Article
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Deep Down My Enemy Is Good: Thinking about the True Self Reduces Intergroup Bias

Format:Print

Abstract

Intergroup bias—preference for one's in-group relative to out-groups—is one of the most robust phenomena in all of psychology. Here we investigate whether a positive bias that operates at the individual-level, belief in a good true self, may be leveraged to reduce intergroup bias. We find that even stereotypically threatening outgroup agents are believed to have a good true self (Experiment 1). More importantly, consideration of an ingroup and out-group members' true self reduces intergroup bias, both in the form of explicit evaluative judgments (Experiment 2) and actual donation behavior (Experiment 3). Across studies, the palliative effects of thinking of an individual's true self generalize to that individual's entire group. In sum, a simple intervention—thinking about another's true self—reduces the gap in how people evaluate and treat out-group relative to ingroup members. We discuss implications of these findings for conflict reduction strategies.