Definition and Prevalence of Weight Bias

Weight bias refers to stigmatization, bullying, prejudice, and discrimination against overweight and obese individuals based on their body weight and appearance (Puhl & Brownell, 2003). It can manifest in prejudiced implicit and explicit attitudes, including the attribution of negative stereotypes (e.g., unattractive, lazy, unclean, gluttonous, unintelligent, unhealthy) toward overweight and obese people. It also includes discriminatory actions toward an individual based on their weight and appearance, such as suboptimal health care and employment inequities. As this chapter shows, extensive evidence demonstrates that overweight and obese individuals are at significantly greater risk for institutional and interpersonal prejudice and discrimination because of their higher weight (Carr & Friedman, 2005). Although a substantial amount of research, policy, advocacy, and social action has been dedicated to understanding the causes of, and methods for preventing, other forms of discrimination (e.g., race and sexuality), policy and social action addressing weight bias has thus far been limited (Brownell, 2005). It has been suggested that weight bias is the last socially acceptable form of discrimination (Puhl & Brownell, 2001). This neglect is concerning given research demonstrating that experiencing weight bias can impair psychological and physical health, hinder economic and employment opportunities, and impede academic performance and education.

In the United States, weight discrimination is one of the most common forms of discrimination reported by women and men (Puhl, Andreyeva, & Brownell, 2008). Unlike other forms of discrimination that have remained stable in recent decades, reports of weight discrimination were found to increase by 66%, from 7% in 1995–1996 to 12% in 2004–2006 (Andreyeva, Puhl, & Brownell, 2008).

On Friday, April 5, 1968, I entered my third-grade classroom in Riceville, Iowa, determined to teach my students about the ugliness of prejudice and the discrimination that results from it. I had decided, while watching the news the night before, that the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., who had been one of our “Heroes of the Month” in February, could not go unnoticed by my students. Our lesson plan for the day, since we were involved in studying the Native American unit, was to learn the Sioux Indian prayer that says, “Oh, Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.” I had decided that I would arrange to have that prayer answered for my students, on this fateful day, by treating them fairly or unfairly, based solely on the color of their eyes. I didn't create this exercise from nothing, you realize; I modeled it on what I learned in the third grade about Adolph Hitler sending people into gas chambers, based, in part, on the color of their eyes. By the end of the day, my students had learned more than I had ever taught them before, and I had learned more than they had.

The first thing I learned was that I didn't know anything about racism, its causes, and/or effects. I had always been taught, by the significant adults in my environment, that discrimination is caused by prejudice, that prejudice is the problem. All you have to do is change people's hearts and behavioral change will follow. I was certain that the same thing would happen with my students; so, after we had said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and had sung “God Bless America,” we began to talk about the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. It was obvious that my students weren't internalizing anything that was being said; so I asked them whether they had any idea how it would feel to be treated as many people of color are treated in this country. Of course, they didn't, but they indicated that they'd like to try something that would help them know a little bit more than they knew about that situation.

Intergroup discrimination can be defined broadly as differential treatment of individuals based on social category membership. In many contexts, discrimination takes the form of ingroup bias, whereby members of one's own social categories are evaluated more positively or responded to more favorably than members of other social categories (outgroups). In much of the social psychological literature, discrimination is viewed as the behavioral component of prejudice.

In light of this conflation of prejudice and discrimination, it is interesting that ingroup bias is often referred to as ingroup favoritism (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971), whereas prejudice is most often defined as outgroup hostility (see Dixon, Levine, Reicher, & Durrheim, 2012; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). This chapter reviews theory and empirical research on the relationship between ingroup bias and outgroup hostility and argues that it is important to distinguish between these two loci of discrimination and to recognize that much intergroup discrimination takes the form of ingroup favoritism in the absence of outgroup antagonism.

Ingroup Bias and Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism was described by Sumner as a universal characteristic of human social groups whereby

Over the past 50 years of empirical research on intergroup relations, this propensity to privilege ingroupers over outgroupers has been well established, confirming the power of we-they distinctions to produce differential evaluation, liking, and treatment of other persons depending on whether or not they are identified as members of the ingroup category.

Considerable advances have occurred in the study of prejudice against sexual minorities (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender individuals) across multiple fields of psychology in recent years. With this growing attention, scholars have proposed more refined and nuanced conceptualizations of sexual prejudice, documented varied ways in which it is expressed, identified multiple underlying predictors, and pointed to emerging issues that require concerted interdisciplinary approaches to address. There is also a substantial literature base documenting discrimination against sexual minorities and its many physical, mental, and behavioral health consequences (Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2012; Meyer, 2003). For the purpose of this chapter, however, we focus on the construct of sexual prejudice itself and seek to provide an understanding of individual factors and social processes that contribute to its development and perpetuation.

Operationalizing Sexual Prejudice

Scholars have proposed and used varying terminology for the continually evolving concept of sexual prejudice as it is now understood; of these terms, “homophobia” (largely attributed to Weinberg, 1972) has been the most enduring and widely used in research and popular culture. Herek (2004) provided a rich review and critique of these terms, with an emphasis on homophobia, and considered the historical and societal context in which this term first originated and was later revised. In his critique, Herek noted important limitations to the term “homophobia,” including (a) it rarely refers to an intense, irrational fear of sexual minorities; (b) it is framed through the lens of psychopathology but is not meant as a diagnosis; (c) it has inadequately reflected the role of broader social norms and processes in shaping individuals’ attitudes; (d) more recently its operationalization has become diffuse as a consequence of being applied to a rather large range of ideas; and (e) it is often considered synonymous with prejudice toward gay men specifically rather than sexual minorities more expansively. Consequently, although many researchers use the term “homophobia” to capture a range of interrelated concepts (e.g., individuals’ negative attitudes toward non-heterosexuals, discriminatory social policies or institutions), it has steadily been replaced by terms such as “sexual stigma,” “heterosexism,” and “sexual prejudice,” which we describe next.

Sexual stigma may be defined as the collective belief among members of society that non-heterosexual identities, feelings, or behaviors are wrong and inferior to heterosexual identities, feelings, or behaviors (Herek, 2004).

Understanding acquisition and development of stereotypes and prejudice by young children in the context of intractable conflicts is a special challenge for social, developmental, and political psychologists, because these concepts play a major role in the dynamics of the hostile intergroup relations between the rivals (i.e., the parties involved in intractable conflicts). In this type of conflict, societies, as a result of the severe conditions of life, develop and later maintain sociopsychological repertoires, of which extremely negative stereotypes and strong prejudice are an inseparable part. The very negative stereotypes are denoted in delegitimization, defined as follows:

Prejudice refers to the attitude that people hold toward another group (e.g., Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Schadron, 1994; Stroebe & Insko, 1989). However, in the context of intractable conflict, the negative attitude experienced by rival society members is strong. Therefore, we refer to such prejudice as animosity, which conjures emotions of hatred and anger, to stress its particular nature (see Jung et al., 2002). Though delegitimization and animosity are learned similarly as are all stereotypes and attitudes, they are special reflections of the context of intractable conflicts. They are acquired by children as a direct result of their exposure to violence, and other experiences as well, and are imparted to them implicitly and explicitly by agents of socialization. These agents include the family, as well as those at institutionalized levels, through educational systems, media, or political organizations. This chapter elucidates the unique process of the early acquisition of delegitimization (very negative stereotyping) and animosity (very strong prejudice) by children who grow up in societies that are involved in intractable conflict with all its implications. First, the chapter elaborates on the nature of the intractable conflicts, as the unique context in which children develop and acquire their intergroup repertoire of stereotypes and prejudice.

Males are stereotyped as more competitive than females, females as more caring than men, and African Americans as more physically aggressive and violent than European and Asian Americans. Heterosexuals are prejudiced against homosexuals, locals are prejudiced against immigrants, and religious people are prejudiced against atheists. As generalizations, these statements are supported by considerable bodies of empirical work, many of which are reviewed in the other chapters of this handbook.

Werner Heisenberg, the theoretical physicist, noted that “what we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning” (1958/1999, p. 58). The findings just described characterize the nature of one small subset of stereotypes and prejudices and emerge from methods of questioning derived from a variety of theoretical perspectives – perspectives focusing, for example, on ingroup/outgroup distinctions, social identity and self-enhancement processes, and a need to justify discriminatory behaviors against others. As we will see throughout this chapter, however, the nature of stereotypes and prejudices is often more nuanced and complex than what the questioning favored by such approaches allows us to discern. These nuances have important implications not only for our understanding of stereotyping and prejudice but also for the theoretical frameworks aiming to explain them.

Some of these nuances exist in the form of more textured conceptions of stereotyping and prejudice, missed by traditional methodological lenses focused at levels insufficiently fine to detect them. For example, when researchers use traditional measures to assess prejudices against groups as varied as gay men and Mexican Americans, respondents report feeling similarly prejudiced and negative toward the two groups. When researchers ask respondents about their specific emotional reactions to these groups, however, respondents report feeling quite differently toward the groups – feeling disgust toward gay men but fear of Mexican Americans (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005). Other complexities have been missed because they occur beyond the scope of the investigative lenses derived from traditional frameworks. Consider, for example, that stereotypes of young African American men being dangerous are especially likely to come to mind for perceivers who are physically in a dark environment (Schaller, Park, & Mueller, 2003), or that a woman's current ovulatory stage influences her prejudices against outgroup men (McDonald, Donnellan, Cesario, & Navarrete, 2015). As conceptual variables, environmental darkness and fertility status lie well outside the theoretical architectures of traditional theories.

For more than 80 years, understanding the causes, consequences, and remedies for prejudice has been a central theme in social psychology. Prejudice, by definition, refers to the holding of negative attitudes toward others based exclusively on their membership of a given group (Brown, 1995, p. 6). Prejudice is a major area of academic enquiry because it is considered a necessary condition for discrimination, which affects the opportunities and well-being of its targets – the victims. Furthermore, when negative views about a particular group become widespread and shared, then intergroup conflict, violence, and civil unrest are more likely.

Much of social psychology, though, has focused on the concepts of prejudice and social change as largely distinct areas of inquiry underpinned by different levels of analysis. Many approaches to explaining prejudice are directed at individual-level factors such as personality and cognitive and motivation processes (which are potentially faulty and irrational). Other explanations of prejudice emphasize the role of system-level factors and argue that maintenance of the status quo and preservation of stable social hierarchies consequently result in the subjugation of particular minority groups. An alternative analysis is that prejudice and social change are both outcomes of ongoing and fluid intergroup relations whereby people's group memberships and relationships between groups play a central explanatory role. The overarching and fundamental questions of interest within this trajectory of work are how is the intergroup relationship perceived now and when and how does it change.

Drawing on the social identity perspective, which incorporates both social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), the aim of this chapter is to make a case for the interdependence of prejudice and social change. This more integrated analysis relies on a new understanding of prejudice that rejects the premise that such attitudes and associated negative treatment are the product of flawed and faulty cognitive and motivational psychological processes (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Reynolds, Haslam, & Turner, 2012). Instead prejudice needs to be conceptualized, first and foremost, as an outcome of group processes and intergroup dynamics, whereby members of the majority and minority groups are positioned in a particular social relationship. Majority and minority do not refer to the simple numbers but to positions of power through cultural and economic dominance within a social system.

What are the consequences of bringing people from diverse groups together? Does it enhance trust and goodwill, or does it lead to mistrust and hostility? More than 60 years ago, social scientists offered initial evidence and theoretical perspectives regarding how contact between members of different groups can reduce intergroup hostility and promote positive intergroup attitudes (see Allport, 1954; Williams, 1947). Since then, Allport's (1954) formulation of intergroup contact theory has become one of the most enduring models in the history of social psychology (Brewer & Brown, 1998), as well as one of psychology's best strategies to improve intergroup relations (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2011).

This chapter provides an overview of recent theorizing and research on intergroup contact with a focus on three key developments in the literature. First, we highlight the special role of affective processes and friendship in improving intergroup attitudes while considering both direct and indirect forms of intergroup contact. We then review the differential effects and implications of contact among members of minority and majority groups and describe how contact effects reach far beyond shifts in intergroup attitudes. Finally, we discuss the effects of both positive and negative intergroup contact on attitudes and relations between groups.

Effects of Direct Contact

Research reveals the crucial roles that affective processes play in contact effects, both in terms of the kinds of contact that are most likely to improve intergroup attitudes and the kinds of positive outcomes we can expect from such contact (see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2011). With survey data from seven European samples, seminal work by Pettigrew (1997) showed that intergroup contact in the form of cross-group friendships was consistently and negatively associated with a range of prejudice measures, particularly those assessing feelings of sympathy and admiration toward the outgroup. In line with Pettigrew's (1997) findings, other studies indicate that cross-group friendships relate more strongly to reduced prejudice than more distant forms of contact (Herek & Capitanio, 1996), particularly when affective dimensions of prejudice such as feelings and emotions toward outgroup members are involved (Tropp & Pettigrew, 2005a).

Cross-group friendships. Empirical interest in the special role of cross-group friendships has expanded and corroborated these early findings through longitudinal, meta-analytic, and experimental research. Longitudinal surveys in several countries have shown that greater cross-group friendships predict more positive intergroup attitudes over time (Binder et al., 2009; Levin, van Laar, & Sidanius, 2003; Swart, Hewstone, Christ, & Voci, 2011).

Michael Brown, age 18. Tony Robinson, age 19. Amadou Diallo, age 22. Oscar Grant III, age 22. Freddie Gray, age 25. Akai Gurley, age 28. Jerame Reid, age 36. Eric Garner, age 43. Tamir Rice, age 12. These are just some of the names of innocent Black men (and, in the case of Tamir Rice, boys) who fell prey to the use of deadly force by police officers over the past few years in the United States. Although these victims vary considerably in terms of their age, their place of residence, and the circumstances surrounding their death, a common thread unites them; they all poignantly bring to light race-based injustices within the criminal justice system.

Unfortunately, racial disparities in the courts have long been noted (Alexander, 2010; Snowball & Weatherburn, 2007; Sudbury, 2013). For example, research from the United States shows that Blacks are nearly seven times more likely than Whites to serve time in prison by the time they reach their early 30s (Pettit & Western, 2004). Though some argue that these disparities are based on different rates of offending and other legitimate factors (see Klein, Petersilia, & Turner, 1990), studies show that after controlling for various legally relevant factors, race-based differences in criminal justice outcomes still exist (see Austin & Allen, 2000; Bales & Piquero, 2012; Mitchell & MacKenzie, 2004). In short, racial disparities can be found throughout the criminal justice system.

To a certain extent, race-based injustices such as the ones noted above may be (partly) explained – though certainly not excused – by the implicit associations that exist between race and crime (see Eberhardt, Goff, Purdie, & Davies, 2004). Specifically, Yogeeswaran, Devos, and Nash (Chapter 11, this title) note that implicit biases originate from socialization processes and operate outside of awareness. As such, crime-related stereotypes about Blacks may lead police officers and others within the criminal justice system to unintentionally misinterpret ambiguous information in a stereotype-consistent manner (see Levinson & Young, 2010). When involving life-or-death decisions, these basic cognitive biases may give rise to the unnecessary use of deadly force. In other words, basic psychological processes that underlie stereotyping and implicit biases may (partially) account for the noted racial disparities found in the courts (for a detailed review of the literature on implicit biases, see Yogeeswaran et al. (Chapter 11, this title).

Late one night in the winter in 1940, in the small French village of Le Chambon, a shivering Jewish woman knocked on the door of André and Magda Trocmé, the local Lutheran minister and his wife. She was fleeing from the Nazis and desperate for food and shelter. Magda quickly took her in, fed her, and started thinking how to help her. The woman needed false identification papers and a place to hide. Across the next few weeks, Magda and André talked with their parishioners and neighbors, and soon the entire village was providing refuge for fleeing Jews. Some were smuggled to safety in Switzerland. Others were given false identities and hidden on nearby farms. Many were children. Despite a murderous Gestapo raid that killed several members of the community, across the next four desperate years Magda and André led Le Chambon in saving about 3,500 Jews from the Holocaust. When André was arrested and pressed to name all the Jews he had helped, he responded, “We do not know what a Jew is; we only know human beings” (Trocmé, 2007, p. vii).

In the 1980s and 1990s, psychologists conducted several interview studies of those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, often comparing them to bystanders and Nazi perpetrators. Like the Trocmés, rescuers commonly believed that all human beings belong to one human family. One rescuer, interviewed by Samuel and Pearl Oliner, said it this way, “I had always considered all people regardless of their nationality, ethnic origins or race, religion, and so on, as members of one great family: mankind” (Oliner & Oliner, 1988, p. 157; see also Monroe, 1996).

This volume is about prejudice. But in sharp contrast to prejudice against those of a different race or religion, these rescuers cared deeply for all humanity and risked their own lives to save them. I have studied the structure of generalized prejudice (e.g., McFarland, 2010a), including its negative effects on concern for humanity and human rights (e.g., McFarland & Mathews, 2005). Reading about these rescuers, however, suggested that to help overcome prejudice, a focus is also needed on its opposite, on the sense that, as the rescuer said, we are all “members of one great family.”

In the United States, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by significant societal changes. The Civil Rights Movement and social, political, and moral forces stimulated these changes to address racism by White Americans toward Black Americans and achieve the nation's historical egalitarian ideals. With the Civil Rights legislation and other federal mandates, it was no longer simply immoral to discriminate against Blacks; it was now also illegal. Surveys and national polls revealed significant reductions in overt expressions of prejudice among Whites toward Blacks (Dovidio & Gartner, 2004). This unprecedented change in race relations in the United States changed the nature of racial attitudes, from blatant to subtle, and consequently the study of prejudice in psychology (Dovidio, 2001). In other countries, similar normative changes have reduced blatant expressions of prejudice while more subtle, yet equally pernicious, forms of bias persist (see Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995).

This chapter reviews the development of theory about contemporary forms of racism – focusing primarily on aversive racism – tracing the evolution of this perspective, describing key empirical evidence, and identifying productive avenues for future research. We begin by reviewing relations among different theories of subtle contemporary racism and discussing work on implicit prejudice and its relationship to aversive racism. We then consider the implications of aversive racism for interventions to reduce bias and identify promising new directions for research on contemporary racism, in general, and aversive racism, in particular.

Overview of Theories of Subtle Racism

The changing social norms and values shaped by the civil rights era posed unique challenges to the study of prejudice. Although overt expressions of prejudice and negative stereotyping have substantially declined, in part because of new normative pressures toward egalitarianism, privately held beliefs continue to reflect negative racial attitudes and beliefs. One effect of these new norms was that people appeared to more deliberately manage how others perceived their racial attitudes. For example, when expressing attitudes under conditions in which they were led to believe their true attitudes could be detected (e.g., bogus pipeline; Roese & Jamieson, 1993), Whites displayed significantly more negative attitudes toward Blacks than when they reported their attitudes under more normal conditions. This effect occurred, in part, because people normally consciously manage self-reports of prejudice and interracial behaviors to appear nonbiased.

Intergroup Threats

We believe that intergroup threats play a significant role in causing the problems that plague intergroup relations. In this chapter, we lay out the reasoning and research on which this claim is based. We begin by addressing the causes of intergroup threats (see Figure 7.1). We argue that some types of people are more prone than others to perceive intergroup threats. Negative attitudes and related cognitions also play a role in causing intergroup threats. Likewise, prior intergroup relations and intergroup contact contribute to the perception of intergroup threats. In addition, the circumstances in which intergroup interactions occur can lead people to perceive that their group is under threat. Next, we argue that intergroup threats can lead to negative attitudes and expectations, activate cognitive biases, and reduce the effectiveness of cognitive processing. In addition, they often elicit negative emotions such as fear and anger. Perceived intergroup threats commonly lead to negative intentions and behaviors toward outgroups including aggression and discrimination. Intergroup threats can also generate retaliatory and other negative reactions from outgroups that further complicate intergroup relations. However, under some conditions intergroup threats can lead to positive outcomes such as amicable interactions and productive attempts to resolve conflicts. We end with a discussion of the implications of intergroup threats for intergroup interactions.

To encourage future research on intergroup threats, we speculate freely about their causes and consequences. We present examples of relevant research when they are available. Our presentation of these issues is shaped by our previous theoretical articles on intergroup threats, our disciplinary background (social psychology), and the fact that the overwhelming majority of the research on these topics has been conducted in Western countries.

Types of Intergroup Threats

Realistic and symbolic threats have been the focus of most of the extensive research on intergroup threats (Stephan, Ybarra, & Morrison, 2015). Realistic threats are those in which an outgroup is perceived to pose a threat of tangible harm to the ingroup. The potential types of tangible harm range from experiencing negative psychological outcomes such as frustration, embarrassment, feeling inept, being confused, or being perceived as prejudiced, to being concerned about being the target of physical harm, discrimination, economic loss, theft, destruction of personal property or being exposed to infectious diseases.

Migration is one of the most ancient traditions of humankind. From the beginning of human history, people have been moving places and crossing cultural and societal borders to search for new opportunities and a better life or to flee from war and natural disasters. Although migration is not a modern phenomenon, because of recent technological advancements in communication and transportation, moving across countries has become easier than ever before. This has resulted in a marked worldwide increase in the migrant stock over the past 50 years. In 2013, more than 230 million people were living as international immigrants, and it is projected that the migrant population will reach 400 million by 2050 (Martin, 2013).

Globally, four major migration pathways can be identified. The largest exchange (36%) occurs between regions of the Global South, that is, people from less affluent countries moving to other undeveloped regions. The second largest flow (35%) goes from the Global South to the Global North, that is, people from undeveloped regions migrating to the developed world. It is worth noting that the South to North migration continues to rise and is soon expected to become the primary trend. International relocation within the Global North is also considerable (23%), whereas North to South migration contributes only a small proportion (6%) to the global trends. Although there are no notable gender differences in migration trends, age appears to be a significant factor. Of all immigrants, 15% are younger than age 20, and approximately 74% belong to the working-age population. In sum, the majority of international immigrants (59%) currently reside in the developed world, where, according to recent statistics, migration has become the primary source of population growth, highlighting its growing significance in terms of economic prosperity and sustainable social development (UN, 2013).

At the same time, it is important to recognize that migration is not just an economic matter; it also has important implications for individuals and societies. As a result of globalization, demographic expansion, and increasing diversity within and across nations, plural societies are facing a wide range of social issues stemming from a multicultural reality, in which firsthand intercultural contact is an indispensable part of everyday experiences. Navigating these multiethnic contemporary societies has become increasingly complex and challenging, fostering public resistance to immigration and negative intergroup attitudes.

Prejudice is one of the most studied topics in social psychology, and much of this work has an explicit applied focus on prejudice reduction. Yet, we have a long road ahead in designing and rigorously assessing the effectiveness of evidence-based prejudice reduction interventions in real-world settings. In a review of prejudice reduction literature, Paluck and Green (2009) showed that less than half the studies in this area assessed the causal impact of prejudice reduction interventions, and of these, most were conducted in laboratory settings. Of the field experimental studies (11% of all studies reviewed), the vast majority were conducted in schools. Moreover, the research in this area relies heavily on student populations in Western countries (Henry, 2008). Consequently, we know little about prejudice reduction in conflict-affected countries, and in contexts of ongoing violence or its aftermath.

In the past decade, however, important theoretical and empirical developments in social psychology have started to address the nature of intergroup relations in conflict-affected countries, broadening the scope of interventions from prejudice reduction to more generally improving intergroup relations and promoting reconciliation. Premises of influential social psychological theories, such as social identity theory (see Chapter 3) or contact hypothesis (see Chapter 6), have been tested and extended to a number of ongoing and post-conflict settings including Bosnia, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and so on (e.g., Čehajić, Brown, & Castano, 2008; Kanazayire, Licata, Melotte, Dusingizemungu, & Azzi, 2014). In addition, new concepts and approaches have been developed to capture psychological and social processes unique to contexts of violent conflict (e.g., Chapter 26 in this title; Bar-Tal, 2007; Kelman, 1990; Staub, 1989, 2011). Exciting and productive research programs have emerged on intergroup reconciliation (e.g., Shnabel & Nadler, 2008; Staub, 2011), victimhood (e.g., Noor, Brown, Gonzalez, Manzi, & Lewis, 2012; Vollhardt, 2012; Vollhardt & Bilali, 2015), intergroup forgiveness (e.g., Tam et al., 2007), and intergroup apologies (e.g., Blatz, Schumann, & Ross, 2009). These new developments have practical implications, as the principles and findings can guide interventions to promote reconciliation and reduce prejudice in conflict settings (e.g., Hameiri, Bar-Tal, & Halperin, 2014).

In this chapter, we aim to contribute to this growing literature in two important ways. First, despite the important strides made, our knowledge of psychological interventions in conflict and post-conflict settings is limited and at an early stage of development.