• Embracing the “other”
  • Building reflective minds
  • Offsetting hate and extremism
  • Emile Bruneau
  • Overcoming prejudice
  • Facing history
  • Breaking the Silence
  • Reducing Stereotype Threat
Samuel Gaertner, Ph.D.
Director, Social Psychology Graduate Program
U. of Delaware
Intergroup relations: 
reducing prejudice and discrimination

Dr. Gaertner's research is concerned with intergroup relations, and in particular how intergroup bias and conflict can be reduced. His current laboratory and field work explores the possibility that inducing the members of two groups to conceive of themselves as a single, more inclusive social entity will harness cognitive and motivational processes that encourage more harmonious intergroup relations. He is currently examining this perspective in intergroup contexts such as corporate mergers, blended families, and desegregated schools.

Dr. Gaertner is also studying racism among "well-intentioned" people to reveal how their racial attitudes are expressed in subtle, indirect and rationalizable ways. This work won the Gordon Allport intergroup relations prize and his current research is attempting to learn if such subtle forms of racism can be eliminated by inducing an enhanced sense of partnership or common ingroup identity during interracial interactions. This work has been recognized by the 1986 and 1998 Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize (together with John Dovidio, University of Connecticut) awarded by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9 of the American Psychological Association). Also, in 2004 this work was awarded the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award (with John F. Dovidio) by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (Division 9 of the American Psychological Association.
Linda R. Tropp, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor
U. of Mass. Amherst
Director:
Psychology of Peace and Violence Program

Linda R. Tropp is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research concerns how members of different groups approach and experience contact with each other, and how group differences in power or status affect views of and expectations for cross-group relations. She also studies how group memberships can be important aspects of the self, and how individuals' identities as group members can influence their feelings about themselves, their groups, their social experiences, and their feelings toward members of other groups. She received the Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues for her research on intergroup contact, the Erik Erikson Early Career Award for distinguished research contributions from the International Society of Political Psychology, and the McKeachie Early Career Teaching Award from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology. Dr. Tropp is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, and she currently serves on the editorial boards of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Emile Bruneau
Cognitive neuroscientist, MIT, has spent years studying intractable conflicts around the world.

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  • Intergroup Conflict
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Functional Neuroimaging (fMRI)
  • Empathy
  • Dehumanization
My research interests are directly influenced by a number of formative experiences I had overseas. Mostly through serendipity, I found myself in a number of interesting places and some truly interesting times: I spent a year in South Africa doing volunteer work as that country transitioned from Apartheid to Democracy, I was in Sri Lanka visiting friends during one of the largest Tamil Tiger strikes in that country’s history, and I volunteered at a conflict resolution camp in Ireland during “The Troubles”. What really struck me about these conflicts was that despite the vast differences between them (in language, ethnicity, history), they all seemed to be driven by very similar psychological forces: fear, dehumanization, distorted interpretation of events. While there are a number of conflict resolution interventions aimed directly at circumventing these psychological barriers to peace, what troubled me was that after 50 years of implementing these programs, we have very little idea about what types of interventions work, which don’t, and for whom. These experiences set the seeds of my current research program: to characterize the psychological and cognitive underpinnings of inter-group conflict, and critically evaluate efforts to circumvent or even transcend these processes.