Longitudinal effects of helping war refugees on intergroup threat and fear of war: The role of perceived helping functionality

Abstract

This study investigates the longitudinal effects of aiding war refugees on perceptions of intergroup threat and the prospective fear of being affected by military conflict. We hypothesized that engaging in helping behaviors directed towards refugees would prompt individuals to perceive these actions as serving vital self-functions (i.e., satisfying basic psychological needs), which, in turn, could potentially mitigate the intergroup threat perceived in relation to the refugees while amplifying the prospective fear of potential warfare. Data were collected over three waves of a panel study during the initial 2 months of the refugee crisis in Poland arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Our findings reveal that providing assistance to war refugees at Time 1 resulted in greater perceived personal benefits of helping at Time 2. This enhanced perceived functionality of helping subsequently predicted diminished intergroup refugee threat perceptions (both realistic and symbolic), but also heightened fear levels concerning the potential impact of war at Time 3. These results were consistent across models accounting for lagged-1 and more stringent lagged-2 autoregressive effects. Importantly, the observed temporal relationships regarding realistic threat and fear of war were less robust against individual difference factors. These findings enrich the ongoing discourse on the impacts of aiding individuals fleeing conflict zones and how beliefs about the purpose of such means of assistance shape constructive intergroup relations.