This paper details the results of a field experiment to assess the effectiveness of an intervention aimed at shifting the attitudes of host populations towards South Sudanese refugees in four villages in the West Nile region of Uganda. The experiment also measures the village social networks and the social processing that occurs within them after the intervention. Uganda hosts approximately 900,000 South Sudanese refugees, with the majority residing in the West Nile region.
From February to August 2021, a baseline survey was conducted across all households in each of the four villages. This survey assessed attitudes towards refugees, household characteristics, and the interactions that form the village social networks. In a randomly selected half of the households, a perspective-taking treatment was administered. This treatment involved sharing a narrative about a South Sudanese refugee’s life and perspective, designed to foster a nonjudgmental context for discussion and encourage active information processing. Approximately two weeks later, an endline survey was conducted in all households, reassessing attitudes, and exploring experiences with social processing. Additionally, a qualitative follow-up was carried out about a year after the study concluded.
The survey data show that the selected villages were similar in size (about 100–150 households each) and the average age of respondents was similar, though they varied considerably in other demographics such as levels of education, primary occupation, and religious affiliation. Baseline data indicate that a substantial minority of Ugandans in the West Nile study villages hold exclusionary attitudes towards refugees.
Main findings:
- The perspective-taking intervention led to warmer attitudes towards refugees on average in all four villages. However, some of this positive shift in attitudes diminished over the three weeks between the baseline and endline surveys.
- Individuals’ views were significantly shaped by their social networks. Respondents finished the study with views on refugees that were substantially more similar to their network neighbors’ views than when they began. (Network neighbors are the set of households to which they are directly linked through sharing of meals, visiting, borrowing money, and chatting about rumors). Proximity to key reference households—those with extreme baseline attitudes or strong responses to the treatment—affected endline attitudes. Closer network proximity to households with initially warm attitudes or those positively influenced by the treatment resulted in warmer endline attitudes.
- Social processing was prevalent. After the intervention, respondents spoke with their peers in the village social networks. Both treated and control villagers talked about refugees more frequently than usual. In this way, the intervention spilled over into control households and further shaped the reactions of the treated. In all four villages, individuals who discussed refugees became more similar in their attitudes.
- Spillovers from treated respondents do not occur uniformly; some treated respondents generate positive spillovers, while some generate negative ones. Spillovers from treated respondents were not uniform; some generated positive spillovers, while others generated negative ones. Those who were particularly persuaded by the treatment produced positive spillovers, whereas the few who reacted most negatively to the treatment generated negative spillovers through the social network.
The authors conclude that perspective-taking interventions are effective at reducing prejudice among Ugandan individuals toward South Sudanese refugees. Another key finding is that the intervention sparked a social process, increasing conversations about refugees in the two weeks following the intervention. This coincided with improved average attitudes towards refugees not only among treated households but also among control households in the four villages. The results suggest that those most persuaded by the treatment created positive spillovers, while those most negatively influenced generated negative spillovers. These findings strongly suggest that designing interventions for enduring improvements in attitudes towards refugees in rural, developing country contexts requires understanding the social processes that can reinforce or undermine individual-level attitude change.