Youth Prosocial Risk-Taking: Intergroup Conflict, Prosocial Target, and Peer Norms in Three Countries

After conflict, intergroup divisions often persist, becoming entrenched and normative. Violating norms of division to help outgroup members may be an effective form of peacebuilding, yet involves social risks, thus requiring prosocial risk-taking. We explore predictors of willingness to help general, ingroup, and outgroup targets across three countries (Switzerland, N = 431; Northern Ireland, N = 256; Colombia, N = 286) with varying experiences of intergroup conflict, and a broad age range of youth (12-26-years, M = 18.36, SD = 4.00, 57.2% female, 40.2% male, 2.6% another gender). Of interest was the extent to which prosocial risk-taking was predicted by individual differences in prosocial behavior, trait risk-taking, or their combination. The moderating role of perceived peer norms of intergroup friendship-a proxy for social risk of non-conformity-was also explored. Prosocial behavior and trait risk-taking differentially predicted prosocial risk-taking by country; we found no evidence in any country that combined traits of higher prosociality and risk-taking were associated with prosocial risk-taking. Findings indicated various motives to participate in prosocial risk-taking. Perceived peer norms moderated the primary paths of interest. Higher prosociality (Study 2) and risk-taking (Study 3) were only positively related to prosocial risk-taking when peer norms were relatively supportive; yet, when peer norms were relatively unsupportive, higher levels of prosociality and risk-taking were not sufficient to motivate higher prosocial risk-taking. Our research situates individual-level cognitive factors linked to potential peacebuilding in an ecological context and center youth as agents with the capacity to disrupt cycles of division and conflict. SUMMARY: We advance prosocial risk-taking (taking a risk to help others) as a form of peacebuilding after intergroup conflict. Prosocial risk-taking was differentially predicted by prosociality and trait risk-taking across three countries with different conflict histories. Perceived peer norms of intergroup friendship moderated the associations between prosociality (Study 2), trait risk-taking (Study 3) and prosocial risk-taking. Prosociality and trait risk-taking converged with age to jointly predict prosocial risk-taking (Study 1) across a broad age span (12-26-years).