“We are One Team”: An evaluation of an intervention for improving relations between Turkish local and refugee adolescents

Increasing research has evidenced the negative intergroup relations in Turkey between locals and refugees. “We are One Team” (Biz Bir Takımız, WAOT) is designed as a multimodal intervention to improve the attitudes of local and refugee adolescents toward each other. WAOT utilizes sports, direct contact in a camp setting, socio-cognitive skills training, and social categorization as prejudice reduction strategies. The present study (n = 157 for Turkish locals; n = 112 for refugees, mostly Syrians and Afghans) evaluated, first, the efficacy of this project on participants’ intergroup contact intentions, outgroup perceptions, outgroup affect, and intergroup closeness by adopting a pre-and post-test design with a control group. Second, the study analyzed the role of certain participant characteristics (i.e., age, positive and frequent intergroup contact in the pre-intervention period and during the camp, and empathy levels) as moderating the intervention impacts. Findings indicated that the intervention increased both groups’ personal closeness toward outgroup members. However, while WAOT improved the outgroup perceptions of refugees, it worsened those of the locals. The intervention did not produce heightened intergroup contact intentions, positive outgroup affect, and group-level affinity for either group. Camp contact moderated the refugee and local adolescents’ gain scores regarding most intergroup variables. The moderator effects of age on outgroup perceptions and empathy on contact intentions emerged only for Turkish citizens. Lastly, pre-intervention contact moderated gain scores in all intergroup variables (except for contact intentions) only among refugees. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.