Friction between different racial and ethnic groups is a story as old as time; World War II saw America's unjust internment of Japanese-Americans, and more recently tensions are once again rising – sometimes violently – between American police and African-Americans. But why are we condemned to always seek conflict with our neighbors? In large part, a lack of race-based trust – or rather, race-based distrust – is to blame. This mistrust is rooted in human social categorization: people differentiate others into different social groups. By creating ingroups and outgroups, we distinguish each group by creating group boundaries based on perceived characteristics. In turn, group membership guarantees a social identity, a sense of belonging. Because of the human tendency to perceive ourselves, and therefore our ingroups, in a positive light, people tend to treat ingroup members more positively than outgroup members: we call this the ingroup positivity bias . Trust is defined as the degree of positivity – how laudable, hopeful, or good – one expects from another's intentions and behavior. In intergroup contexts such as those of racial conflict, intergroup trust is low due to the low positivity received and expressed between ingroup and outgroup members. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay When faced with social phenomena, it is also instinctive for people to do amateur science to justify them. These faulty explanations, or secular theories, are a person's belief whether specific attributes, such as race, are tied to malleable characteristics and assuming that associations are simple social constructions versus fixed characteristics and assuming that associations are essential to people belonging to that domain. Everyone has cognitive availability for both beliefs; the level of accessibility in a given individual or situation determines the belief accessed. This accessibility of beliefs is individually different, depending on many factors such as one's developmental experiences, social structure and culture, and the ability of the belief to explain an observed pattern of things. One's secular theory of race influences the perceptions and attitudes of others and likely plays a vital role in the formation of intergroup trust. As a result, cooperation is then catalyzed between groups and constructiveness in conflict resolutions. Kung et al. (2018) conducted a study aimed at improving intergroup situations by attempting to establish a relationship between secular race theory and intergroup trust. They hypothesized that, compared to essentialist beliefs, social constructionist beliefs about race may increase trust toward racial outgroups in intergroup contexts based on two arguments. First, people who hold these beliefs are associated with a lower tendency to racially categorize people because of their perception that racial boundaries are malleable. The ingroup bias and lower willingness to confer positivity on outgroup members that we had seen before are negated by these supporters' more positive attitude toward intergroup interactions, resulting in a better ability to extend intergroup trust. Second, these supporters had been associated with a stronger motivation to connect with outgroups; this is a known precursor to trust, as relationships are only built if the other person is believed to have.