"Computer games can change it for us": Serious games and openness to conflict resolution

Transforming intractable conflicts into peaceful intergroup relations is often driven by young people. However, studies indicated that young Israelis and Palestinians lack openness to overcoming conflicts. Does playing a social impact game about a different conflictual context positively influence Israeli and Palestinian undergraduate students’ openness to overcoming conflicts i.e., cross-conflict analogical learning? We examined whether playing Fact Finders (Cyprus conflict) impacts openness to overcoming conflicts among 172 participants (61 Israeli, 69 Palestinian, and 42 American undergraduate students) using a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design. We also examined participants’ openness to overcoming conflicts, focusing on nationality and political orientation differences. Results suggested that all participants developed a significantly higher openness to overcoming conflicts after playing the Fact Finders game, regardless of their nationality and their political orientation. The effect of the game was the same on those who are directly involved in a different, but similar conflict (Israelis and Palestinians) and those who are not (Americans). This research adds to our understanding of the cross-conflict analogical learning outcomes of social impact games, suggesting that such games are universal and they have a positive effect on openness to conflict resolution which extends well beyond a specific conflictual context.