Theory Development and Evaluation of Project WIN: A Violence Reduction Program for Early Adolescents

There is a need for an effective violence reduction program for early adolescents in schools. Social psychologists have had success teaching adolescents integrative negotiation strategies that help them to resolve potentially violent conflicts. The caveat is that these strategies are effective only in cooperative social contexts and backfire in competitive social contexts. To develop an effective violence reduction program, we must not only teach young people skills of integrated negotiation; we must also present complementary strategies to help them transform competitive social contexts into cooperative social contexts. The purpose of this study was to present a violence reduction program, entitled Project WIN (Working out Integrated Negotiations), which accomplished both of these goals. The target group was fifth-graders in a low-income, urban community. Plans for further evaluation of Project WIN and greater investment of educators and researchers in the behavioral technology of violence reduction are discussed.