Downside of Intergroup Harmony? When Reconciliation Might Backfire and What to Do

Abstract

For decades, reconciliation efforts have relied on models of cooperative and positive interactions between members of groups in conflict. Such interactions do improve attitudes and emotions across group lines—outcomes considered pivotal for promoting more harmonious, less conflictual, relations between groups. More recently, research has begun to reveal “a darker side” of such positive interactions: Harmony between groups might sustain existing power structures and, in the long run, even exacerbate, rather than attenuate, intergroup conflict. This work offers recommendations for how to overcome the barriers associated with intergroup harmony. Policy should consider power-related processes when attempting to optimally design reconciliation interventions.

Keywords

reconciliation power intergroup contact social change social identity

Reconciliation often involves cooperative cross-group encounters, but if it doesn’t consider power dynamics, such encounters can fail.

Key Points

Reconciliation practices often leverage cooperative encounters between groups.

Cooperation between groups in conflict does create a psychological sense of common identity among members of rival groups.

Whereas a sense of common identity improves attitudes across group lines, it also inspires optimism regarding equality.

Regardless, the reality of inequality and injustice outside the encounters continues to persist.

Overtime, this can give rise to frustration and disappointment on part of low-power groups.

Emphasizing social identities and group differences can overcome the barriers associated with a focus on a common identity.

Introduction

How to best design reconciliation processes is of major interest to policy makers and practitioners who aim at reducing intergroup conflicts. This article offers a power-based perspective on reconciliation interventions, locating reconciliation in the broad context of power dynamics between groups. After presenting drawbacks of reconciliation practices, I offer guidelines for attempts to overcome them.

Reconciliation Practices and Promoting a Common Identity

Reconciliation processes largely aim at removing psychological barriers between rival groups, including negative attitudes and emotions such as hate, contempt, and distrust (Hameiri, Bar-Tal, & Halperin, 2014; Nadler, 2002). Indeed, the guiding principle in reconciliation efforts is that, without removing such psychological barriers, reaching peaceful relations on the ground has little chance (Nadler & Saguy, 2004). With this backdrop, interventions that involve cooperative encounters between groups in conflict have played an important role in attempts to improve intergroup relations and achieve reconciliation (Bekerman, 2009; Maoz, 2011). This article focuses on this particular type of reconciliation efforts.

As research in social psychology suggests, cooperation is a central element constituting a positive, or optimal, intergroup interaction. In one classic, highly cited study (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), a series of events that required rival groups to cooperate to achieve a common goal reduced intergroup animosity. The focus on shared goals further appears in the contact hypothesis, which guides many reconciliation interventions (Allport, 1954; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2003; Paluck & Green, 2009; Pettigrew, 1998). According to the contact hypothesis, intergroup bias substantially reduces via intergroup encounters that, among other things, give rise to a sense of common identity shared by members of both groups (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Psychologically, if people work together toward a common goal, they are likely to view themselves as sharing a common group membership, or a superordinate identity, with others who work toward the same goal. This way, the motivational and cognitive processes that are typically applied to the ingroup (i.e., ingroup favoritism) can be redirected to the more inclusive category (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Saguy, 2015; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000).

Accordingly, a focus on commonalities has consistently related to more positive outgroup attitudes, fostered more intimate cross-group interactions, and promoted prosocial behavior across group lines (Dovidio et al., 1997; Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000; Nier et al., 2001; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). These are in line with the type of outcomes that reconciliation processes seek. Indeed, various reconciliation efforts, such as trust-building projects and dialogue groups, capitalize on the benefits of a superordinate identity (Maoz, 2011). For example, in the context of reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East, projects in education (e.g., bringing teachers from rival groups to study together), medicine (e.g., providing joint training to doctors from both sides of the conflict), and arts (e.g., bringing artists together to work on a joint project) were common in the mid-1990s (after the signing of the Oslo peace accords; Nadler & Saguy, 2004) and are, to some extent, also common today. Notwithstanding the benefits of such joint projects, in recent years, scholars have begun to question the utility of focusing on cross-group commonalities.

Limitations of a Focus on Cross-Group Commonality: The Low-Power Perspective

Relations between groups in tension are often characterized by notable power asymmetry reflected in one group controlling a disproportionate share of resources, opportunities, and influence (Fiske, Dupree, Nicolas, & Swencionis, 2016; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Examples include the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in the Middle East, relations between immigrants and host-country citizens across Europe, and interracial dynamics in the United States. In such asymmetrical relations, the low-power side often seeks a change in the status quo toward more equality and justice, while the high-power side is motivated to maintain the status quo (Saguy & Kteily, 2014).

The critique regarding a focus on cross-group commonalities considers such societal power asymmetry and asks the following: Beyond the changes in attitudes and emotions toward the outgroup, how do people who go through such commonality-focused interventions come to view the unequal social system? The way the social system is perceived plays a critical role in promoting change toward more equality and justice. Such change is critical to consider because, from their early formulations, contact interventions have never been considered an end, but rather means for achieving a larger goal of a more moral and equal society (Allport, 1954).

Research on social change showed that people need to be well aware of the structural inequality between groups to be motivated to do something about it (van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). In addition, and particularly for low-power groups, members must be strongly attached to their group (Stürmer & Simon, 2004) and view the high-power group negatively (Simon & Klandermans, 2001)—for them to be motivated to promote change.

Whereas positive intergroup encounters foster more positive outgroup orientations, accumulating evidence suggests that they may also undermine the very processes that give rise to motivation for promoting equality and justice (see Saguy, Schori-Eyal, Hasan-Aslih, Sobol, & Dovidio, 2016, for a review). Specifically, positive cross-group interactions were associated with weaker ingroup identification among members of low-power groups (Tausch, Saguy, & Bryson, 2015; Wright & Lubensky, 2009), reduced awareness of power disparities (Saguy, Tausch, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2009), and increased trust in the high-power group (Saguy et al., 2009; Tausch et al., 2015). Given that such processes are critical for collective action, positive intergroup contact could increase low-power group members’ acceptance of a biased system and weaken their motivation to act for equality (see Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012). As such, intergroup harmony might have ironic consequences by contributing to social stability rather than social change.

For example, a laboratory study manipulated group position, by assigning participants to high-power (advantaged) and low-power (disadvantaged) groups (Saguy et al., 2009). Besides group position, type of contact was also manipulated by instructing participants to convene and discuss cross-group commonalities or differences between the groups. Consistent with the contact literature, commonality-focused (vs. difference-focused) contact not only improved outgroup attitudes but also led participants to pay less attention to status inequalities. Moreover, after commonality-focused contact, disadvantaged group members trusted the advantaged group more and had stronger expectations for outgroup fairness. The advantaged group violated these expectations, however, displaying ingroup favoritism and discriminating against the low-power group, across both the difference-focus condition and the commonality-focused conditions.

Several correlational studies conducted around the world among members of low power groups reveal the potential downstream consequences of increased trust in the high-power group. In those studies, cross-group friendships served to assess the group members’ optimal encounters in an unplanned setting. For example, a greater number of Jewish friends was associated with more trust in Jews and with reduced attention to intergroup inequality among Arabs in Israel (Saguy et al., 2009, Study 2). These outcomes, in turn, predicted reduced support for social change. A correlational study conducted in South Africa among Blacks (Cakal, Hewstone, Schwär, & Health, 2011) and a longitudinal study conducted in the United States among Black and Latino-Americans (Tropp, Hawi, Van Laar, & Levin, 2012) both revealed that friendships with Whites negatively predicted collective action tendencies (see Tausch, Saguy, & Bryson, 2015, for further evidence regarding Latino-Americans). Similarly, among the Maori minority in New Zealand, more friendships with the White majority predicted perceiving the inequality as legitimate (Sengupta & Sibley, 2013). And among Ethiopian Jews in Israel, friendships with the White majority were associated with viewing discrimination against Ethiopians as less prevalent (Saguy & Chernyak-Hai, 2012).

Why would harmonious intergroup dynamics undermine recognition of inequality and reduce motivation for advancing change on part of those who need it the most? Several studies have pointed to processes associated with how low-power group members see themselves and their identities, as potential mechanisms for the effects. For example, minorities in the United States were led to focus on either a superordinate representation of intergroup relations (“Recognizing that all of us are Americans”) or a dual-identity representation (“Recognizing that all of us are members of groups that have different traditions but also share a common American identity”; Glasford & Dovidio, 2011). Relative to the dual-identity condition, promoting a common identity decreased social change motivation (see similar findings in Ufkes, Calcagno, Glasford, & Dovidio, 2016). Likewise, among European Kurds (Ufkes, Dovidio, & Tel, 2015), stronger identification as Europeans negatively related to collective action tendencies.

Together, these results suggest that commonality-focused contact, which leads to a sense of shared identity between high-power and low-power group members, can take attention away from intergroup disparities and from the need to change them. Because acknowledging inequalities represents a crucial antecedent of the motivation to engage in collective action (van Zomeren et al., 2008; Wright & Lubensky, 2009), these studies highlight a shortcoming of positive contact, which may ironically be an obstacle to the mobilization of minorities toward social change.

Notably, this previous research on the ironic consequences of contact was conducted mainly among members of low-power groups. Research involving high-power groups had relatively little emphasis on outcomes pertaining to social change. The handful of studies that do measure such outcomes paint a mixed picture of the association between contact and social change—as described next.

Cross-Group Commonalities and Social Change: The High-Power Perspective

The bulk of research on prejudice reduction, and particularly on intergroup contact, has focused on members of high-power groups. For the most part, the outcomes considered in this research surrounded attitudes and emotions toward the (low-power) outgroup, which tended to be more positive following optimal contact (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Little work examined how members of high-power groups conceive of social inequality following contact, and even less work considered behavioral outcomes such as resource distribution.

The research that did take this step paints a complex picture. On one hand, some studies show a positive association between positive contact and support for egalitarian policies. For example, friendships with Blacks predicted White South Africans’ support for reparative race-related policies (Dixon, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2007; Dixon, Tropp, Durrheim, & Tredoux, 2010). In Western Europe and the United States, friendships with immigrants were associated with pro-immigration attitudes. For example, nonimmigrants in the United Kingdom who had close contact with immigrants were more likely to support the inclusion of immigrants in the United Kingdom (Hayes & Dowds, 2006; see also Pettigrew, Wagner, & Christ, 2007).

Notwithstanding these findings, positive contact, and a focus on commonality, may also undermine intentions for social change among high-power groups. For instance, friendships with South-African Blacks related to Whites’ sense that they cannot do much to change the situation of Blacks, which in turn related to weaker tendencies to act for promoting equality (Cakal et al., 2011 Study 2). These findings echo much earlier work (Jackman & Crane, 1986): Among a nationally representative sample of White Americans, experiences of positive contact with Blacks predicted better racial attitudes, but less support for policies designed to redress racial inequalities in housing and employment. This finding is also consistent with work arguing for a general gap between advantaged group members’ commitment to justice in principle, and their support for actual policies that can promote equality (e.g., affirmative action), a phenomenon labeled “the principle-implementation gap” (Dixon et al., 2007).

A study described earlier (Saguy et al., 2009) offers the possibility that reduced attention to inequality can play a role in this gap. As indicated, in that study, high-power and low-power group members engaged in either a commonality-focused or a difference-focused interaction. Members of the high-power groups indeed came to like the low-power group more after an interaction that centered on commonalities (rather than differences), but still discriminated against them to the same extent after both types of contact. Thus, consistent with the notion of a rift between tolerant attitudes and egalitarian behavior, changed attitudes across the contact conditions did not change the allocation of resources, which were discriminatory regardless of the type of encounter. Moreover, in the commonality condition, high-power group members also focused less on the inequality that was created in the study; perhaps combining positive attitudes and lesser attention to inequality produced the same level of discrimination that was observed in the differences condition.

In line with these ideas, commonalities had paradoxical effects on recognition of discrimination among high-power group members (Banfield & Dovidio, 2013). Some White American participants were primed with a common (American) identity of Blacks and Whites or primed with separate racial identities; others were given no information about identity. Participants then read a hiring scenario that involved either subtle or blatant discrimination, in which a Black candidate was not offered a job. When the bias was subtle, White participants primed with a common identity perceived less bias than those primed with separate identities or those in a control condition. These perceptions of relatively little bias in turn predicted less willingness to protest the negative outcome for the Black person who was rejected. However, when discrimination was blatant, it was always perceived as such—regardless of the identity primed. Another study (Banfield & Dovidio, 2013, Study 3) induced a common identity versus a dual identity (vs. an empty control). Although across conditions participants were equally likely to recognize racial bias, participants in the dual-identity condition expressed greater willingness to protest the decision, compared with participants in the common identity and control conditions.

These results help to interpret the inconsistency in the findings for the high-power group. The inconsistency could be attributed to the gap between attitudes and behavior: While contact can increase support for policies favoring the low-power group (e.g., affirmative policies), contact is less effective in affecting behavioral intentions to personally engage in actions challenging the status quo. Moreover, a sole focus on commonalities can have the paradoxical outcome of reducing sensitivity to subtle injustice across group lines. But a focus that combines both commonalities and differences (as in the dual-identity conditions; Glasford & Calcagno, 2012; Glasford & Dovidio, 2011) can more effectively promote social change orientations.

Implications and Recommendations

The research reviewed has several implications for designing contact/reconciliation interventions and for intergroup relations more generally. Members of low-power groups may become trusting of the high-power group and hopeful regarding the fairness of the system (dominated by high-power group members). But at the same time, members of high-power groups do not necessarily become more egalitarian in their actions. As a result, a sense of frustration and even betrayal is likely to develop among the low-power side. For example, in an analysis of interviews among Palestinians who took part in joint projects with Jews, Palestinians had increasing disappointment and frustration associated with the lack of change that followed the positive encounters (Nadler & Saguy, 2004; Zandberg, 2006). Such emotions, in the long run, can have detrimental consequences for intergroup relations. For example, in Israel, Arabs who felt that the system dominated by Jews had failed them were more likely to support violent, nonnormative forms, of social protest (Saguy & Abu-Aita, 2017).

This suggests that intergroup encounters need not instill expectations for fairness and harmony, but rather attempt to paint a more realistic picture of the relations between the groups. As indicated, these relations are often marked by power asymmetry, inequality, and injustice. The challenge is, therefore, how to create positive encounters with the backdrop of such reality while not denying it. As a first step, to bear relevance to the actual relations between the groups, it seems necessary to avoid attempts to covering up original group identities in favor of a superordinate category.

Instead, as described in the research on the effects of dual identity, the original identities can be respected. An emphasis on social identities and on power relations, within friendly contact, can indeed undermine the demobilizing effects of positive contact. When the content of friendly contact involved a focus on power differences as illegitimate, contact did not have a demobilizing effect among members of disadvantaged groups (Becker, Wright, Lubensky, & Zhou, 2013).

Raising attention to group-based distinctions, possibly also to issues of inequality and justice, can have additional advantages particularly when considering high-power group members’ sensitivity to inequality. Salience of social identities—and of associated inequalities—is a critical element in promoting sensitivity to social injustice on the part of high-power group members (Saguy & Dovidio, 2013). For example, research on group-based emotions shows that perceiving one’s ingroup as enjoying an unfair advantage can drive feelings of shame (Lickel, Schmader, & Barquissau, 2004), guilt (Swim & Miller, 1999), and anger (Iyer & Ryan, 2009) over the ingroup’s actions, which can in turn shape willingness to act for redressing social inequality.

Recent research underscores the importance of incorporating an emphasis on social identities in the context of cross-group friendships (Vezzali, Andrighetto, Capozza, Di Bernardo, & Saguy, 2017). Members of the majority group (Native Italians) reported their experiences of contact with immigrants. Participants were further asked to indicate their focus when interacting with their immigrant friends. Reflecting the mixed findings reviewed earlier regarding a focus on commonalities, when friendships focused on cross-group commonalities, contact did not relate to social change tendencies. That is, it did not increase, nor decrease, high-power group members’ motivation for promoting equality. However, when friendships were focused on differences between the groups, more contact related to an increased motivation for social change. Also, relatively little contact that was focused on differences was associated with relatively weak motivation for change. This indicates that a focus on differences should be part of a meaningful set of interactions that provide an opportunity for personal acquaintance and deep investigation of the relationship, for it to predict a motivation to promote change among members of high-power groups.

Whereas friendships can naturally develop to include a focus on differences (most likely also among relatively tolerant high-power group members), in planned reconciliation encounters, a focus on differences is likely to be challenging to maintain. When advantaged group members are asked to choose topics for a future intergroup encounter, they clearly prefer to prioritize cross-group commonalities, over an emphasis on differences (Saguy, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2008; Saguy & Kteily, 2014), and they strategically attempt to avoid issues that might threaten their privileged position (Kteily, Saguy, Sidanius, & Taylor, 2013).

Considering such challenges, research had offered ways that high-power group members can become more sensitive to inequality and more willing to discuss it. For example, under conditions that emphasize the illegitimacy of group-based inequality, high-power group members are more motivated to address group-based differences, including differences in power (Saguy & Dovidio, 2013). Other work revealed that self-affirmation, the act of expressing one’s core values, can increase high-power group members’ sensitivity to inequality. For example, Jews were more willing to acknowledge “difficult truths” regarding their role as perpetrators, after they were instructed to write about events that made them feel proud of themselves (Čehajić et al., 2011). Similarly, Whites in the United States were more likely to recognize institutional racism after they wrote about their core personal values (Unzueta & Lowery, 2008). Together, these ideas suggest useful tools for “preparing” high-power group members for activities involving power disparities. Practitioners could therefore utilize such methods and consider a careful preparation stage or a precontact stage, which would allow incorporating information about identities and potentially also associated disparities.

Practitioners can consult the vast experience in reconciliation attempts from the Middle East, which offers at least two ways to implement an emphasis on social identities in planned encounters (Maoz, 2011). The first involves an explicit emphasis on power differences and associated psychological processes, within intergroup encounters. This model of encounter, referred to as “the confrontational model” or “the social identity model,” aims to promote awareness of the unjust and negative aspects that inequality imposes on society and on members from both low-power and high-power groups (Halabi & Sonnenschein, 2004). The clearest strength of this model is its direct and explicit discussion of issues that are at the heart of the relations between the groups such as power asymmetry, prejudice, and discrimination. Even though touching on such issues is often difficult and even painful, research from the Middle East suggests that many Palestinians and Jews do not see the dialogue between them as complete or relevant to their needs unless it explicitly deals with these issues (Maoz, 2000). However, the direct confrontation can also distress and alienate participants and can be more susceptible to destructive forms of communication (Maoz, 2011)—which may explain its infrequent use in reconciliation practices.

Another form of encounters that emphasizes social identities, but in a more delicate way, is referred to as “the narrative model.” In this type of encounter, participants from both groups engage in storytelling about their lives in the conflict, sharing their personal and collective narratives and experiences (Bar-On & Kassem, 2004). The narrative model combines interpersonal interaction with interaction through group identities, giving rise to personal ties alongside the acknowledgment of the conflict and of power relations. Unlike the confrontational model, the discussion of these issues through personal stories enables intergroup acceptance and understanding while avoiding dead-end arguments about who is more right or moral.

These two examples demonstrate attempts to design intergroup encounters in a manner that would not create false expectations about harmony and social change—because the power dynamics and their ramifications are acknowledged and addressed (see also Zuniga, Nagda, & Sevig, 2002, for a related approach). Even though these models have drawbacks (mostly associated with motivation to engage in them, see Ron, Solomon, Halperin, & Saguy, 2017), they clearly propose an alternative to the more common forms of encounters surrounding a common identity. As such, they can serve as viable examples for considering how to incorporate a focus on differences in planned encounters.

Summary

For decades, research on cross-group encounters has generally assumed that positive emotions and attitudes across group lines are key for improving intergroup relations. This led to the frequent utilization of cooperative models of encounters, which reduces intergroup hostility. However, intergroup harmony can have some notable drawbacks: It may inspire optimism regarding the social system, distract group members’ attention away from power and group-based disparities, and undermine their tendencies to promote change toward equality. As such, encounters that are rooted in commonalities can have the unintended consequence of stabilizing the status quo.

In the long run, if the low-power groups’ expectations for fairness are not met, such encounters might even give rise to feelings of frustration and disappointment, which can have detrimental effects on intergroup relations. One way to overcome such dynamics is to consider ways of incorporating a focus on social identities, and potentially also on power relations, within intergroup encounters. Social psychological research and experience from reconciliation endeavors in conflict zones offer tools and ideas that can serve practitioners and policy makers devoted to long-lasting reconciliation.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Downside of Intergroup Harmony? When Reconciliation Might Backfire and What to Do

Abstract

Keywords

Tweet

Key Points

Introduction

Reconciliation Practices and Promoting a Common Identity

Limitations of a Focus on Cross-Group Commonality: The Low-Power Perspective

Cross-Group Commonalities and Social Change: The High-Power Perspective

Implications and Recommendations

Summary

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

References