How does exposure to violence affect behavior?

[I]ndividuals who have either experienced violence themselves, or who live in communities that have been violently attacked, display more altruistic behavior, are more risk seeking, and act less patiently.

Long term consequences:

[In Burundi] civil war violence that occurred between 1993 and 2003 has a clear impact on individual behavior in 2009.

The thesis of poverty traps after civil wars is under scrutiny. 

That is from the paper "Violent Conflict and Behavior: a Field Experiment in Burundi," by Voors et al. (AER, April 2012). A draft is here.