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People’s proclivity for favoring their ingroups over outgroups has negative consequences for individuals, groups, and societies. Social psychologists have explored a variety of techniques to reduce these intergroup biases. Emerging research suggests that mindfulness may be effective for this purpose. Mindfulness is defined as present-moment attention and awareness with an accepting attitude, and it is often cultivated through meditation. Our systematic review of the mindfulness-intergroup literature suggests that, across the heterogeneity of paradigms, mindfulness attenuates intergroup bias. Supporting this supposition, for all studies in the current review, regardless of operationalization of mindfulness (i.e., mindfulness-based intervention, brief mindfulness induction, expert meditators, dispositional mindfulness), the overall effect size was g = +.29 ( k-number of studies = 36; 95% CI [0.20, 0.39]; Z = 5.94, p < .0001), suggesting a small but significant effect of mindfulness on improved levels of intergroup bias. In the current work, we review the eligible studies and their findings in detail and conclude by discussing critical issues and implications for future research.

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Three studies examined whether Democrats and Republicans expressed favoritism toward an ingroup political candidate, even when the candidates were presented as positive and bipartisan. Participants rated electability and traits, after reading party consistent (Passage 1) and positive, bipartisan information (Passage 2). Conservatism (Studies 1-3), the cognitive reflection test (Studies 2-3), and ingroup loyalty (Study 3) were examined. Republicans showed initially higher favoritism after the first passage. Both Republicans and Democrats showed lower ingroup favoritism after reading the second passage, although Republicans continued to show more favoritism than Democrats in some circumstances. Conservatism was associated with greater favorability toward the Republican candidate. Our results showed no evidence that CRT or ingroup loyalty mediated these associations. | 427PRICE-BLACKSHEAR Et AL. strongly subscribed to the ideology of their group, we expect that they will be more likely to indicate their ingroup candidate is more electable than their outgroup candidate and rate the their ingroup candidate's traits as more positive than the outgroup candidate, when candidates are described as party consistent. Importantly, as we explain in the following subsections, we subsequently described the same political candidates with information that was party neutral and positive to examine which mechanisms may reduce ingroup favoritism.

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