Recent work developing interventions designed to reduce intergroup bias has sometimes yielded disparate findings. We tested whether the varying effectiveness of such interventions may have a motivational basis. In two experiments we examined whether differential ingroup identification moderated the effectiveness of a differentiation-reducing intervention strategy. In Experiment 1, thinking of characteristics shared between the ingroup and outgroup reduced ingroup favoritism to a greater extent for lower identifiers than for higher identifiers. In Experiment 2 we replicated this finding with different target groups and evaluative measures while controlling for information load. We discuss the implications of this work for developing social psychological models of bias-reduction.
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