Do computer games enhance learning about conflicts? A cross-national inquiry into proximate and distant scenarios in Global Conflicts

The study used the Israeli-Palestinian game and the Guatemalan civil war game.Israeli, Guatemalan and Palestinian undergraduate students participated in the study.All participants acquired knowledge about proximate conflicts.All participants changed their attitudes about distant conflicts.Israelis and Palestinians changed their attitudes about proximate conflicts. Interactive conflict resolution and peace education have developed as two major lines of practice to tackle intractable inter-group conflicts. Recently, new media technologies such as social media, computer games, and online dialogue are added to the existing set of tools used for peace education. However, a debate is emerging as to how effective they are in motivating learning and teaching skills required for peace building. We take issue with this question and have conducted a study investigating the effect of different conflict contexts on student learning. We have designed a cross-national experimental study with Israeli-Jewish, Palestinian, and Guatemalan undergraduate students using the Israeli-Palestinian and Guatemalan scenarios in the computer game called "Global Conflicts." The learning effects of these scenarios were systematically analyzed using pre- and post-test questionnaires. The study indicated that Israeli-Jews and Palestinians acquired more knowledge from the Guatemalan game than Guatemalans acquired from the Israeli-Palestinian game. All participants acquired knowledge about proximate conflicts after playing games about these scenarios, and there were insignificant differences between the three national groups. Israeli-Jews and Palestinians playing the Israeli-Palestinian game changed their attitudes about this conflict, while Guatemalans playing the Guatemalan game did not change their attitudes about this case. All participants changed their attitudes about distant conflicts after playing games about these scenarios.

[1]  Bruce W. Dayton,et al.  The Social Psychology of Identity and Inter-group Conflict: From Theory to Practice , 2011 .

[2]  H. Saunders,et al.  A public peace process , 1993 .

[3]  Michael J. Hannafin,et al.  In search of a future: A critical analysis of research on web-based teaching and learning , 2003 .

[4]  Tim Sweeney,et al.  PeaceMaker: A Video Game to Teach Peace , 2005, INTETAIN.

[5]  Katie Salen.  The ecology of games : connecting youth, games, and learning , 2008 .

[6]  Amira Galin,et al.  E-negotiation versus face-to-face negotiation what has changed - if anything? , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[7]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  Bridging the Gap: Face-to-Face Negotiations with an Automated Mediator , 2011, IEEE Intelligent Systems.

[8]  Hayley J. Mayall,et al.  The GlobalEd Project: Gender differences in a problem-based learning environment of international negotiations , 2003 .

[9]  H. Kelman.  Contributions of an unofficial conflict resolution effort to the Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough , 1995 .

[10]  J. Wilkenfeld,et al.  Mediating International Crises , 2003 .

[11]  Anna Holzscheiter.  Between Communicative Interaction and Structures of Signification: Discourse Theory and Analysis in International Relations , 2014 .

[12]  D. Bar-Tal.  Formation and change of ethnic and national stereotypes: An integrative model , 1997 .

[13]  Daniel Bar-Tal,et al.  Intractable Conflicts: Socio-Psychological Foundations and Dynamics , 2013 .

[14]  S. Chaiken,et al.  Attitude structure and function. , 1998 .

[15]  James N. Druckman,et al.  e-Mediation: Evaluating the Impacts of an Electronic Mediator on Negotiating Behavior , 2004 .

[16]  J. Schirmer.  The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy , 1999 .

[17]  R. Fisher.  Paving the way : contributions of interactive conflict resolution to peacemaking , 2005 .

[18]  Ifat Maoz,et al.  Coexistence Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Evaluating Intergroup Encounter Interventions Between Jews and Arabs in Israel. , 2004 .

[19]  Pedro F. Hernández-Ramos,et al.  Flow and cooperative learning in civic game play , 2012, New Media Soc..

[20]  M. Deutsch,et al.  Intractable Conflicts and Their Transformation , 1989 .

[21]  Konstantin Mitgutsch,et al.  Serious Learning in Serious Games - Learning In, Through, and Beyond Serious Games , 2011, Serious Games and Edutainment Applications.

[22]  Chen Yan,et al.  Increased Game Immersion by Using Live Player-Mapped Avatar Evolution , 2011, Edutainment.

[23]  M. Hadjipavlou.  Multiple Realities and the Role of Peace Education in Deep-Rooted Conflicts: The Case of Cyprus , 2007 .

[24]  Lelyn D. Saner,et al.  Learning to Stand in the Other’s Shoes , 2013 .

[25]  E. Halperin,et al.  Three layers of collective victimhood: effects of multileveled victimhood on intergroup conflicts in the Israeli–Arab context , 2014 .

[26]  Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen.  The learning effect of Global Conflicts: Palestine. Media@Terra conference , 2006 .

[27]  Ronit Kampf.  Internet, conflict and dialogue: the Israeli case , 2011 .

[28]  Lakhmi C. Jain,et al.  Serious Games and Edutainment Applications , 2014 .

[29]  Mary B. Anderson,et al.  ENCOURAGING EFFECTIVE EVALUATION OF CONFLICT PREVENTION AND PEACEBUILDING ACTIVITIES Towards DAC Guidance , 2007 .

[30]  Ifat Maoz,et al.  From Working Through the Holocaust to Current Ethnic Conflicts: Evaluating the TRT Group Workshop in Hamburg , 2002 .

[31]  Noam Ebner,et al.  Online Dispute Resolution , 2009 .

[32]  R. Fisher.  Interactive Conflict Resolution , 1997 .

[33]  Scott W. Brown,et al.  Introduction: From digital dirt road to educational expressway: Innovations in web-based pedagogy , 2003 .

[34]  Akiba A. Cohen,et al.  Foreign news on television : where in the world is the global village? , 2013 .

[35]  P. Frosh,et al.  Covering Death in Conflicts: Coverage of the Second Intifada on Israeli and Palestinian Television , 2008 .

[36]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[37]  Ronit Kampf.  Are two better than one? Playing singly, playing in dyads in a computerized simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , 2014, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[38]  Ronit Kampf,et al.  Learning about Conflict and Negotiations through Computer Simulations: The Case of PeaceMaker† , 2014 .

[39]  Sarit Kraus,et al.  AutoMed: an automated mediator for multi-issue bilateral negotiations , 2012, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[40]  Ifat Maoz,et al.  An Experiment in Peace: Reconciliation-Aimed Workshops of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian Youth , 2000 .

[41]  Thomas F. Pettigrew,et al.  The intergroup contact hypothesis reconsidered. , 1986 .

[42]  A Public Peace Process , 1993 .

[43]  Deepak Malhotra,et al.  Long-Term Effects of Peace Workshops in Protracted Conflicts , 2005 .

[44]  Mira Lee,et al.  The Effects of a Serious Game on Role-Taking and Willingness to Help , 2010 .

[45]  T. Pettigrew.  Intergroup contact theory. , 1998, Annual review of psychology.

[46]  H. Kelman,et al.  Social-Psychological Dimensions of International Conflict (2007) , 2016 .

[47]  Noam Ebner,et al.  Using Role-Play in Online Negotiation Teaching , 2011 .

[48]  G. Salomon.  The nature of peace education: Not all programs are created equal. , 2002 .

[49]  Andri Ioannou,et al.  Increasing interest in social studies: Social perspective taking and self-efficacy in stimulating simulations , 2008 .