Mitigating the Social Exclusion of Child Refugees: An Intervention on Perspective Taking

Since the beginning of the Syrian War in 2011, Turkey has received over 3.5 million Syrian refugees, including nearly 1 million children. Syrian refugee children face social exclusion and in-school violence. Socially excluded individuals are less likely to exhibit prosocial attributes. These outcomes may justify even further social exclusion and intergroup violence. This study evaluates a unique educational intervention that aims to foster “perspective-taking” among host and Syrian students in schools that recently received a significant number of refugee children. The intervention involves a specifically designed curriculum that teachers will be trained on to deliver to their students. We will measure the effect of the intervention on intergroup violence and acts of social exclusion through its influence on prosocial behavior, noncognitive skills, and social preferences. Experimentally elicited measures of these mechanisms are used in the evaluation; such as, altruism, trust, patience, and cooperation.