Our Compass

Nine premises underlying Arts SoCo’s cohesion campaigns and arts-based cohesion interventions

1. Many complexities groups face emerge from two linked domains: relationships and structures.[i]

Such complexities range from sustaining members’ engagement, increasing collaboration or undertaking bold initiatives to navigating change and conflict.

2. People can afford to be more collaborative, creative and innovative in relationships where they feel: Valued as people and for their contributions; agency; and psychological safety to express perspectives and experiences without fear of reprisal.[ii]

3. Such relationships form a social infrastructure persisting beyond any single agenda, increasing a group’s capacities to navigate current and unknown future challenges.[iii]

4. Strengthening relationships is accelerated by crafting situations, not fixing people.[iv]
People naturally respond differently to perceptions of threat vs safety, however subtle or tacit. Such perceptions about others, self, and social situations are not fixed. They are often amenable to shifts through situation design.[v]

5. Under certain circumstances, long-lasting inference shifts can be effected by relatively brief interventions if carefully designed, tailored, targeted and timed.[vi]

6. Arts-based interventions offer distinct advantages in effecting such shifts.
Artistic experiences help us “human” each other: They help tunnel below surface positions to deeper values and experiences that lead people to know and choose as they do — a person’s story.[vii] Being moved by a person’s story increases empathy, elevating shared identities above differences.[viii] The curiosity to understand experiences and circumstances underlying someone’s perspectives and choices requires neither agreement nor equivalence.[ix]

7. Both healthy relationships and artistic experiences are their own reward as sources of wellbeing and joy.[x]
Arts-based interventions motivate participation by bypassing often heavy connotations for those exhausted by “politics” or even “dialogue.”[xi]

8. Relationships are expressed, reinforced and perpetuated by external structures.
These include: shared agreements, how and where people meet and communicate, group decision-making processes, skills, resources, how conflict is handled, policies and institutions.[xii]

9. Lasting change generally requires attention to both relationships and structure.
As vital as it may be to shift inferences about self, other and relationships, on its own this is usually not sufficient for lasting behavior change.[xiii] Without structure, the relational shifts go unexpressed and dissipate over time.[xiv] And without healthy relationships, structural interventions such as skill training or providing resources tend towards limited, short-lived results.[xv]

Citations

[i]For mutual dependence of psychological and structural conditions, see for example Walton, G. M., & Wilson, T. D. (2018). Wise interventions: Psychological remedies for social and personal problems. Psychological Review, 125(5), 617–655. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000115 — p. 618.

For the interplay of relationships and institutions at neighborhood level, see Kaplan, S. D. (2023). Fragile neighborhoods: Repairing American society, one zip code at a time. Little, Brown Spark.

[ii]For belonging measured as feeling valued, having a say, and safety to speak, see for example Argo, N., & Sheikh, H. (2024). The Belonging Barometer: The state of belonging in America (Rev. ed.). Over Zero & American Immigration Council — pp. 6–8.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999 — p. 354.

For belonging as a driver of motivation and functioning, see Walton, G. M., & Brady, S. T. (2021). The social-belonging intervention. In G. M. Walton & A. J. Crum (Eds.), Handbook of wise interventions: How social psychology can help people change (pp. 36–62). Guilford Press — p. 53.

[iii]For neighbors’ cohesion and willingness to act together predicting lower violence, independent of poverty, see Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277(5328), 918–924. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.277.5328.918

For relationships as both the means and the goal of community organizing, see Putnam, R. D., & Feldstein, L. M. (with Cohen, D.). (2003). Better together: Restoring the American community. Simon & Schuster — Ch. 1, “Valley Interfaith,” pp. 11–33.

Ross, C. E., & Jang, S. J. (2000). Neighborhood disorder, fear, and mistrust: The buffering role of social ties with neighbors. American Journal of Community Psychology, 28(4), 401–420. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005137713332

[iv]For interventions that change how people read a situation rather than change the people, see Walton & Wilson (2018), p. 617.

For crafting situations around people’s core needs, see Sherman, D. K., Lokhande, M., Müller, T., & Cohen, G. L. (2021). Self-affirmation interventions. In G. M. Walton & A. J. Crum (Eds.), Handbook of wise interventions: How social psychology can help people change (pp. 63–99). Guilford Press — p. 64.

Cohen, G. L. (2022). Belonging: The science of creating connection and bridging divides. W. W. Norton — Part One, “The Science and Art of Situation-Crafting.”

[v]For inferences about self, others and situations as malleable and shaped by context, see Walton, G. M., & Crum, A. J. (2021). Introduction. In G. M. Walton & A. J. Crum (Eds.), Handbook of wise interventions: How social psychology can help people change (pp. 1–6). Guilford Press — p. 1.

For threat provoking defensiveness and narrowing attention, see Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The psychology of change: Self-affirmation and social psychological intervention. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 333–371. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115137 — pp. 334–336.

For mistaken, revisable expectations of how others will receive us, see Epley, N. (2026). A little more social: How small choices create unexpected happiness, health, and connection. Knopf.

[vi]For the three T’s — targeting, tailoring, timing — see for example Sherman et al. (2021), p. 76, and Cohen (2022).

For an example of an hour-long exercise with effects 7–11 years later, see Walton & Brady (2021), pp. 36, 43, 53.

For how brief interventions can last when well situated and timed, see Cohen & Sherman (2014), p. 342.

[vii]For an elaboration of tunneling from positions through interests and to core needs, see for example Ury, W. (2024). Possible: How we survive (and thrive) in an age of conflict. Harper Business — pp. 73–92. See also Ripley, A. (2018, June 27; updated 2019). Complicating the narratives. Solutions Journalism Network. https://thewholestory.solutionsjournalism.org/complicating-the-narratives-b91ea06ddf63 — “Ask questions that get to people’s motivations.”

For complicating flattened narratives, see Coleman, P. T. (2021). The way out: How to overcome toxic polarization. Columbia University Press — “Complicate.”

For art making as showing oneself and being seen, see Sagan, O. (2025). Loneliness, social cohesion, and the role of art making. Societies, 15(9), 237. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15090237

[viii]For how exchanging personal stories, not arguments, durably reduces prejudice in divisive canvassing situations, see for example Kalla, J. L., & Broockman, D. E. (2020). Reducing exclusionary attitudes through interpersonal conversation: Evidence from three field experiments. American Political Science Review, 114(2), 410–425. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000923

Taylor, C., & Wei, Q. (2020). Storytelling and arts to facilitate community capacity building for urban planning and social work. Societies, 10(3), 64. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc10030064 — p. 3 (pilot study).

Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297234003

[ix]For understanding as distinct from agreement, see Hicks, D. (2011). Dignity: Its essential role in resolving conflict. Yale University Press, pp. 49–62, 81–85; and Ripley (2018).

[x]See, for example, Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLoS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316

For small social choices and wellbeing, see Epley (2026).

Fancourt, D., & Finn, S. (2019). What is the evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being? A scoping review (Health Evidence Network Synthesis Report No. 67). WHO Regional Office for Europe.

[xi]For the “exhausted majority,” see Hawkins, S., Yudkin, D., Juan-Torres, M., & Dixon, T. (2018). Hidden tribes: A study of America’s polarized landscape. More in Common — Ch. 6.

For polarization fatigue, see Coleman (2021).

For apolitical, human-centered storytelling enabling connection across differences, see Thomas, H. (in press). Participant experiences of “In Our Words”: The case study of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Temple Israel of Boston [Arts evaluation brief]. Incevia Policy Partners — “Key Findings.”

[xii]For how gathering structure shapes participant connection, see for example Parker, P. (2018). The art of gathering: How we meet and why it matters. Riverhead Books.

For institutions and norms sustaining relationships, see Kaplan (2023), and Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Wiley.

[xiii]For reasons a changed meaning generally requires structure to take root, see Walton & Wilson (2018), p. 618 and Table 1, p. 620.

For attitude change alone seldom sufficing for lasting behavior change, see Cohen & Sherman (2014), p. 349.

For psychological exercises failing without objective supports, see Walton & Brady (2021), p. 44.

[xiv]For mindset shifts that held only where peer norms supported acting on them, see Dweck, C. S., & Yeager, D. S. (2021). A growth mindset about intelligence. In G. M. Walton & A. J. Crum (Eds.), Handbook of wise interventions: How social psychology can help people change (pp. 9–35). Guilford Press — pp. 19–20.

Walton, G. M., & Yeager, D. S. (2020). Seed and soil: Psychological affordances in contexts help to explain where wise interventions succeed or fail. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 29(3), 219–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721420904453

For an evaluation finding that shifts from brief arts-based interventions persisted beyond six months while bonds rarely became ongoing contact, absent relational infrastructure, see Thomas, H. (in press). Participant experiences of “In Our Words”: The case study of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Temple Israel of Boston [Arts evaluation brief]. Incevia Policy Partners — “At a Glance.”

[xv]For how improving situations or building skills without addressing subjective meanings tends to produce limited, short-lived results, see for example Menec, V. H., Perry, R. P., Struthers, C. W., Schonwetter, D. J., Hechter, F. J., & Eichholz, B. L. (1994). Assisting at-risk college students with attributional retraining and effective teaching. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 24(8), 675–701. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1994.tb00607.x; Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41(3), 586–598. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.41.3.586