Building Social Cohesion in Ethnically Mixed Schools: An Intervention on Perspective Taking
Quarterly Journal of Economics · 2021 · Şule Alan、Ceren Baysan、Mert Gümren、Elif Kubilay
中文摘要
我们评估了一项教育项目的效果，该项目旨在通过培养儿童的观点采择能力，在族群混合学校中构建社会凝聚力。该项目在因大量叙利亚难民儿童涌入而受到影响的土耳其小学中实施。我们衡量了一组全面反映学校环境凝聚力的结果，包括同伴暴力事件、跨族群社会关系的普遍程度以及亲社会行为。利用项目实施的随机变异，我们发现，该项目显著降低了校园内的同伴暴力和受害现象。该项目还降低了遭受社会排斥的可能性，并增进了课堂中的跨族群社会关系。我们发现，该项目显著改善了通过激励性任务衡量的亲社会行为：处理组学生彼此之间以及对校外匿名同龄人均表现出显著更高的信任、互惠和利他水平。我们表明，从事后收益的角度看，这种亲社会性的增强改善了福利。我们考察了可能解释这些结果的多种渠道，包括族群偏见、冲动性、同理关怀、情绪智力、行为规范和观点采择。儿童更加努力地采择他人观点，是解释我们研究结果最为稳健的机制。
Abstract
Abstract We evaluate the effect of an educational program that aims to build social cohesion in ethnically mixed schools by developing perspective-taking ability in children. The program is implemented in Turkish elementary schools affected by a large influx of Syrian refugee children. We measure a comprehensive set of outcomes that characterize a cohesive school environment, including peer violence incidents, the prevalence of interethnic social ties, and prosocial behavior. Using randomized variation in program implementation, we find that the program significantly lowers peer violence and victimization on school grounds. The program also reduces the likelihood of social exclusion and increases interethnic social ties in the classroom. We find that the program significantly improves prosocial behavior, measured by incentivized tasks: treated students exhibit significantly higher trust, reciprocity, and altruism toward each other as well as toward anonymous out-school peers. We show that this enhanced prosociality is welfare improving from the ex post payoff perspective. We investigate multiple channels that could explain the results, including ethnic bias, impulsivity, empathetic concern, emotional intelligence, behavioral norms, and perspective taking. Children’s increased effort to take others’ perspectives emerges as the most robust mechanism to explain our results.