Social and Intergroup Psychology

Intergroup psychology examines how people think, feel, and behave toward others based on group membership — whether defined by race, class, nationality, religion, or any number of social categories. Researchers in this space investigate how identities form and harden, how stereotypes operate below conscious awareness, how contact between groups can reduce prejudice (and when it fails to), and how systems of power shape what people perceive as fair or natural. A central puzzle is why individuals often defend arrangements that disadvantage them — a phenomenon known as system justification — and whether moral reasoning can override it. Active work is pushing on how interventions scale beyond controlled settings, and whether changing implicit associations actually translates into changed behavior in the real world.

Works

68,335

Total citations

2,657,947

Keywords

Intergroup ContactSocial IdentityImplicit BiasStereotype ThreatPrejudice ReductionPower Dynamics