The Institute for InterGroup Understanding exists to help create intergroup Peace. We need to intellectually overcome our more negative and damaging instinctive behaviors. We instinctively divide the world into "Us" and "Them" — and we react very differently to "Us" versus how we react to "Them." We protect, defend, accept, and support “Us” — and we dislike, distrust, attack, and damage “Them.”

Those instincts have great power in shaping our lives. They have had paramount impact on our history — causing us to 'become who we are' and 'do what we do,' in ways we rarely understand. Understanding those instincts gives us great power over them. We need that power over those instincts, and we need it now, to create Peace in our world.