Journal article
Identity fusion can foster intergroup trust and willingness to cooperate
- Abstract:
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Identity fusion – a construct that captures extreme ingroup commitment – has traditionally been associated with intergroup violence. However, recent research suggests that identity fusion is also associated with feelings of security that promote intergroup interactions. This apparent contradiction was explored by examining moderators of the relationship between identity fusion and positive intergroup relations across two studies. Study 1, a pre-registered study on intergroup relations in the turbulent Bangsamoro region of the Philippines (N = 816), found that identity fusion was positively associated with outgroup trust when the outgroup was perceived positively. Study 2 (N = 1576) replicated these results across Gambia (n = 236), Pakistan (n = 505), Tanzania (n = 337), and Uganda (n = 498), while also finding that perceptions of the relationship itself (e.g., whether cooperation was judged beneficial to the ingroup) similarly moderated the effect of identity fusion on willingness to cooperate. These results suggest that identity fusion can have positive consequences for intergroup relations, depending on contextual perceptions.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.5MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s44271-025-00303-9
Authors
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/0472cxd90
- Grant:
- 694986
- Programme:
- Horizon 2020
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/037wke960
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Communications Psychology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 3
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 124
- Publication date:
- 2025-08-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-07-28
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2731-9121
- ISSN:
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2731-9121
- Language:
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English
- Pubs id:
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2275617
- Local pid:
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pubs:2275617
- Deposit date:
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2025-08-07
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Klein et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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