Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2026 Jan;29(1):e70097.
doi: 10.1111/desc.70097.

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

Bethany Corbett  1 , Vivian Liu  2 , Juliana Valentina Duarte Valderrama  3 , Léïla Eisner  4 , Jeanine Grütter  5 , Tabea Hässler  4 , Claudia Patricia Pineda Marin  3 , Laura Taylor  2
Affiliations

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

Bethany Corbett et al. Dev Sci. 2026 Jan.

Abstract

After conflict, intergroup divisions often persist, becoming entrenched and normative. Violating norms of division to help outgroup members may be an effective form of peacebuilding, yet involves social risks, thus requiring prosocial risk-taking. We explore predictors of willingness to help general, ingroup, and outgroup targets across three countries (Switzerland, N = 431; Northern Ireland, N = 256; Colombia, N = 286) with varying experiences of intergroup 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 trait risk-taking differentially predicted prosocial risk-taking by country; we found no evidence in any country that combined traits of higher prosociality and risk-taking were associated with prosocial risk-taking. Findings indicated various motives to participate in prosocial risk-taking. Perceived peer norms moderated the primary paths of interest. Higher prosociality (Study 2) and risk-taking (Study 3) were only positively related to prosocial risk-taking when peer norms were relatively supportive; yet, when peer norms were relatively unsupportive, higher levels of prosociality and risk-taking were not sufficient to motivate higher prosocial risk-taking. Our research situates individual-level cognitive factors linked to potential peacebuilding in an ecological context and center youth as agents with the capacity to disrupt cycles of division and conflict. SUMMARY: We advance prosocial risk-taking (taking a risk to help others) as a form of peacebuilding after intergroup conflict. Prosocial risk-taking was differentially predicted by prosociality and trait risk-taking across three countries with different conflict histories. Perceived peer norms of intergroup friendship moderated the associations between prosociality (Study 2), trait risk-taking (Study 3) and prosocial risk-taking. Prosociality and trait risk-taking converged with age to jointly predict prosocial risk-taking (Study 1) across a broad age span (12-26-years).

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Abrams, D., S. B. Palmer, A. Rutland, L. Cameron, and J. Van de Vyver. 2014. “Evaluations of and Reasoning About Normative and Deviant Ingroup and Outgroup Members: Development of the Black Sheep Effect.” Developmental Psychology 50, no. 1: 258. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032461.
    1. Adler, N. E., E. S. Epel, G. Castellazzo, and J. R. Ickovics. 2000. “Relationship of Subjective and Objective Social Status With Psychological and Physiological Functioning: Preliminary Data in Healthy, White Women.” Health Psychology 19, no. 6: 586. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278‐6133.19.6.586.
    1. ARK. 2023. Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey. [Computer File]. ARK. www.ark.ac.uk/nilt [distributor], July 2025.
    1. Armstrong‐Carter, E., E. S. Bibby, M. Burroughs, et al. 2021a. “Adolescents Are More Likely to Help Others on Days They Take Risks and Crave Social Connections.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 32, no. 4: 1421–1432. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12705.
    1. Armstrong‐Carter, E., K. Do, J. F. Guassi Moreira, M. J. Prinstein, and E. H. Telzer. 2021b. “Examining a New Prosocial Risk‐Taking Scale in a Longitudinal Sample of Ethnically Diverse Adolescents.” Journal of Adolescence 93, no. 1: 222–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Adolescence.2021.11.002.

LinkOut - more resources