Developing ReApp: an emotion regulation mobile intervention for intergroup conflict

ABSTRACT

People living in areas of intractable conflicts experience extreme negative emotions which ultimately lead to support of aggressive policies. Emotion regulation and particularly cognitive reappraisal has been found to be effective in reducing negative emotional experiences and shifting policy preferences. Therefore, it is important to develop scalable, evidence-based interventions aimed at regulating negative emotions in such contexts. In this paper, we introduce ReApp – a mobile game, aimed at training people to regulate their emotions using cognitive reappraisal. We examine the game's effectiveness in reducing negative emotions and support for aggressive policies in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Results indicate that people who played ReApp experienced lower levels of anger and disgust, and were less supportive of aggressive political policies targeted at the outgroup. We believe that games such as ReApp could potentially influence mass audiences and by that promote conflict resolution.

KEYWORDS:

• Intergroup conflict
• emotion regulation
• cognitive reappraisal
• persuasive gaming

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a European Research Commission grant [335607] to the last author. This work is based on the Master Thesis of the second author. We would like to thank Benjy Cook for programming ReApp, and Adi Galili, for designing it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This feature was not tested in the current experiment.

2 Players who reach advanced stages will also unlock additional reappraisal tools such as free-hand drawing using one's fingers, and emoticon stickers that may be placed on top of the image.

3 In this game, players take turns dropping coloured discs from the top of a seven-column, six-row vertically suspended grid. Their objective is to be the first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one's discs.

4 The survey consisted of a number of additional exploratory items that are not relevant for the current paper.

5 We ran similar regression analyses for joy and sadness and found that conditions did not differ significantly (β = .18, p = .32, β = −.11, p = .54 for joy and sadness respectively).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a European Research Commission grant Ares(2020)934365 - 335607_Emotions in Conflict to the last author.