Intergroup attribution bias in the context of extreme intergroup conﬂict Amarina Ariyanto, 1 Matthew J. Hornsey 2 and Cindy Gallois 2 1 School of Social Psychology, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia; and 2 School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Limited research has examined attributional biases in the context of extreme intergroup conﬂict, and the research that does exist contains methodological shortcomings. To remedy this, 282 Indonesians read a newspaper article describing a violent incident in Ambon. Christians (but not Muslims) used stronger situational attributions for violent ingroup acts than for violent outgroup acts. In contrast, both Muslims and Christians used stronger dispositional attributions for violent outgroup acts than for violent ingroup acts. This latter tendency emerged independently of who was described in the article as the perpetrators of the violence. Implications for our understanding of intergroup conﬂict are discussed. Key words: intergroup attribution bias, intergroup conﬂict. Intergroup attribution bias in the context of extreme intergroup conﬂict Attributions (causal explanations for behaviour) assist people to make sense of the world, to guide their own behaviour, and to predict events. However, there is consid- erable evidence that attributions regarding group behaviour are biased in favour of the ingroup and at the expense of the outgroup (Taylor & Jaggi, 1974; Stephan, 1977; Pettigrew, 1979; Lau & Russell, 1980; Hewstone & Ward, 1985; Hewstone, 1990; Islam & Hewstone, 1993). The intergroup attribution bias refers to people’s tendency to attribute posi- tive ingroup behaviours to internal causes and negative ingroup behaviours to external causes. Conversely, positive outgroup behaviours are disproportionately likely to be attributed to external causes, and negative outgroup behav- iours are disproportionately likely to be attributed to inter- nal causes. This phenomenon can be explained by social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), which proposes that people’s self-concept is based, in part, on their group iden- tities. As a result, people have a motivation to attribute events in a way that reﬂects positively on the ingroup and negatively on rival outgroups. This biased attributional pattern might help sustain a positive collective self-concept, but also carries with it the potential to legitimize prejudice and maintain intergroup conﬂict. Most attribution studies have been conducted in the context of intergroup relations characterized by rivalry, rather than intense intergroup competition. Furthermore, the negative behaviours being assessed typically have been related to rather mild violations of social norms (e.g. rude- ness, dishonesty, apathy) rather than to extreme acts (e.g. acts of war). As a result, relatively little is known about how the intergroup attribution bias might play out in the context of extreme intergroup behaviour. This is a problem because the psychological processes underpinning extreme inter- group conﬂict are qualitatively different from those govern- ing more benign intergroup relations: The intergroup context is more salient, the socio-structural relations between the groups are more contested, the intergroup emotions are more visceral, the levels of mistrust between the groups substantially higher, and the consequences of intergroup bias (potentially) more destructive. It seems rea- sonable, then, to examine the extent to which biases that have been demonstrated in more benign contexts can be replicated in the context of intense intergroup conﬂict (see also Hornsey, 2005). Indeed, some theorists have specu- lated that the intergroup attribution bias would be stronger in the context of groups that have been involved in a history of conﬂict (e.g. Pettigrew, 1979). To our knowledge, only three studies have examined intergroup attribution bias in relation to extreme intergroup conﬂict. The ﬁrst was a study by Rosenberg and Wolsfeld (1977), in which Arab and Israeli participants were asked to make attributions regarding major news events. The results for the immoral acts are particularly relevant to the current paper. For Arabs, the immoral act was in relation to Syria refusing the Red Cross access to Israeli prisoners for some time after the October war. For Israelis, the immoral act Correspondence: Matthew Hornsey, School of Psychology, Uni- versity of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072 Qld, Australia. Email: m.hornsey@uq.edu.au This research was conducted as part of the ﬁrst author’s PhD research. Received 15 May 2008; accepted 4 March 2009. Asian Journal of Social Psychology © 2009 The Authors © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd with the Asian Association of Social Psychology and the Japanese Group Dynamics Association Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2009), 12, 293–299 DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-839X.2009.01292.x