Intergroup conflict is one of the greatest challenges of modern society (Cohen & Insko, 2008). The distinction between 'us' and 'them' can be rooted in political ideologies and serve as the foundation of intergroup conflict (Haidt, 2012; Lakoff, 2016; Orian Harel et al., 2020). In a Megastudy conducted in the US, Voelkel et al. (2022) demonstrated that several interventions can mitigate partisan animosity between conservatives and liberals. 

We plan to expand Voelkel et al.'s findings by investigating how four selected interventions have cross-cultural influences on behavioral indicators of cooperation, social distance, and interconnectivity, as well as the extent to which individual traits influence these outcomes on political polarized individuals. We will also include measures of traits that could be relevant, such as morality, intellectual humility, collective narcissism, and others. In this call, we invite researchers from around the world to collaborate in this study. We aim to recruit 1,500 participants in each country. This cross-cultural study endeavors to explore whether interventions can enhance cooperation among polarized individuals.

On May 24th, 2024 we launched a call for collaborators via social media to gather researchers interested in joining us in this journey. About 195 researchers have indicated interest in helping us to conduct this study in 48 countries. All participating countries are marked in the world map below.

Marked in blue are the 43 countries where researchers have demonstrated interest in collaborating in the Global Cooperation Project.

References

Cohen, T. R., & Insko, C. A. (2008). War and Peace: Possible Approaches to Reducing Intergroup Conflict. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3(2), 87–93. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00066.x

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Pantheon Books.

Lakoff, G. (2016). Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Third Edition. University of Chicago Press.

Orian Harel, T., Maoz, I., & Halperin, E. (2020). A conflict within a conflict: Intragroup ideological polarization and intergroup intractable conflict. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 34, 52–57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2019.11.013

Voelkel, J. G., Stagnaro, M. N., Chu, J., Pink, S. L., Mernyk, J. S., Redekopp, C., Ghezae, I., Cashman, M., Adjodah, D., Allen, L., Allis, V., Baleria, G., Ballantyne, N., Bavel, J. J. V., Blunden, H., & Braley, A. (2022). Megastudy Identifying Successful Interventions to Strengthen Americans’ Democratic Attitudes [Manuscript]. https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/documents/working-papers/2022/wp-22-38.pdf