Be the Change You Want to See: Intergroup Helping Reduces InGroup Bias and Facilitates OutGroup Bias in Trading Behaviors

This research investigated how an instance of intergroup helping affects intergroup attitudes and cooperative behavior. Past research demonstrates that helping behavior elicits prosociality, both reciprocally and toward uninvolved third parties. However, much of this research has either ignored group membership altogether or has assumed a shared group identity between benefactor and beneficiary. Where intergroup helping has been directly evaluated, more negative intergroup attitudes are often observed. The current study examined the effects of an instance of intergroup helping, introduced during a card game, on the beneficiary’s attitudes of closeness and cooperative trading behavior as well as those of ingroup and outgroup witnesses to the helping act. Results from this well-powered study (N = 1,249) indicate that although intergroup helping is less likely to impact feelings of closeness, intergroup cooperative trading increases for both the beneficiary and the intergroup observers. These findings add to the understanding of how helping impacts intergroup relations.