ABSTRACT
The overarching theoretical rationale behind interventions designed to promote empathy and perspective taking in intergroup contexts is that fostering cognitive and affective merging of self and other reduces prejudice. Findings from laboratory and field research suggest that such interventions can be effective when they involve indirect approaches or are administered to children, and that direct approaches can be effective when they are delivered in low-threat contexts in which individuals do not feel personally identifiable to outgroup members. However, when it is likely that individuals’ focus on potential negative evaluation by outgroup members will be enhanced, as when the intervention primes criticisms of the ingroup or the intergroup relationship is hostile, such interventions can backfire. Big open questions center on how – and indeed whether – empathy and perspective-taking interventions can be made effective in contexts characterized by high intergroup conflict and prejudice, the mechanisms by which strategies that indirectly facilitate empathy and perspective taking exert their positive effects, and how to enhance benefits to targets of empathy.
