The Northern Ireland Conflict: Intergroup Relations Between The Two Communities

The main objective of this research is to further investigate different aspects of the Northern Ireland conflict from a social psychological perspective in relation to various intergroup attitudes regarding the peace in the region. Focusing on both Protestant and Catholic community members, we look at their representations and and perceptions of the conflict and their identity as the key aspects of the conflict. We have created new scales for measuring different identity construals and different representations of the conflict & peace. The intergroup attitudes regarding the peace in the region include measures such as intergroup forgiveness, collective action and allyship. The study was conducted between Dec 2021 and Jan 2022. Participants were 18 years or older, from Northern Ireland, and living in the UK or Ireland. Participants were recruited via a crowdsourcing platform, Prolific (89%), or via convenience sampling (11%) by sharing the survey link on social media. After giving their consent in line with the ethics approval, participants answered an online questionnaire. Out of the initial 578, 67 participants were excluded: 3 participants failed both attention checks; one response was duplicate; 14 did not consent, 37 were either not living in the UK/Ireland or did not identify as from Northern Ireland; a further 12 participants were excluded due to missings as they did not respond beyond the first page of the survey that involved demographics. Out of the remaining 511 valid responses, 354 self-identified (or were raised as) Protestant, 136 as Catholic and 21 as other.