ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the potential role that civic service programs and, in particular, youth service programs can play in facilitating intergroup cooperation and conflict reduction. The field of social psychology has long examined the area of intergroup relations. This specialized area encompasses broad constructs such as stereotypes and prejudice, social identity, in-group and out-group bias, attributional biases, and ethnocentrism and ethnonational conflicts. The aforementioned national and international service programs have one major commonality: they place emphasis on cultural integration. Since most service programs have objectives to alleviate negative social, economic, or environmental conditions, these objectives could be framed as superordinate goals that could potentially serve to ease intergroup tension and conflict. Rouhana, N and D. Bar-Tal suggest that conflict resolution strategies must be designed to take into account the psychological foundations of the conflict and to employ psychological theories in the resolution process.
