This article analyzes the role that empathy can play in improving intergroup relations. Three types of empathy are defined: cognitive empathy and two types of emotional empathy, reactive and parallel. Research indicating that empathy causes prosocial behavior is reviewed, along with studies indicating that training can be used to increase levels of empathic skills. Intergroup relations programs that employ empathy are also reviewed. Studies of the effects of empathizing with outgroup members on prejudice are discussed, and several processes by which empathy may mediate changes in prejudice are presented (e.g., reducing perceived dissimilarity and anxiety concerning the outgroup) and cognitive dissonance. The ways in which empathy can be introduced into intergroup relations programs are discussed, along with a series of recommendations for its implementation.Granma said you couldn't love something you didn't understand. -Carter, 1976, p. 38 Prejudice has proven to be an enduring and intractable enemy. It is in the nature of prejudice, defined here as negative attitudes toward social groups, to create a psychological distance between the prejudiced person and the target of his or her prejudice. Prejudice alienates people from the targets of their hostility. As a consequence, people make little or no attempt to understand the people toward whom they are prejudiced. And their dislike for members of the other group makes it difficult for people who are prejudiced to take the perspective of members of the other group. This article is an attempt to explore the proposition that narrowing the

Intentions to perform most behaviors are more controlled by attitudes than by subjective norms. Yet subjective norms typically account for a significant, albeit small, proportion of unique variance in intentions. To explore the hypothesis that this effect can be explained largely by individual differences in the degree to which some people are apt to be more under normative control, subjects were asked to indicate their intentions, attitudes, and subjective norms toward performing 30 behaviors. Between-subjects and within-subjects analyses were performed. The within-subjects analyses revealed important differences in whether subjects are under attitudinal or normative control across the behaviors. Further, when "normatively controlled" subjects were excluded from the sample, the significant effects of subjective norms on intentions that were obtained in previous between-subjects analyses were eliminated, and the attitudinal effects were augmented. Finally, this individual difference was associated with the strength of the collective self;

Four studies were performed to test whether Ajzen's (1988, 1991) concept of perceived behavioural control is really an amalgamation of two variables, which we term 'perceived control' and 'perceived difficulty'. Perceived control refers to the extent to which people consider the performance of a behaviour to be under their voluntary control. Perceived difficulty refers to whether people consider a behaviour to be easy or difficult to perform, Findings from Studies 1 to 4 demonstrate that it is possible to perform manipulations that affect perceived control more than perceived difficulty, or that affect perceived difficulty more than perceived control. Studies 2-4 used a variety of paradigms to show that people distinguish between beliefs that are presumed to underlie perceived control and perceived difficulty. Finally, we performed a meta-analysis in Study 5 to determine whether perceived control or perceived difficulty is more important for predicting behavioural intentions and behaviours. Taken together, the findings support the distinction between perceived control and perceived difficulty, and also suggest that perceived difficulty is a better predictor of most behavioural intentions and behaviours than is perceived control.

Prior research indicates that information‐based intergroup relations programs are only moderately successful (MGregor, 1993; Stephan & Stephan, 1984). In order to explore a means of increasing the effectiveness of techniques used to change attitudes toward out groups, the current study examined the effects of giving Anglo American students information about everyday incidents of discrimination against African Americans either with or without empathy‐inducing instructions. The results indicate that reading about discrimination against African Americans or inducing empathy reduces in‐group‐out‐group bias in attitudes toward African Americans vs. Anglo Americans. The implications of these findings for models of the effects of empathy on intergroup relations are discussed.

Trafimow & Finlay (1996) employed between‐ and within‐subjects analyses to show that people, as well as behaviors, can be under attitudinal or normative control. Using both types of analyses, Finlay, Trafimow & Jones (1997) provided evidence that subjective norms are particularly important in the health domain. The current research compares health and domain general behaviors to show that people intend to perform health behaviors that have relatively large subjective norm beta weights more than those with smaller normative beta weights. Also, people whose behaviors are generally under normative control intend to perform more healthful behaviors than do people whose behaviors are generally under attitudinal control. These results were not found using domain‐general behaviors.

Three studies assessed the relative contribution of affect and cognition to determining behavioural intentions for a variety of behaviours using both between-participants and within-participants analyses. The between-participants analyses showed that affect tends to make more of a contribution than does cognition for more behaviours. However, the within-participants analyses indicated that there are strong individual differences among people. Some people are more under affective control, across behaviours, whereas other people are more under cognitive control. The most interesting finding was that, despite the potential independence of between-participants and within-participants analyses (Mischela, 1990), between-participants analyses on subsamples created from the within-participants analyses showed significant dependence. The predictive validity of affect vs. cognition depended upon whether participants were affectively or cognitively controlled.

Although a famous singer in the 1940s suggested that we should "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative," a voluminous literature on the so-called negativity effect suggests that people do exactly the opposite when they make attributions from behaviors

Two experiments applied the integrated threat theory of prejudice to predicting attitudes toward people with terminal cancer or AIDS. The measures, which were designed to assess the components of the model (realistic threats, symbolic threats, inter group anxiety, and negative stereotypes), were reliable and generally predictive of attitudes. The theory predicted attitudes toward AIDS better than attitudes toward cancer, perhaps because more people believe that they are likely to become a member of the cancer out‐group. The benefits of applying social psychological theory to health issues are discussed along with suggestions for future research.