Abstract

How do stances on public policies aimed at ethnic conflict resolution affect intergroup trust? Building on theories of prosociality, social identity, and intergroup bias, we expect redistributive policy preferences meant to resolve ethnic conflict to replace ethnicity as the main barrier to intergroup trust because their zero-sum nature raises intergroup threat. We test our expectations in Chile's ongoing indigenous/nonindigenous conflict using behavioral trust games embedded in an online nationally representative quota survey (n = 1105). Results align with our expectation. Namely, a lack of shared ethnic identity between nonindigenous Chileans and indigenous Mapuche does not lower intergroup trust. However, shared stances on a policy that would raise taxes to spur development in indigenous communities do increase intergroup trust discrimination. We probe the psychological mechanism-meaningful policy-based group identities-by testing whether trustor indigenous identification and trustor political ideology moderate the effect of trustee policy stances on intergroup trust. Results are consistent with our assumption that shared policy stances can, indeed, form the basis of a meaningful social identity. Hence the very policies meant to end intergroup conflict could potentially perpetuate or redirect it to institutional channels of representation.