About this session

Saturday, 12:10 PM - 1:40 PM

Fostering Harmony: Promoting Intergroup Prosociality Across the Globe

Given the current sociopolitical and cultural climate of divisiveness and conflicts among groups across many societies, it is increasingly important to foster prosociality toward diverse outgroup members. These include emotions (e.g., empathy) and behaviors across multiple levels (e.g., helping at the interpersonal level, collective actions). In this symposium, we present four studies on understanding and fostering such prosociality across the globe, these studies spanning early adolescents to adults, using focus groups interviews, longitudinal, and experimental methods.
Paper 1 focused on understanding peacebuilding actions (i.e., outgroup prosociality). Adolescents and adults from four countries participated in focus groups and surveys. Preliminary findings on peacebuilding across different levels (e.g., interpersonal helping, collective actions) will be shared.
Gender and race are salient social group memberships, especially for U.S. youth, Paper 2 and 3 focused on examining how parenting relates to U.S. early adolescents’ altruistic and public prosocial behaviors toward peers of different gender and race longitudinally. Findings revealed how global parenting (i.e., warmth) and specific socialization practices (i.e., gender socialization, racial socialization) function together in adolescents’ outgroup prosocial behavior.
Paper 4 focused on the understanding people’s collective actions toward Ukrainian refugees with two randomized experiments. Irish and other European participants from two studies were more likely to support Ukrainian refugees through collective actions if they were exposed to war-related information, and this relation is mediated by increased empathy.
Together, these studies provide a platform for discussion of advancement and future directions on promoting intergroup prosociality and social harmony across the globe.

Paper #1
Title	Defining Youth Peacebuilding in Conflict and Non-Conflict Settings
Presenting author	Dr. Laura K. Taylor, Ph.D., University College Dublin, Ireland

Paper #2
Title	A Longitudinal Investigation of the Relation between Parenting and Youth’s Prosocial Behavior towards Other-Gender Peers
Presenting author	Dr. Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Ph.D., Northern Arizona University, United States

Paper #3
Title	Longitudinal Relation between Ethnic-Racial Socialization and Adolescents’ Prosocial Behavior towards Other-Ethnicity/Race Peers
Presenting author	Zehra Gulseven, Ph.D., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, United States

Paper #4
Title	Empathy in Collective Action Toward Ukrainian Refugees: The Impact of War-Related Information Exposure
Presenting author	Islam Borinca, Ph.D, University of Groningen, the Netherlands

View all paper details

Session chair
Dr. Sonya Xinyue Xiao, Ph.D., Northern Arizona University, United States

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