Intergroup Attitudes and Interpersonal Relationships in Online Contact between Groups in Conflict

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study examined changes in intergroup attitudes and interpersonal relationships between members of virtual groups from diverse and conflicting backgrounds in an intergroup contact program. Seventy-six students took part in a collaborative online course during one academic year connecting Jews and Arabs in Israel. They marked their perceived distance to their team members at the beginning and end of the course using the novel Team Circles tool. Initially both Arab and Jewish students felt closer to their in-group team members. However, perceived distances decreased significantly over time with Arab students reporting equal perceived distances to their in-group and out-group members after the course. The results from the Team Circles test were combined with repeated measures of intergroup attitudes using Implicit Association Tests. Although no significant changes in intergroup attitudes were observed, greater reduction in perceived distances to out-group team members resulted in lower levels of prejudice toward the out-group as a whole after the course.

KEYWORDS:

• Online intergroup contact
• contact hypothesis
• group dynamics
• interpersonal relationships
• intergroup attitudes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Professor Joseph Walther for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

1. https://mofet-web.macam.ac.il/tec/en

2. The online tutorial of the Team Circles tool can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-kWfY0bFAM

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Ilan Nagar

Ilan Nagar’s PhD is in educational management and policy and he lecturers in the education department at Hemdat Hadarom College in Israel, he has been working in the field of integrating technology into teaching since 1991. Ilan is an instructor and facilitator in the Department of Education for online learning, and a trainer in continuing teacher education in a number of fields including initiatives and research, in teacher training colleges and at the Mofet Institute. He serves as techno-pedagogue for two MOOC courses. He is involved in research in the following fields: collaborative learning, online teaching and learning and multiculturalism.

Elaine Hoter

Elaine Hoter (PhD. Hebrew University, Jerusalem) has pioneered collaborative online teaching since 1995. A senior lecturer at Talpiot College, she organized and led the first International online Teacher Educator's Conference in 2001. In 2005 she jointly founded the TEC Center (Education Technology and Social Diversity) . Today she leads the Center’s innovative pedagogy and develop virtual worlds. Her resaech interests are prominantly in the fields of virtual worlds, simulations and intercultural education. She is a Fulbright graduate

Béatrice S. Hasler

Béatrice S. Hasler (PhD, University of Zurich) is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Virtual Reality Lab for Conflict Research (VR-CORE) in the Sammy Ofer School of Communications at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel. She works at the intersection of psychology and technology, and specializes in virtual reality and its social applications. Her main research interest lies in the creative exploration of interactive and immersive media as a means for conflict resolution.