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In 2022, Europe experienced unprecedented citizen mobilizations to help Ukrainian refugees. Based on two parallel lines of scholarship, we examined individual prosocial dispositions and superordinate identities related to intentions to help Ukrainians. Employing a French-speaking student sample in Belgium (N = 374), in Study 1, we showed that dis- positional prosociality and European identification were both positively related to intentions to help Ukrainians. An interac- tion qualified these main effects, so that highly prosocial European identifiers were particularly willing to help. With a nationwide quota sample of the French-speaking population in Belgium (N = 371), in Study 2, we identified two processes mediating the relationship of dispositional prosociality and European identification with intentions to help Ukrainians. On the one hand, dispositional prosociality was positively related to empathy with Ukrainians, which in turn predicted participants' helping intentions. On the other hand, European identification was positively related to both empathy and identity fusion with Ukrainians, which further predicted participants' helping intentions. Overall, these findings suggest that individual prosocial dispositions and superordinate identities represent two cumulative pathways to intergroup helping. Concluding, we discuss common and specific processes related to intentions to help Ukrainians, compared with other refugee groups.
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Politi et al. (2022) studied this question.