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This week's speaker is Matthew Kugler, who holds a PhD in psychology and social policy from Princeton University and is currently a graduate student in the law school at the University of Chicago

Whom can I trust? A cooperative contingencies model of strategic intergroup bias   One function of groups is to facilitate trust, and therefore cooperation, between group members. The Cooperative Contingencies Model posits this cooperation-facilitating function of groups gives decision-makers a powerful instrumental incentive to preferentially coordinate with ingroup (rather than outgroup) members, helping perpetuate existing group disparities. Because this preference is driven by a desire for successful coordination rather than anti-outgroup attitudes, it exists even among individuals who have egalitarian beliefs.  The strength of this incentive should be contingent, however, on the full set of cooperative requirements (how much people need to cooperate) and cooperative affordances (the mechanisms available to facilitate cooperation) perceived in a given context.  We tested the hypothesis that one particular alternate affordance – effective social institutions (e.g., rule of law) – can attenuate intergroup affiliative biases by providing another mechanism allowing for trust across group boundaries.