Us versus Them in Context: Meta-Analysis as a Tool for Geotemporal Trends in Intergroup Relations

Abstract

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: small;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:200%">The increasing availability of studies from many nations offers important potential insights into group-based psychology and behavior, conflict, and violence.&nbsp;Nonetheless, to date, few cross-national or cultural comparisons of study findings have been made, representing a gap in our understanding of the&nbsp;historical causes and courses of inter-group conflict in current comparative approaches. Meta-analytic methods offer researchers the ability to combine&nbsp;data from studies with groups as well as across time. Our review of statistical methods available for comparative analyses in inter-group research found&nbsp;strengths and limitations for understanding group differences, conflict, and violence, and meta-analytic methods address these limitations by exploring potential&nbsp;structural-level moderators and by identifying how temporal and geographical variations may relate directly to group-based variables. Such methods&nbsp;can contribute to our understanding of broad structural effects on group-based variables by elucidating the mechanisms underlying them.</p></span></p></span></span>

Keywords

• Comparative analyses, meta-analysis, multi-level analyses, temporal analysis, intergroup phenomena