prosocial behaviors benefiting the outgroup. These effects were driven by an increased importance of participants’ moral identity. Establishing ways of affirming threatened moral identity and, in that way, facilitating more prosocial and moral actions is important for contexts with a history of human right violations.

Parties involved in intergroup violence tend to be portrayed in simplified ways, clearly dividing between those perceived as morally bad (often referred to as perpetrators) and those perceived as morally good (often referred to as victims). However, the process of intergroup violence is not as simple and includes a wide and more complex array of behaviors, varying in terms of moral evaluation (see Vollhardt & Bilewicz, 2013). One such rare and counter-stereotypical behavior, observed among the perpetrators and bystanders of collective violence, is a courageous act of helping victims under high personal risk. Implications of this type of behavior constitute the main topic of this chapter. Acts of help provided to victims by perpetrators or witnesses of collective violence are examples of morality crossing ethnic, national, religious, or ideological boundaries. It is important to accentuate that such help, provided under circumstances of hostility, often results in severe consequences for the helper such as ostracism, exclusion, or even loss of health and life for themselves and their relatives. The most widely discussed examples of such heroic actions are people who rescued Jews from death in extermination camps during the Holocaust, awarded with the Righteous Among the Nations Medal. However, such acts of heroic behavior have also been observed not only in relation to the Holocaust but also in contexts of other examples of collective violence in the 20th century. We refer to such acts using the term moral exemplars (Čehajić-Clancy & Bilewicz, 2017, 2021). In this chapter, we propose that exposure to moral exemplars is an effective intervention facilitating positive intergroup relations in post-conflict areas.