Emotion Regulation and Attitudes toward FARC-EP Ex-combatants and Venezuelan Migrants: Effects of a Reappraisal Training

Colombia currently faces the challenge of integrating into civil life two large segments of population: over fourteen thousand FARC-EP ex-combatants from peace agreements after five decades of conflict, and nearly two million Venezuelan migrants. Successful integration heavily depends on fostering public acceptance of these groups. Prior research by Halperin et al. (2013) and Hurtado-Parrado et al. (2019) demonstrated the effectiveness of reappraisal training, a brief emotion-regulation intervention, in reducing negative emotions (e.g., anger, irritability, fear) and aggressive attitudes (e.g., support for war or opposition to the peace process), while increasing conciliatory attitudes (e.g., support for humanitarian aid). The present study extended those findings via testing reappraisal training to promote positive attitudes towards FARC-EP ex-combatants (Experiment 1) and Venezuelan migrants (Experiment 2). In both experiments, reappraisal training reduced negative emotions and support for aggressive statements, while increasing support for conciliatory statements. In addition, negative emotions mediated the effect of reappraisal on both aggressive and conciliatory statements. Lastly, reappraisal training increased participants’ willingness to donate, a measure of prosocial behavior tested for the first time in this line of research. These findings add to the evidence of the effectiveness and generalizability of reappraisal training across a wider range of social targets and prosocial behaviors, and its potential to inform public policy and promote larger-scale social integration efforts.