Analysis and Design for Project Impact
Practice Notes
For
Confidence Building Work
2013
Hello!
These short Practice Notes are designed to provide some tips and guidance on how to
design projects that help build confidence between different groups who have lost trust in
each other. Because every situation is unique, the Practice Notes do not try to provide one
standard approach to confidence building. Rather they seek to provide key information and
simple tools that you can use to design an effective confidence building project that is
specifically tailored to fit your situation.
The Practice Notes have been developed as part of a set of capacity building training
courses organised by COBERM, and are aimed at organisations that do not yet had a lot of
experience in doing work aimed at building confidence. However, organisations who
already have long-standing experience in this field might still find some useful tips and
information to help improve the impact of their work.
The Practice Notes are divided into the following short chapters:
1. Key principles of effective confidence building
2. Tips and tools for thinking through an effective project design:
i. Key principles of good context analysis
ii. Analysing and understanding the root causes of a lack of confidence
iii. Analysing the factors in society that can either help or hinder you reaching
your goals
3. Strategies for having a sustainable impact on confidence building
4. How to change attitudes
5. How to change stereotypes
The Practice Notes were developed by the Peaceful Change Initiative (PCI) which is a
network of peacebuilding practitioners who specialise in working in societies experiencing
significant change. You can find more information about PCI at www.peacefulchange.org
The development of the Practice Notes was funded by COBERM, a joint EU-UNDP initiative.
1. Lessons on effective confidence building
Confidence is a feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something.
Individuals and groups can lose confidence in each other in many different ways and for
many different reasons. But once confidence is lost, it becomes very difficult for individuals or
groups to interact with each other in a constructive way or to solve shared problems
together.
Confidence building refers to actions and initiatives that lower tension and make it less likely
for a conflict to break out, escalate or re-emerge through a lack of information,
misunderstanding, mistake or misreading of the actions of a potential adversary. Confidence
building initiatives can also foster trust and bridge dividing lines between groups. They can
help repair distorted communication between groups and increasing confidence amongst
parties that current and future commitments will be honoured.1
The good news is that effective confidence building initiatives can come in all different
shapes and sizes. BUT designing effective confidence building measures does require some
thorough and systematic thinking. This is why these Practice Notes place a lot of emphasis on
analysis and strategic planning.
Key international lessons learned about effective confidence
building
Over the past decades much effort has gone into confidence building activities around the
world. However, not all of this work has been successful in contributing to peace. It is
important to understand some of the key lessons that have been learned about how to
make confidence building successful:
Simply bringing people together does not necessarily lead to sustainable attitude change
People often assume that simply bringing people from divided communities together so that
they can have a positive experience of each other, will change their negative attitudes and
stereotypes that they have of “the other side”. Actually, extensive evaluations show that
although this kind of contact improves participants’ perceptions of each other as individuals,
it rarely affects the perception that participants have of each others’ society or community
as a whole. We will explore how to change attitudes and stereotypes in chapters 3 and 4.
It is important to work inside your own society as well as across boundaries In order to
promote confidence building between communities, often it is just as important to work on
attitudes, perceptions and beliefs inside your own society as it is to work with people across
the divide. Sometimes each side of a conflict has to work on the factors inside their own
society that contribute making conflict and a lack of confidence a long-term problem. We
will look at analysing these factors in chapter 2.
Effective confidence building means working with people who do not believe in peace There
is a strong tendency to do confidence building work with groups on the basis that they are
easy to reach and easy to work with in the sense that they are neutral and already relatively
open minded towards each other. While this approach to confidence building work may
make sense for an individual project, when replicated across several projects it may
undermine the overall impact of the confidence building. This is because people who are
harder to reach, in the sense that they are more reluctant to get involved in, or are cynical
towards, confidence building work, can then become excluded. If these ‘harder to reach’
groups make up a significant proportion of society, confidence building efforts are less likely
to be impactful on peacebuilding.
1
OSCE Guide on Non Military Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), pp 10-11
Confidence building means working in the long term Confidence is best built by combining
several different kinds of initiatives that reach out to different layers of society in a gradual,
but cumulative way. Once confidence is lost, one-time measures and projects of short
duration are unlikely to have sufficient impact.
Signposts to effective confidence building
As you are designing your confidence building activities, please keep these lessons in mind.
Below are some signposts that can be useful as a guide to help you think through if your
activities are likely to move the situation in the right direction.2
1. Do your activities address the driving factors, people and dynamics that are key to a
lack of confidence?
2. Do your activities contribute to a momentum for peace by causing participants and
communities to develop their own initiatives to build confidence?
3. Do your activities prompt people increasingly to resist violence and provocations to
violence?
4. Do your activities result in an increase in people’s security and their perception of
security?
5. Do your activities result in meaningful improvements in relationships among groups
who have lost confidence in each other
6. Do your activities contribute to the development of new, constructive ways of
managing disagreements when they arise between groups who have lost
confidence in one another?
2
Anderson, M. and Olson, L (2003) Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners.
2. Tips and tools for thinking through an effective project
design
i. Key principles of good context analysis
All projects are trying to create some kind of change – to change a situation to something
better. Before starting any project, it is important to analyse the situation or problems that the
project is trying to address. Otherwise, there is a high chance that the project will not be
properly targeted at dealing with the issues that you want to tackle through your project and
that, therefore, your project will not be as effective as it should be.
Analysis is really just a process of deepening and systematising our knowledge about a
particular situation or problem that we are interested in. This helps us to see more clearly
what needs to be done about a problem and how to do it. Over the next few pages you will
find some simple but powerful analysis tools that will help you plan projects that have an
effective impact on confidence building. As you start using these tools, below are some
important principles of good analysis to bear in mind.
Principles of Good Analysis

Involve the people that you are trying to help in your analysis process: It is important
that your analysis of a problem or situation that you are trying to improve involves the
people who are directly affected by that situation or problem. If you don’t, you might
miss some very important information about what are the most important problems to
address, the causes of those problems and so on.

Seek information from different sources: We all have our own understandings of issues
in society and see things from our own perspectives. It is very important that we
check our information and seek to broaden our perspectives and understandings of
a situation. Try to talk to and share information with other organisation, institutions,
and individuals who are working on similar issues.

Keep your analysis updated: It is important to recognise that situations change –
sometimes in fast and dramatic ways, sometimes in more slow, subtle, but still
important ways. Six or 12 months later if you are going to be making important
decisions about your work, it is important to think about whether your analysis is still up
to date.

Use your analysis (!): Make sure that once you have done your analysis you use it to
design your project and plan your activities.
For example, imagine that you are interested in environmental protection. Your
analysis reveals that the central problem of environmental protection in your area is
that people do not care for their local environment. So your project goal might be
that local communities become more active in protecting their environment. Then
you can use your analysis to identify the handful of key reasons that people do not,
currently, care for their local environment. If you can start changing some of these
reasons/factors, then you are contributing to you goal. Use your analysis to
understand what needs to be done to change these factors. And then, plan your
activities…
ii. Analysing the causes of a problem
Consider the following example from Central Asia:
Three different ethnic groups share the same water resources in a particular area.
There is a history of violent conflict between these groups and very low levels of trust.
Currently each group is seeking to utilize the scarce water resources in their area as
much as they can for their own benefit. This is increasing tensions between them.
There have been some attempts to negotiate an agreement between them on
managing the water, but these negotiations have not been successful in changing
the groups’ behaviours.
In order to change people’s behaviours we need to understand why they behave the way
that they do. The triangle below illustrates a simple way of analysing and understanding
people’s behaviours. The core idea is that behaviours are driven by what is going inside
people’s hearts and minds (their attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, interests, goals, desires and so
on) and what is going on outside in the general social, political and economic context that
surrounds them:
BEHAVIOURS
- Each group uses water resources to maximise their own immediate gain, to
the detriment of other groups and to their own long-term detriment
- No shared planning on how to use water in an environmentally sustainable
way
- Escalating tensions between groups, e.g. reduced social interaction
between them, inflammatory language used in local media, isolated
incidents of violence between farmers from different groups.
ATTITUDES
- The groups hold negative stereotypes
of one another
- They do not want to have contact with
one another
- They believe that working together
would not work anyway, because the
other groups cannot be trusted
- Each group feels that they have to take
care of their own people because the
other groups will probably try to give
them a bad deal
CONTEXT
- Irrigations systems used to be under
shared Soviet control, but are now divided
into segments
- There is a lack of awareness about
sustainable water use practices
- The irrigation infrastructure is old and
wasteful. Governments are not investing
in maintenance.
- Less water is available.
- There is a history of conflict .
This simple but powerful tool of analysis, called the "ABC Triangle”, was developed by
Professor Johan Galtung from Norway. He made the point that a person’s behaviours are
driven by their attitudes and by the context around him. He also made the important
observation that people’s context shapes their attitudes, and people’s attitudes shape their
behaviour. In other words, all behaviours, attitudes and context are all inter-related.
Using the ABC Triangle tool
1. Brainstorm which are the main groups or stakeholders in the situation
2. Make a separate triangle for each of them
3. On each triangle, list the key issues related to attitudes, behaviours and context from
the viewpoint of that party.
4. Compare the triangles and consider any similarities and differences in the
perspectives of the parties.
5. Think about how the most important factors that you list in each triangle interact and
reinforce each to create the problem.
You could, for example, imagine some of the factors from the ABC triangle analysis above
interacting in the following way to create a negative cycle of conflict over water:
What needs to change to break the cycle?
Groups have negative
stereotypes of each other
Competition and tensions
are rising between the
groups
There is a lack of trust
between groups
Each group uses water resources
for their own benefit. They seek to
get the most for themselves
Infrastructure is
deteriorating and
amount of water is
reducing
There is no shared planning
or agreements on water
usage
iii. Mapping entry points for fostering change
Whenever you are trying to create some kind of change, whether in relation to confidence
building or other issues that are important to you, there will be forces in society that are either
supporting the change that you are trying to achieve – or working against. You can think of
the positive forces as factors or pressures in your community or society that already exist that
are trying to help change the situation for the better. But, at the moment these positive
forces and factors are still not powerful enough to overwhelm the negative pressures and
factors in society that are working to maintain the status quo and prevent change from
happening.
Analysing these positive and negative forces can help you think more tactically and
strategically about what you need to do in order to build confidence by more clearly letting
you see:
l
The Forces pushing TOWARDS Goal
The Forces pushing AWAY from
Goal
* What already exists that you can
build on in order to strengthen the
momentum for change?
*Who has an interest in maintaining
the status quo? What is the nature of
that interest?
* Who is already showing leadership on
this issue? Can you support them? Can
you collaborate with them?
* What attitudes, values, desires,
fears, traditions etc . are currently
acting as a block to change?
* What attitudes, values and interests
exist that are supportive of the change
that you are trying to create?
* What resources are being used and
mobilised to prevent change from
happening?
* What legal frameworks already exist
that provide some foundation for the
change you want to see?
* What legal frameworks currently
exist that are preventing change?
*What resources exists that can be
used or mobilised to create change?
Your Goal
* What information are people
currently working with that supports
the status quo?
Think of the right hand column as “these are the challenges we have to overcome”. Then
think of the left hand column, as “and this is what we currently have to work with in terms of
overcoming the challenges.” Change in the direction of your goal can occur as a result of
any combination of the following:
-
strengthening any of the positive forces
adding new positive forces (possibly by transforming a former negative force)
removing or reducing any of the negative forces
The Force-field Analysis tool
This kind of analysis is called a “force-field analysis”. The tool works very well when a group of
people come together to brain-storm around it.
How to use the tool
1. Draw a line down the middle of the page. On top of this line briefly define the present
situation in terms of the present behaviours, attitudes and context factors that you
think are the most important.
2. Draw a line along the right-hand edge of the paper. Along this line write down the
goal that you are trying to achieve. Be as specific as you can, in terms of which
behaviours, attitudes and context factors need to change – and how you would like
them to be different.
3. Then list the positive helping forces on the left side of the line in the middle of the
page. Indicate whether these forces are currently strong or weak by drawing thinner
or thicker arrows under them pointing in the direction of the goal.
4. On the right hand side list the negative hindering forces which prevent change or
reduce its power of change that you want to see. Again use thinner or thicker arrows
to indicate the strength of each force you have listed.
5. Think about what forces need to be strengthened or weakened in order to overcome
the status quo and create momentum for change? What new forces need to be
created? Which of these forces can you influence?
HELPING
FORCES
PRESENT
SITUATION
HINDERING
FORCES
GOAL
3. Strategies for having an impact on confidence building
One of the key challenges for confidence building work is to think through how to have a
sustainable impact by ensuring that the positive effects of your particular initiative are
eventually transferred to the broader community or society. The sustainable impact of your
work depends on the type of strategies you choose as you design your initiative.
Typically there are two simple strategic choices that you can make when you are designing
a programme3:
1. According to your analysis, WHO do you need to engage?
There are essentially two basic approaches when deciding who needs to be engaged in
confidence building work
MORE PEOPLE
KEY PEOPLE
This approach aims to engage increasing
number of people in actions aimed at
promoting confidence. Practitioners who
take this approach believe that confidence
can be built if many ordinary people
become involved in the process. This involves
gradually expanding the number of people
committed to confidence building
This approach focuses on involving particular
people or groups of people who your
analysis tells you are critical to building
confidence because of their power or
influence. This approach assumes that,
without the involvement of these groups,
progress cannot be made in terms of
building confidence. Who is “key” depends
on the context.
2. According to your analysis WHAT kind of change needs to happen?
Again, there are essentially two basic kinds of change that you can seek to foster through
confidence building work:
INDIVIDUAL/PERSONAL CHANGE
Programs that work at the individual/personal level seek to change the attitudes, values,
skills, perceptions or circumstances of individuals, based on the underlying assumption that
confidence building is possible only if the hearts, minds and behaviour of individuals are
changed. Many confidence building projects operate at this level, working with groups of
individuals to affect their skills, attitudes, perceptions, ideas and relationships with other
individuals.
SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGE
Programs that concentrate at the socio-political level are based on the belief that
confidence building requires changes in socio-political structures and processes. Change at
this level includes alterations in government policies, legislation, policies, economic structures,
ceasefire agreements, constitutions, etc. But it also incorporates changes in social norms,
group behaviour, and inter-group relationships.
These four basic strategies can be combined to form a simple matrix that can be used to
describe most approaches to confidence building work – see next page.
3
This chapter is adapted from the Reflecting on Peace Practice Participant Training Manual (2009)
Individual/Personal Level
Socio-Political Level
More People
Key People
Example: A summer camp that
brings children together from
different ethnicities.
This project is working to engage
more people in confidence
building, by changing the
individual attitudes of the children
towards each other.
Example: Mobilising parents’
groups to call for the development
of a curriculum on peace
education for schools.
This project is also working to
engage more people in confidence
building, but trying to create
change at a societal rather than
personal level
Example: Confidence building
workshops for teachers from
different sides of a conflict.
This project is working with a
group of people who can be
considered key to attitude change
processes, but is seeking a
personal outcome for them.
Example: Advocacy arguing for
revision of the school curriculum
to include peace education.
This project is also working to
engage key decision makers in
confidence building, but does so
by addressing the national
education institutions.
Key lessons to bear in mind when designing confidence building initiatives
A key learning from many projects around the world is that work that stays in only one
quadrant of the table is generally not enough to build momentum for significant change.
You need to bear in mind:
Individual and personal changes must be linked to action at the socio-political level
Confidence building initiatives that focus on building relationships and trust across conflict
lines, increasing tolerance and so forth can produce dramatic transformations in attitudes,
perceptions and trust. But evidence shows that impacts for the broader peace are more
significant if these personal transformations are translated into actions at the socio-political
level.
Therefore, as you are developing your work think about how you can gradually move the
focus of your work from changes in attitudes, beliefs, perceptions and inter-personal or small
group relationships towards social action, activities in the public domain, or efforts to affect
something that is collective (whether institutions, public opinion, etc.). As individual or small
group attitudes, relationships or behavioural change expand and become community or
group attitudes, relationships, behaviours or social norms, they reach the socio-political level.
More people and Key people strategies must be linked
Similarly, if your activities are focusing on mobilising “more people” around an issue, it is
difficult to create real, sustainable change unless you involve the “key people” who have
influence in a community or society. At the same time, if your work focuses on the “key
people”, you will eventually need to think about how to involve the broader public –
otherwise the change you wish to see may not go very far, because there is no popular
momentum behind it.
Therefore, as you are developing your work, think about how you can gradually begin to
build links between different kinds of actors and stakeholders in your work.
This does not mean that every single project needs to work in all quadrants at the same time.
Given that action in all four quadrants is important to creating real, sustainable change, it
may be that a project starts off by working in one quadrant, and once a good foundation
has been laid there, then it builds by moving gradually on to the other quadrants. It may also
be that different organisations working on the same issue have particular expertise or ability
to work in different quadrants – as long as they coordinate well with each other, their work
should be able to complement each other and “add up” to the desired change. Think
about where is your organisation best placed to act
Some illustrative examples
Below are a few examples from international experience aimed at illustrating the importance
of making the links between individual and socio-political change and balancing the
involvement of “more” people and “key people”. 4
Cyprus: Effective Individual/Personal—Socio-Political Linkage
In Cyprus, international agencies conducted intensive conflict resolution training for local
activists from both sides of the conflict. These participants formed a permanent working
group of trainers and initiated a series of peacebuilding projects aimed at recruiting more
participants into bi-communal activities. This spread into a wide-ranging bi-communal
movement on the island. In response to a serious incidence of violence that threatened to
escalate the conflict, the United Nations planned to cancel a planned bi-communal fair. The
group pressed the United Nations not to cancel the event and publicized the event. Four
thousand people showed up, and it became a public demonstration of support for the
faltering peace process.
Armenia-Azerbaijan: Effectiveness Undermined by Lack of Linkage between Key/More
People
An agency organized a high-level dialogue between Armenia and Azerbaijan among
people on the negotiating teams and in influential policy positions in government, academia
and business. This resulted in improved communication and relationships in the negotiations
and the implementation of some ideas to de-escalate the conflict and facilitate refugee
return. However, after several years, while some convergence had been achieved in the
dialogue on political resolution, participants claimed they were blocked by public opinion
(and a regional power). They urged the program to shift the focus of its work with media to
affect More People.
Fiji: Effective Linkage between Key and More People Strategies
The Citizens’ Constitutional Forum in Fiji developed and advocated broad-based
recommendations for constitutional reform to address entrenched inequalities between
ethnic groups in the country. Many of their ideas were taken up by the government.
Realizing that the reforms needed public acceptance to be durable, they linked with other
activists to conduct a public education campaign around the country to publicize the new
constitutional provisions through a series of workshops, campaigns, and sales of T-shirts and
posters. The work focused on Key People but provided a link back to More People.
4
These case studies are developed in the Reflecting on Peace Practice Participant Training Manual (2009), pp
12-13
4. Changing attitudes
An “attitude” is a general feeling or evaluation (which can be positive or negative) about
some person, object or issue.5
Changing attitudes can be a vital part of confidence building: either in terms of groups
changing their attitudes towards each other, or in terms of changing broader social attitudes
that are blocking confidence building.
Consider the following example:
Imagine that your organisation is concerned about social attitudes towards people who seek
to engage in confidence building activities with another community. In particular, you are
concerned that people who have had direct contact with people from “the other side” are
sometimes subjected to unpleasant pressure in the media and in their local community. Your
organisation develops a new project, the aim of which is to change people’s attitudes about
confidence building activities.
How do you change attitudes?
Shaping attitudes
Where do our attitudes come from? We develop our attitudes from experience – either
through direct personal experience or through our observations of others’ experiences. Social
roles and social norms also have a strong influence on the attitudes we develop. Imagine a
young woman who is developing her attitudes towards confidence building. Below are some
of the influences that will shape her attitudes.
5

Direct experience: Does she have any direct experiences with confidence building?
Did these experiences make her feel positive or negative? This will play a significant
role in shaping her attitudes.

Signals in the social environment: Is she surrounded by attractive and appealing
imagery, for example, commercials with young beautiful people from different ethnic
groups having fun together? If so, she will tend to develop a positive connection in
her mind about spending time with people from different groups and, perhaps, the
value of confidence building. It will seem normal. If, on the other hand, her social
environment is filled with negative images of people from “the other side”, she will
tend to develop a negative connection in her mind about confidence building.

Feedback from people around us: When she mentions her curiosity about people
from “the other side” to her friends, colleagues or family – do they complain or scold
her for expressing these opinions? If so, she is likely to develop an attitude that
confidence building is something negative. If, on the other hand, people chat with
her in a friendly way about the topic, encourage her to participate in such activities
or just listen to her with interest, then she is likely to develop an attitude that
confidence building is not something negative.

Learning by observation: When someone we admire demonstrates a particular
attitude, we are more likely to develop the same attitude. If her parents talk openly
about wanting to change relations with people from the “other side”, if a boy that
she likes has participated in such activities, or if a famous person whom she admires
speaks publically about confidence building activities they have been engaged in,
again she is more likely to develop a positive attitude towards confidence building
than if they do not.
Hogg, M. A. And Vaughan, G.M. (2011), Social Psychology (6th Edition), Prentice Hall, Harlow.
Things to think about in practice when you want to change attitudes
Create positive experiences Where possible create opportunities for people to have positive
experiences in relation to the issue around which you are trying to change attitudes. Multiply
the impact of these individual experiences by developing a clear communications strategy
that allows your organisation to disseminate public information about these experiences.
Offer alternative signals Analyse what signals are people surrounded by in relation to the
issue that you are interested in. Where do these signals come from?
Think about what new kinds of imageries and messages would it be useful to introduce in the
community or society at large to shape different attitudes? How can you introduce different
kinds of images in your local community or society at large?
Tackle social norms Analyse the social norms that influence the attitudes that you are
interested in. What feedback are people likely to get from their family and peers in relation to
particular behaviour?
Use the ideas of “more people” – “key people” and “individual change” – “socio political
change” (chapter 3) to think strategically about how to have an impact that begins to
change social norms.
Promote role models Use a Force Field Analysis tool to identify figures in the local community
or the wider society who are respected and who can act as a models or champions of the
attitude change that you are seeking to promote. Look for ways of working with and
supporting these individuals.
5. Changing Stereotypes
Often in conflict situations, people from different sides of the conflict have negative attitudes
towards each other and negative stereotypes about each other. Stereotypes are
assumptions that we make about the personalities, attitudes and behaviours of people
based on, for example, their religion, ethnicity, nationality, sex, race or class/profession. 6 We
all seem to have a tendency to categorise and characterise large human groups in terms of
a few fairly basic attributes. When we meet a person from a group that we have stereotypes
about, often we start interacting with that person, based on our assumptions (stereotypes)
about their personality, views and behaviour – rather than interacting with them as an
individual.
Sometimes negative stereotypes turn into prejudice against all people from a certain group,
irrespective of their actual attributes as individuals.
Barriers to stereotype change
Psychological research in many different countries has shown that stereotypes are difficult to
change. They appear to change most profoundly in response to wider social, political or
economic changes in society. The fact that it is difficult to change stereotypes just means
that we have to think extra carefully about our activities to make sure our work has an
impact.
It is important to understand why stereotypes are difficult to change. We might assume, for
example, that we can change people’s stereotypes simply by bringing them into contact
with each other and letting them experience each other as individuals. Let’s imagine, for
example, that we bring together 10 Palestinians together with 10 Israelis in a confidence
building workshop. A great deal of research has demonstrated that bringing people
together like this might improve attitudes between the individual participants in the
workshop, BUT that these more positive attitudes will generally not extend to the “group”
represented by the participants as a whole. In other words, the Palestinians might form
friendships with the Israelis in the workshop, but their negative opinions of other Israelis will not
necessarily change. This is because our brain employs some very strong mechanisms to keep
our stereotypes intact:
6

We explain away inconsistencies – If we meet someone from a group about which
we have negative stereotypes, we might discover that actually they are a
reasonable, kind and intelligent person. Instead of using this positive experience to
change our stereotypes, we might unconsciously interpret that person’s behaviour as
being a result of special circumstances (for example, “they were just being nice
because they were in a confidence-building workshop”).

We make up new “sub categories” of stereotypes to explain inconsistent information
– When we can’t explain things away, we can still, often subconsciously, defend our
existing stereotypes by creating a new “sub categories”. The Palestinians and Israelis
in our example, might create a special category for the people who attend
workshops, so that they acknowledge that a few people from either group are an
“exception to the rule”, but the rule remains that most people from that group are
not good people.

We see individuals who do not fit with our stereotypes as being “unique” – Again,
instead of changing our stereotypes, we might see people who do not behave in
accordance with our stereotype of the group to which they belong as being
“exceptional” or “remarkable” people who are not representative of their broader
groups as a whole.
Hogg, M. A. And Vaughan, G.M. (2011), Social Psychology (6th Edition), Prentice Hall, Harlow.
Changing Stereotypes: some practical things to think about
Understanding why stereotypes are so difficult to change helps us to think through how to
make our work in this field more impactful. Research and practical experience from different
countries illustrate some of the important things to bear in mind when designing projects
aimed at reducing negative stereotypes:

Developing a basis for tolerance early on is important – teaching children to be
mindful of others and to have the ability to empathise appears to reduce the
likelihood of them acting to hurt someone on the basis of negative stereotypes later
on in life.

Prolonged contact is important – before they start changing or reducing their
negative stereotypes, we need to experience individuals behaving in a way that is
different from our stereotype of members of their group again, and again and again.
After a while, it becomes more difficult to explain away their behaviour as being just
the result of special circumstances and we might have to conclude that our
stereotype was not correct.

The impact of prolonged contact is enhanced by cooperative activities – working
together on issues that are important to both groups starts to create small incentives
for them to change their attitudes towards each other to make success on whatever
it is that they are working on more likely.

Contact should involve as many “typical” members of each group as possible – so
that it becomes more difficult for people to put positive experiences down to
individuals from the other group as being unique rather than normal. Therefore, in our
meeting between Israelis and Palestinians it is important to make sure that
participants are constantly reminded that one group is from Israel and the other is
from Palestine – so as to reinforce the idea that people from these groups can
behave in positive ways too.

Make sure that people who are having contact have equal status – when bringing
people together it is important that they have more or less equal status in terms of
professional status, educational background, skills and so on; otherwise the contact
might just tend to reinforce the negative perceptions that they have of each other.

Making sure that people tell their friends about positive experiences – when people
get to know that some of their close friends have had positive experiences with
individuals from a group about whom they have strong negative stereotypes, this can
help us realise that perhaps that group is not so bad as we thought it was. This
highlights the importance of developing well thought out communication plans to
accompany people-to-people exchange projects.

Remember to think of ways in which individual change can gradually be translated
into change at the socio political level – Otherwise, the social and political systems,
values, norms and attitudes that help maintain conflict between different group will
just remain intact and change will not be sustainable.
Are you interested in more information?
Here are a few links that can give you further tips and inspiration to develop really impactful
confidence building programs:

The Reflecting on Peace Practice Participants’ Training Manual contains many
important insights on how to develop really effective programming in conflict
situations:
http://www.undg.org/docs/10325/rpp_training_participant_manual_rev_20090104_Pd
f.pdf

The Berghof Glossary on Conflict Transformation contains many useful definitions and
thoughts about how to work on conflict transformation: http://www.berghofhandbook.net/

The OSCE Guide on Non Military Confidence Building Measures contains some very
useful examples of confidence building work in many different parts of Europe:
http://www.osce.org/cpc/91082

The Conflict Sensitivity Resource Pack contains many useful tips on conflict analysis
and project design http://www.conflictsensitivity.org/sites/default/files/ConflictSensitive%20Approaches%20to%20Development,%20Humanitarian%20Assistance%20
and%20Peacebuilding%20Resource%20Pack.pdf