The international community favors resolving displacement through voluntary return. However, we know little about what motivates return to conflict-affected areas. Previous research has shown that local communities hit by violence undergo a process of social transformation resulting in greater social cohesion. We argue that when weighing the decision to return, displaced persons must consider this new social reality brought about by the violence. Those that express a willingness to return should be more prepared to engage in collective coping and to act altruistically towards members of one’s own community. Return to conflict-affected areas may also put returnees back in harm’s way, however, and those that were the targets of direct violence during the fighting should be less willing to return, particular if they suffer posttraumatic stress. Those that do wish to return should have experienced greater posttraumatic growth. We term this the “congruence hypothesis”, which we test using a large-scale experiment among displaced persons residing in Turkey. We elicit refugees’ distributional preferences in both the ingroup and outgroup domain. Our unique design allows us to distinguish between nine possible preference types, enabling us to identify the precise preference pattern associated with the willingness to return. We find that refugees displaying altruistic social preferences towards ingroup members, but not outgroup members, express a much greater willingness to return. We discuss the implications of our findings for the encouragement of voluntary return and possible consequences for post-war reconstruction and social cohesion within and between groups in the aftermath of violence.