Youth Prosocial Risk-Taking: Intergroup Conflict, Prosocial Target, and Peer Norms in Three Countries

After conflict, intergroup divisions often persist, becoming entrenched and normative. Violating norms of division to help outgroupmembers may be an effective form of peacebuilding, yet involves social risks, thus requiring prosocial risk-taking. We explorepredictors of willingness to help general, in group, and out group targets across three countries (Switzerland, N = 431; Northern Ireland, N = 256; Colombia, N = 286) with varying experiences of inter group conflict, and a broad age range of youth (12–26-years,M = 18.36, SD = 4.00, 57.2% female, 40.2% male, 2.6% another gender). Of interest was the extent to which prosocial risk-taking was predicted by individual differences in prosocial behavior, trait risk-taking, or their combination. The moderating role of perceived peer norms of intergroup friendship—a proxy for social risk of non-conformity—was also explored. Prosocial behavior and traitrisk-taking differentially predicted prosocial risk-taking by country; we found no evidence in any country that combined traits ofhigher prosociality and risk-taking were associated with prosocial risk-taking. Findings indicated various motives to participatein prosocial risk-taking. Perceived peer norms moderated the primary paths of interest. Higher pro sociality (Study 2) and risk-taking (Study 3) were only positively related to prosocial risk-taking when peer norms were relatively supportive; yet, when peernorms were relatively unsupportive, higher levels of prosociality and risk-taking were not sufficient to motivate higher prosocialrisk-taking. Our research situates individual-level cognitive factors linked to potential peacebuilding in an ecological context andcenter youth as agents with the capacity to disrupt cycles of division and conflict