The effect of praise from peers on empathy and political inclusion towards racial or ethnic outgroups

Outgroup bias is well documented and pernicious, manifesting in negative attitudes and behaviour towards outgroups. Addressing it is a first-order priority for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programmes, as well as society more generally. Empathy—taking the perspective and understanding the experiences of others—holds promise for attenuating outgroup bias, but existing methods are expensive. Through seven pilots, we develop a low-cost, easily scalable ‘peer praise’ intervention that encourages empathy. In this report, we experimentally test (N = 5,303) whether our intervention promotes empathy and inclusive behaviour/attitudes among White US respondents towards Black and Latino/a Americans, a context where outgroup bias is particularly durable. We measure costly choices to engage in empathy, test whether peer praise promotes political (an index of letter writing and donations) and attitudinal (an index of social distance and thermometer ratings) inclusion, and, in a separate experiment (N = 4,404), test whether praise specifically from co-partisans can also promote inclusion. We find that peer praise for empathy neither motivates White participants to engage in empathy for racial outgroups, nor changes their attitudes or self-reported empathy towards outgroups. However, peer praise for empathy does encourage politically inclusive behaviour towards racial outgroups in the form of writing letters on behalf of racial equality to the government. Other registered analyses show that peer praise for empathy can change attitudes both in the short term (Wave 1) and over time (in our longitudinal Wave 2) but only for certain subgroups. Overall, this study provides an examination of a treatment to promote outgroup empathy. That treatment is demonstrated to be effective for behavioural outcomes related to political inclusion across all respondents and can even change attitudes, although only for some demographics. Broadly, our study suggests the importance of targeting empathy-promoting interventions towards receptive groups as well as the difficulty in promoting outgroup empathy, particularly when group identity is highlighted. Longitudinal US experiments show that peer praise for empathy can promote politically inclusive behaviour towards racial/ethnic outgroups. Varying effects among subgroups suggest the value of targeted rather than uniform approaches.