Israeli-Jews and Palestinians cannot easily be exposed to contradicting information about “the other” in the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotionally charged situation and prevailing ethnocentrism. Serious games like PeaceMaker are used as innovative interventions for peace education. Winning PeaceMaker indicates better conflict resolution skills and developing an informative viewpoint regarding the situation, which is required for conflict resolution and peacebuilding. The evaluation of the effectiveness of prosocial games in educating about conflict and peace in the literature is severely lacking. We examine the effects of this computerized simulation of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on enhancing knowledge about the conflict and “the other” among undergraduate players who are direct parties (i.e., Israeli-Jews and Palestinians) and third parties (i.e., Americans and Cypriots). In addition, we investigate the knowledge gap between direct parties and third parties who won and did not win the game. Using questionnaires, we conducted a quasi-experimental study with 168 undergraduates using a pre- and post-intervention research design. We found that direct parties to the conflict acquired significantly more knowledge about the other side, and third parties acquired significantly more knowledge about the conflict after playing PeaceMaker. In addition, PeaceMaker minimized the knowledge gap after playing the game among direct parties who won the game and those who did not win and increased the knowledge gap between third parties who won the game and those who did not win. Our results suggest that serious games might be effective interventions for peace education, because they appear to enhance knowledge about the conflict, and about “the other” particularly for young people who are direct parties to this divide.

中文翻译：

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严肃游戏、知识获取和冲突解决：和平缔造者作为和平教育工具的案例

在棘手的以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突中，由于情绪激动的局势和盛行的种族中心主义，以色列犹太人和巴勒斯坦人不能轻易接触到关于“对方”的相互矛盾的信息。像和平缔造者这样的严肃游戏被用作和平教育的创新干预措施。赢得“和平缔造者”意味着更好的冲突解决技能以及对局势形成信息丰富的观点，这是解决冲突和建设和平所必需的。文献中严重缺乏对亲社会游戏在冲突与和平教育方面的有效性的评估。我们研究了以色列-巴勒斯坦冲突的计算机模拟对增强本科生参与者（即以色列犹太人和巴勒斯坦人）和第三方（即美国人和塞浦路斯人）对冲突和“他者”的了解的影响）。此外，我们还调查了赢得和未赢得比赛的直接方和第三方之间的知识差距。我们通过问卷调查，对 168 名本科生进行了一项准实验研究，采用干预前和干预后的研究设计。我们发现，冲突的直接各方在玩《和平缔造者》后获得了更多关于另一方的知识，而第三方则获得了更多关于冲突的知识。此外，PeaceMaker 最小化了赢得比赛的直接方与未获胜的直接方之间的知识差距，并增加了赢得比赛的第三方与未获胜的第三方之间的知识差距。我们的研究结果表明，严肃的游戏可能是和平教育的有效干预措施，因为它们似乎可以增强人们对冲突以及“他者”的了解，特别是对于直接参与这一分歧的年轻人来说。