Psychological interventions to reduce support for ingroup harmdoing in intergroup contexts

This thesis aimed to develop and empirically test psychological interventions to reduce support for ingroup harmdoing towards outgroups in two contexts where harmdoing is widespread and often accepted at the societal level: harm to animals in factory farming and harm in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We focused on the role of morality in evaluations of harm and explored leveraging moral identity, moral reasoning, and moral emotions to reduce support for ingroup-committed harm. The first intervention aimed to reduce moral identity threat by morally absolving (vs. blaming) participants when providing information about ingroup harmdoing. We tested this in the context of harm to animals and found that raising awareness of animal suffering in factory farms while absolving (vs. blaming) participants reduced defensiveness and led to more positive attitudes and intentions towards harm reduction. The next interventions were tested in the context of intractable conflict. The second intervention used analogical reasoning to encourage more objective evaluation of ingroup harmdoing, specifically collective punishment. We found that considering a remote but similar case of collective punishment led to harsher moral judgments of ingroup collective punishment. The third intervention explored the effects of the emotional experience of moral elevation (vs. amusement), and found that moral elevation increased moral concern for others and support for humanitarian policies to protect the outgroup from harm. These interventions provide avenues for encouraging critical reflection on ingroup harmdoing and reducing support for harmful ingroup behavior.