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In three studies, we examined how racial/ethnic majority (i.e., White) and non-Indigenous minority participants in Canada responded to reparations for Indigenous peoples in Canada. Our goal was to understand whether and why there may be intraminority solidarity in this context. In Study 1, with a large, national survey (N = 1,947), we examined the extent to which participants agreed the government should be responsible for addressing human rights violations committed by previous governments as well as whether the government has done enough to address the wrongs committed against Indigenous peoples in Canada. With a sample of undergraduate students in Study 2 (N = 144) and another community sample in Study 3 (N = 233), we examined possible mediators of the relationship between ethnic status and support for reparations. Taken together, the results of three studies suggest that, compared to White majority Canadians, non-Indigenous minority Canadians were more supportive of providing reparations to Indigenous peoples through a complex chain of collective victimhood, inclusive victim consciousness, continued victim suffering, and solidarity.

The pursuit of intergroup reconciliation often includes efforts to educate with the goal of fostering empathy. Yet little empirical evidence demonstrates whether and why greater knowledge might increase empathy. In this research, we investigated whether more critical historical knowledge about a harmed outgroup increases empathy for them, and we explored whether perceptions of privity, the extent to which a past harm continues to cause suffering today, account for this relationship. We tested these hypotheses in the context of non‐Indigenous Canadians' knowledge of Indian Residential Schools and attitudes about Indigenous Peoples across eight laboratory studies with 1242 non‐Indigenous undergraduate students at two Canadian universities. In two studies, participants completed a multiple‐choice measure of knowledge. In the remaining studies, we experimentally varied knowledge through brief educational interventions. All studies included measures of empathy, and five studies included measures of privity. Internal meta‐analyses indicated that participants with higher levels of critical historical knowledge felt more empathy for the outgroup because they could better see how past intergroup harms continue to cause suffering today. We discuss implications for social and political psychological theory and designing education for reconciliation interventions in Canada and elsewhere.

Transitions to novel achievement settings are often accompanied by unfamiliar learning conditions and unanticipated failure that undermine how individuals adapt to such situations. For first‐year students, the transition to college is imbued with adverse learning conditions that can result in decreased motivation and academic performance. This study examined the efficacy of a motivation‐enhancing treatment, attributional retraining (AR), to assist students who are at risk because of a high‐failure avoidance orientation (tendency to maintain self‐worth by avoiding failure). For high‐ (but not low) failure avoidance students, AR fostered an adaptive psychological mindset (course grade expectations, judgments of course responsibility) and better academic performance (course grade, grade point average). Findings suggest the utility of AR to offset the negative effects of a high‐failure avoidance self‐worth orientation.