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

Tal Moran; Adi Amit; Dror Butbul

doi:10.1177/19485506261428949

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

Tal Moran
, Adi Amit
, Dror Butbul

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

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.

Original language	English
Journal	Social Psychological and Personality Science
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506261428949
State	Accepted/In press - 2026

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

Keywords

conflict
ingroup favoritism
moral exemplars
moral judgment

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10.1177/19485506261428949

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

abstract = "Learning about outgroup individuals who risked their lives to save members of one{\textquoteright}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.",

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author = "Tal Moran and Adi Amit and Dror Butbul",

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year = "2026",

doi = "10.1177/19485506261428949",

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N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

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

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Keywords

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