Preventing Violence and Promoting Active Bystandership and Peace: My Life in Research and Applications

In this article, I describe some of my research on caring, helping, active bystandership, and the origins of genocide and collective violence, as a background to interventions in real-world settings aimed to create positive change. They include working with teachers to create classrooms that promote caring and helping; training police to prevent or stop unnecessary harmful actions by fellow officers, and similarly students in schools to prevent harmful actions; promoting reconciliation, using trainings and workshops, and educational radio programs in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Congo; working to improve Dutch-Muslim relations in Amsterdam after violence; and a number of other projects. In these projects, information and participants' experiences combined to create "experiential understanding." Evaluation studies showed positive effects. These projects and their evaluation show that research- and theory-based interventions can be effective. An initial motivation for this work was my early childhood experience during the Holocaust in Hungary and receiving help from bystanders. Public Significance Statement This review of research, interventions, and applications in real-world settings shows that research on helping behavior and on the origins of great violence by groups can be applied to prevent violence, for example, by police or by students who would bully, and to help groups reconcile after great violence, for example, the genocide in Rwanda. It shows that knowledge gained in research can be used to make a difference in the world.