How do disasters affect intergroup peace and conflict? Existing research shows that disasters can have opposing effects on how we perceive others: they can exacerbate existing tension in some cases or serve as catalysts for peace and cooperation in others. Yet we know little about the conditions under which we should expect one or the other. In this study, we estimate the impact of disasters on perceptions of out-groups. We combine a dataset of mass disasters with tens of thousands of individual-level survey responses recorded in Round 6 of the Afrobarometer data between 2014 and 2015. Using a difference-in-differences approach exploiting spatial and temporal proximity to disaster occurrences, we estimate the degree to which disasters affect public opinion toward out-groups. As disaster occurrence is plausibly exogenous to interview dates or respondent locations, our approach allows for an improved test of how the shock from disaster can impact public perceptions. Moreover, we show such impact varies by considering the differences in political salience of out-group identities and short- versus long-term differences in the impact on group dynamics. The implications of our findings for understanding the aftermath of past disasters and effects of future disasters on intergroup peace and conflict are discussed.

灾难如何影响群体间的和平与冲突？现有研究表明，灾害会对我们如何看待他人产生相反的影响：在某些情况下，它们会加剧现有的紧张局势，或在其他情况下成为和平与合作的催化剂。然而，我们对我们应该期待其中一个或另一个的条件知之甚少。在这项研究中，我们估计了灾害对外部群体感知的影响。我们将大规模灾害数据集与 2014 年至 2015 年间非洲晴雨表第 6 轮数据中记录的数以万计个人层面的调查响应相结合。使用差异中的差异方法利用灾害发生的空间和时间接近度，我们估计灾害影响公众舆论对外部群体的程度。由于灾害发生似乎与采访日期或受访者地点无关，因此我们的方法可以改进对灾害冲击如何影响公众认知的测试。此外，我们通过考虑外群体身份的政治显着性差异以及对群体动态影响的短期和长期差异，表明这种影响会有所不同。讨论了我们的研究结果对了解过去灾难的后果以及未来灾难对群体间和平与冲突的影响的影响。