I'm still on leave, but I wanted to point everyone to
@salma_mousa_ cover story on building social cohesion between Christians and Muslims out today. Its a fantastic paper on intergroup contact and model for social science work. Just a couple thoughts 1/
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/866

Idea that positive, meaningful cooperation between groups toward a shared goal should support reconciliation is a classic, w/many studies. But often the groups or tasks are artificial, the measures are attitudinal or immediate, and its rare to study in a violent conflict setting

Author created soccer leagues in Iraq that either did or did not integrate Muslim players onto Christian teams. What she finds is that integration improves Christians' on the field behaviors- sign up for mixed team again, train w/Muslims months later, vote for Muslim to win award

But these positive effects don't generalize off the field. Christian players aren't more likely to attend a mixed social event, donate to a program that helps both Christians and Muslims, or use a coupon to go to a Muslim restaurant. Inconsistent attitude effects too

Overall, this is the cleanest demonstration that intergroup contact may have benefits in the specific context of the intervention, but that it has difficulty generalizing, either to other contexts or to other people. There's much more nuance to the results, so def read the paper.

@betsylevyp & Chelsey Clark, world experts, generously wrote a perspective piece. Goes much deeper than me. They especially emphasize methods innovation and the importance of this kind of work for policy. They see it as the future for social science! https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6505/769

* always remember to check that the figure caption was on the screenshot- https://twitter.com/tage_rai/status/1293994808130838528