An Open Mind or a Big Heart: Possible Routes ToReducing Ingroup Bias

People have a well-known proclivity to prefer members of their ingroup over members of their outgroups. In times of intergroup competition, ingroup bias can turn into outgorup hostility. Recentdevelopments in democratic politics in western countries, notably the United States, have stoked outgroup hostility towards members of opposing political parties, but also racial/ethnic outgroups,and migrants. In this project, we study ways to reduce ingroup bias. In Study 1, we analyze the degree to which people are capable of taking the perspective of an opposing partisan and found that only individuals high in trait reectiveness or capable of pushing pass their partisan biases to put themselves in the shoes of an opposing partisan. In Study 2, we pre-register a follow up study that investigates whether compassion training can encourage people to be less hostile towards outpartisans as well as individuals from racial outgroups and migrants.