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Essentialist beliefs affect children’s outgroup empathy, attitudes and prosocial behaviours in a setting of intergroup conflict
Date Issued
February 2021
Date Available
13T13:13:28Z January 2021
Abstract
Empathy for salient outgroups can promote positive intergroup attitudes and prosocial behaviours. Less is known about which factors may promote empathy, particularly among children, in contexts of intergroup conflict. Empathy may depend on underlying cognitions, such as social essentialist beliefs, that is, believing that certain social categories have an underlying essence that causes members to share observable and non-observable properties. This study explored the influence of essentialist beliefs about ethno-religious categories on outgroup-directed empathy, attitudes, and prosocial behaviours of children living in Northern Ireland (N=88; M=7.09, SD=1.47 years old). Bootstrapped chain mediation found that lower essentialist beliefs predicted greater outgroup-directed empathy, which was positively related to outgroup attitudes, which in turn, predicted more outgroup prosocial behaviours. The findings highlight the importance of essentialist beliefs as an underlying factor promoting empathy, with links to prosocial behaviours in settings of intergroup conflict. The intervention implications are discussed.
Other Sponsorship
Queen’s University Belfast School of Psychology
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Wiley
Journal
International Journal of Psychology
Volume
56
Issue
1
Start Page
151
End Page
156
Copyright (Published Version)
2020 International Union of Psychological Science
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0020-7594
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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ODriscoll et al PURE Essentialism and intergroup relations.docx
Size
63.11 KB
Format
Owning collection
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13
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