ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how cognitive and affective experiences, often apparently unrelated to intergroup interaction, can directly and indirectly facilitate more inclusive, superordinate representations and reduce intergroup bias. It focuses on incidental cognitive and affective experiences. It explores how cognitive priming of ingroups and outgroups can automatically activate favorable or unfavorable evaluative biases. It reports research that investigate how affect, specifically incidental positive affect, can shape intergroup attitudes. The chapter explores how more general priming with positive affect can influence social categorization and intergroup attitudes. The Common Ingroup Identity Model, was to examine the mediating role of superordinate group representations for more favorable attitudes toward outgroup members and for the reduction of intergroup bias. The contemporary and historical relations between groups and the stereotypicality of individual group members can moderate the impact of positive affect on the ways people process information, the nature of group representations, and ultimately the favorability of intergroup attitudes.
