The Enduring Effect of Exposure to Moral Exemplars During Active Intergroup Tensions: Evidence From Groups Within Israel

Learning about outgroup individuals who risked their lives to save members of one’s ingroup can improve intergroup relations. However, previous studies have primarily focused on historical conflicts with clear intergroup boundaries, relied solely on self-report measures, and lacked assessments of durable effects. A preregistered preliminary experiment and a preregistered main experiment tested whether exposure to moral exemplars would improve the attitudes of Jewish citizens of Israel toward Arab citizens of Israel (their outgroup) following the October 7 attacks. Jewish Israeli participants who read true stories of outgroup (vs. ingroup) heroic acts showed more positive outgroup evaluation and reduced ingroup favoritism. In the main experiment, these effects persisted 1 week later and were accompanied by an effect on an indirect measure (Single-Target IAT) of outgroup morality immediately following the intervention. The results support the effectiveness and durability of the moral exemplar approach in improving outgroup evaluations.