Clannish
More Than Skin Deep: Visceral States Are Not Projected Onto Dissimilar Others
Ed O'Brien & Phoebe Ellsworth
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
What people feel shapes their perceptions of others. In the studies reported here, we examined the assimilative influence of visceral states on social judgment. Replicating prior research, we found that participants who were outside during winter overestimated the extent to which other people were bothered by cold (Study 1), and participants who ate salty snacks without water thought other people were overly bothered by thirst (Study 2). However, in both studies, this effect evaporated when participants believed that the other people under consideration held political views opposing their own. Participants who judged these dissimilar others were unaffected by their own strong visceral-drive states, a finding that highlights the power of dissimilarity in social judgment. Dissimilarity may thus represent a boundary condition for embodied cognition and inhibit an empathic understanding of shared out-group pain. Our findings reveal the need for a better understanding of how people's internal experiences influence their perceptions of the feelings and experiences of those who may hold values different from their own.
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Competitive victimhood as a response to accusations of ingroup harm doing
Daniel Sullivan et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, April 2012, Pages 778-795
Abstract:
Accusations of unjust harm doing by the ingroup threaten the group's moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (Study 3). Undergraduates engaged in competitive victimhood with university staff after their group was accused of harming staff (Study 2). Study 4 showed that the effect of accusations on competitive victimhood among high-status group members is mediated by perceived stigma reversal: the expectation that one should feel guilty for being in a high-status group. Exposure to a competitive victimhood claim on behalf of one's ingroup reduced stigma reversal and collective guilt after an accusation of ingroup harm doing (Study 5).
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The power of being heard: The benefits of ‘perspective-giving' in the context of intergroup conflict
Emile Bruneau & Rebecca Saxe
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although hundreds of dialogue programs geared towards conflict resolution are offered every year, there have been few scientific studies of their effectiveness. Across 2 studies we examined the effect of controlled, dyadic interactions on attitudes towards the ‘other' in members of groups involved in ideological conflict. Study 1 involved Mexican immigrants and White Americans in Arizona, and Study 2 involved Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East. Cross-group dyads interacted via video and text in a brief, structured, face-to-face exchange: one person was assigned to write about the difficulties of life in their society (‘perspective-giving'), and the second person was assigned to accurately summarize the statement of the first person (‘perspective-taking'). Positive changes in attitudes toward the outgroup were greater for Mexican immigrants and Palestinians after perspective-giving and for White Americans and Israelis after perspective-taking. For Palestinians, perspective-giving to an Israeli effectively changed attitudes towards Israelis, while a control condition in which they wrote an essay on the same topic without interacting had no effect on attitudes, illustrating the critical role of being heard. Thus, the effects of dialogue for conflict resolution depend on an interaction between dialogue condition and participants' group membership, which may reflect power asymmetries.
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Emotions in context: Anger causes ethnic bias but not gender bias in men but not women
Toon Kuppens et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions influence information processing because they are assumed to carry valuable information. We predict that induced anger will increase ethnic but not gender intergroup bias because anger is related to conflicts for resources, and ethnic groups typically compete for resources, whereas gender groups typically engage in relations of positive interdependence. Furthermore, we also predict that this increased ethnic intergroup bias should only be observed among men because men show more group-based reactions to intergroup conflict than women do. Two studies, with 65 and 120 participants, respectively, indeed show that anger induction increases ethnic but not gender intergroup bias and only for men. Intergroup bias was measured with an implicit measure. In Study 2, we additionally predict (and find) that fear induction does not change ethnic or gender intergroup bias because intergroup bias is a psychological preparation for collective action and fear is not associated with taking action against out-groups. We conclude that the effect of anger depends on its specific informational potential in a particular intergroup context. These results highlight that gender groups differ on a crucial point from ethnic groups and call for more attention to the effect of people's gender in intergroup relations research.
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Occupational status differences in attributions of uniquely human emotions
Tilemachos Iatridis
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Infrahumanization theory has claimed that groups tend to infrahumanize, and thus denigrate, each other irrespective of group status. However, research on infrahumanization has mainly addressed status in the context of national, ethnic, and regional divisions. The present studies tested the effect of group status in infrahumanization by employing occupational groups of varied status, both in abstract (blue-collar vs. white-collar workers) and specific terms (lawyers vs. shopkeepers, and high school teachers vs. university faculty members and primary school teachers). The results showed that only relatively higher status groups always attributed uniquely human emotions more to their in-group than to lower status out-groups. In contrast, lower status groups showed no bias in attributions of uniquely human emotions, or were biased in favour of the higher status out-group. The discussion of these results points to the role of consensus in the distribution of social value amongst groups of asymmetric status.
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A lay-statistician explanation of minority discrimination
Brent Simpson & Kimmo Eriksson
Social Science Research, May 2012, Pages 637-645
Abstract:
We outline a new explanation of discrimination against numerical minorities. In contrast to prior work that focuses on how the content of categories affects discrimination, our argument describes how the size of categories leads to discrimination. Specifically, we argue that, when comparing multiple categories, actors tend to view larger categories as more closely approximating an underlying population than smaller ones. As a result, a decision maker will tend to expect that members of a numerical majority are more likely to be what he/she is searching for, whether it is the best or worst candidate. We report the results of two studies designed to test these arguments. To demonstrate the generality of the proposed mechanism, Study 1 tested the argument in a non-social domain. Participants disproportionately favored the majority (vs. minority) category when searching for a single winning lottery ticket, and favored the minority category when the goal was to avoid a single losing ticket. Our second study supported an additional implication of the argument in a social domain: decision makers tended to rank highly qualified majority job candidates as better than equally qualified minority candidates, and relatively unqualified majority candidates as worse than equally unqualified minority candidates.
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Uri Gneezy, John List & Michael Price
NBER Working Paper, February 2012
Abstract:
Social scientists have presented evidence that suggests discrimination is ubiquitous: women, nonwhites, and the elderly have been found to be the target of discriminatory behavior across several labor and product markets. Scholars have been less successful at pinpointing the underlying motives for such discriminatory patterns. We employ a series of field experiments across several market and agent types to examine the nature and extent of discrimination. Our exploration includes examining discrimination based on gender, age, sexual orientation, race, and disability. Using data from more than 3000 individual transactions, we find evidence of discrimination in each market. Interestingly, we find that when the discriminator believes the object of discrimination is controllable, any observed discrimination is motivated by animus. When the object of discrimination is not due to choice, the evidence suggests that statistical discrimination is the underlying reason for the disparate behavior.
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Thomas Chadefaux & Dirk Helbing
PLoS ONE, February 2012
Abstract:
We model an -player repeated prisoner's dilemma in which players are given traits (e.g., height, age, wealth) which, we assume, affect their behavior. The relationship between traits and behavior is unknown to other players. We then analyze the performance of "prejudiced" strategies - strategies that draw inferences based on the observation of some or all of these traits, and extrapolate the inferred behavior to other carriers of these traits. Such prejudiced strategies have the advantage of learning rapidly, and hence of being well adapted to rapidly changing conditions that might result, for example, from high migration or birth rates. We find that they perform remarkably well, and even systematically outperform both Tit-For-Tat and ALLD when the population changes rapidly.
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Is support for multiculturalism threatened by...threat itself?
Linda Tip et al.
International Journal of Intercultural Relations, January 2012, Pages 22-30
Abstract:
Three studies investigated the effects of British majority members' perceptions of minority members' acculturation preferences and perceived identity threat on their support for multiculturalism. The following hypotheses were tested: (1) a perception that minority members want to maintain their original culture will negatively affect support for multiculturalism; (2) a perception that minority members want to adopt the British culture will positively affect support for multiculturalism; and (3) a perception that minority members desire contact with British people will positively affect support for multiculturalism. All three effects were predicted to be mediated by identity threat. Studies 1 and 2 focussed on Pakistanis as a target group, and study 3 focussed on ethnic minority members more generally. All studies yielded evidence in support of the hypotheses.
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Observer Perceptions of Moral Obligations in Groups With a History of Victimization
Ruth Warner & Nyla Branscombe
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors investigated when observers assign contemporary group members moral obligations based on their group's victimization history. In Experiment 1, Americans perceived Israelis as obligated to help Sudanese genocide victims and as guiltworthy for not helping if reminded of the Holocaust and its descendants were linked to this history. In Experiment 2, participants perceived Israelis as more obligated to help and guiltworthy for not helping when the Holocaust was presented as a unique victimization event compared with when genocide was presented as pervasive. Experiments 3 and 4 replicated the effects of Experiment 1 with Cambodians as the victimized group. Experiment 5 demonstrated that participants perceived Cambodians as having more obligations under high just world threat compared with low just world threat. Perceiving victimized groups as incurring obligations is one just world restoration method of providing meaning to collective injustice.
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Mangy Mutt or Furry Friend? Anthropomorphism Promotes Animal Welfare
Max Butterfield, Sarah Hill & Charles Lord
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent research has demonstrated that people have an affinity for non-human entities that appear to have human qualities. The current studies build on this research, examining whether anthropomorphism can be used to promote animal welfare. In Study 1 (n = 42), participants read scenarios about dogs and reported more willingness to help the ones described with anthropomorphic language relative to those described with non-anthropomorphic language. In Study 2 (n = 57), participants rated dogs on either human or canine characteristics (e.g., good listener vs. good at listing to commands). Relative to the non-anthropomorphism condition, participants in the anthropomorphism condition reported more willingness to adopt dogs from a shelter, and more support for animal rights, animal welfare, and vegetarian and vegan attitudes. Moreover, these pro-animal attitudes fully mediated the effect of the anthropomorphism manipulation on willingness to adopt the dogs.
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Peter Kahn et al.
Developmental Psychology, March 2012, Pages 303-314
Abstract:
Children will increasingly come of age with personified robots and potentially form social and even moral relationships with them. What will such relationships look like? To address this question, 90 children (9-, 12-, and 15-year-olds) initially interacted with a humanoid robot, Robovie, in 15-min sessions. Each session ended when an experimenter interrupted Robovie's turn at a game and, against Robovie's stated objections, put Robovie into a closet. Each child was then engaged in a 50-min structural-developmental interview. Results showed that during the interaction sessions, all of the children engaged in physical and verbal social behaviors with Robovie. The interview data showed that the majority of children believed that Robovie had mental states (e.g., was intelligent and had feelings) and was a social being (e.g., could be a friend, offer comfort, and be trusted with secrets). In terms of Robovie's moral standing, children believed that Robovie deserved fair treatment and should not be harmed psychologically but did not believe that Robovie was entitled to its own liberty (Robovie could be bought and sold) or civil rights (in terms of voting rights and deserving compensation for work performed). Developmentally, while more than half the 15-year-olds conceptualized Robovie as a mental, social, and partly moral other, they did so to a lesser degree than the 9- and 12-year-olds. Discussion focuses on how (a) children's social and moral relationships with future personified robots may well be substantial and meaningful and (b) personified robots of the future may emerge as a unique ontological category.
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Emile Bruneau, Nicholas Dufour & Rebecca Saxe
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 5 March 2012, Pages 717-730
Abstract:
In contexts of cultural conflict, people delegitimize the other group's perspective and lose compassion for the other group's suffering. These psychological biases have been empirically characterized in intergroup settings, but rarely in groups involved in active conflict. Similarly, the basic brain networks involved in recognizing others' narratives and misfortunes have been identified, but how these brain networks are modulated by intergroup conflict is largely untested. In the present study, we examined behavioural and neural responses in Arab, Israeli and South American participants while they considered the pain and suffering of individuals from each group. Arabs and Israelis reported feeling significantly less compassion for each other's pain and suffering (the ‘conflict outgroup'), but did not show an ingroup bias relative to South Americans (the ‘distant outgroup'). In contrast, the brain regions that respond to others' tragedies showed an ingroup bias relative to the distant outgroup but not the conflict outgroup, particularly for descriptions of emotional suffering. Over all, neural responses to conflict group members were qualitatively different from neural responses to distant group members. This is the first neuroimaging study to examine brain responses to others' suffering across both distant and conflict groups, and provides a first step towards building a foundation for the biological basis of conflict.
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Motivated social memory: Belonging needs moderate the own-group bias in face recognition
Jay Van Bavel et al.
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2012, Pages 707-713
Abstract:
The current research examines why people have superior recognition memory for own-group members compared to other-group members. In two studies, we provide evidence for one motivational mechanism underlying own-group bias - social belonging needs. In Study 1, participants assigned to a minimal group had superior memory for own-group compared to other-group faces, replicating previous research on the own-group bias. This pattern was moderated by participants' need to belong: participants who reported a higher (versus lower) need to belong showed greater own-group memory bias. In Study 2, participants who were socially excluded had superior memory for own-university compared to other-university faces than participants who were selected to work alone by a computer. Together, these studies suggest that chronic belonging needs and social exclusion motivate own-group bias.
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Witness to hypocrisy: Reacting to ingroup hypocrites in the presence of others
Amber Gaffney et al.
Social Influence, Spring 2012, Pages 98-112
Abstract:
How is one's reaction to a fellow ingroup member's normative hypocrisy affected by the presence of a third party observer who is an ingroup member or an outgroup member? To investigate this question we experimentally manipulated the group membership and reaction of a third party to ingroup hypocrisy in a 2 × 2 design (N = 78) and measured participants' personal endorsement of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors that were normative of the ingroup. As predicted from a social identity analysis of the function of norms and prototypes in social influence processes, personal endorsement of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors was strongest when an outgroup member remarked negatively on the hypocrisy, and weakest when an outgroup member did not appear to notice the hypocrisy.
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Implicit measures of the stereotype content associated with disability
Odile Rohmer & Eva Louvet
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research aimed to show that the mixed stereotype content of persons with disability observed at an explicit level does not manifest itself using implicit measures. Two experimental studies were conducted to analyse the stereotype content of persons with a disability at the implicit level. The procedure used in this study was the concept priming paradigm. Furthermore, Study 2 also included an explicit measure. Results show important discrepancies between implicit and explicit measures. At an explicit level, previous work supporting the mixed stereotype content of persons with disability was replicated: participants judged these persons as warmer but less competent than persons without a disability. At an implicit level, a quite different pattern of results emerged: persons with a disability were associated not only with less competence than persons without disability, but also with less warmth. These findings suggest that the mixed pattern between warmth and competence generally observed at an explicit level may be based on societal pressures against prejudice and discrimination.
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Intergroup Contact Can Undermine Disadvantaged Group Members' Attributions to Discrimination
Tamar Saguy & Lily Chernyak-Hai
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, May 2012, Pages 714-720
Abstract:
In the current research we investigated social settings through which attributions to discrimination are undermined. Drawing on work linking intergroup contact to perceptions of inequality, we tested the prediction that experiences of commonality-focused contact would reduce disadvantaged group members' tendency to attribute negative treatment of fellow group members to discrimination. In Study 1 students were randomly assigned to either a commonality-focused, differences-focused, or no-contact condition, ostensibly with a student from a higher status university. Commonality-focused interactions led participants to view the status hierarchy as more legitimate, and consequently, to be less likely to attribute negative treatment to discrimination. In Study 2 this effect was replicated among Ethiopian-Jews (a disadvantaged minority in Israel) who reported the amount of commonality-focused contact they experience with non-Ethiopian Jews. Theoretical and practical implications regarding intergroup contact and perceptions of inequality are discussed.
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Bart Duriez, Joke Meeus & Maarten Vansteenkiste
Journal of Research in Personality, April 2012, Pages 164-172
Abstract:
Whereas an individual differences perspective recently pointed to the importance of a relative extrinsic to intrinsic value orientation in the prediction of outgroup attitudes, the intergroup relations perspective stresses the importance of threat. This study investigates the interplay of both perspectives. A scenario study among high-school students showed that only people who attach greater relative importance to extrinsic values react with a negative attitude towards an outgroup that is portrayed as threatening. A longitudinal study among university students then showed that people with a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation are not only more likely to react to threat but also to perceive threat. Specifically, cross-lagged analyses showed that a relatively greater extrinsic value orientation predicted over-time increases in threat perceptions.
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I Undervalue You but I Need You: The Dissociation of Attitude and Memory Toward In-Group Members
Ke Zhao et al.
PLoS ONE, March 2012
Abstract:
In the present study, the in-group bias or in-group derogation among mainland Chinese was investigated through a rating task and a recognition test. In two experiments, participants from two universities with similar ranks rated novel faces or names and then had a recognition test. Half of the faces or names were labeled as participants' own university and the other half were labeled as their counterpart. Results showed that, for either faces or names, rating scores for out-group members were consistently higher than those for in-group members, whereas the recognition accuracy showed just the opposite. These results indicated that the attitude and memory for group-relevant information might be dissociated among Mainland Chinese.
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Max Weisbuch & Kristin Pauker
Social Issues and Policy Review, December 2011, Pages 257-291
Abstract:
Social and policy interventions over the last half-century have achieved laudable reductions in blatant discrimination. Yet members of devalued social groups continue to face subtle discrimination. In this article, we argue that decades of antidiscrimination interventions have failed to eliminate intergroup bias because such bias is contagious. We present a model of bias contagion in which intergroup bias is subtly communicated through nonverbal behavior. Exposure to such nonverbal bias "infects" observers with intergroup bias. The model we present details two means by which nonverbal bias can be expressed - either as a veridical index of intergroup bias or as a symptom of worry about appearing biased. Exposure to this nonverbal bias can increase perceivers' own intergroup biases through processes of implicit learning, informational influence, and normative influence. We identify critical moderators that may interfere with these processes and consequently propose several social and educational interventions based on these moderators.
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Outgroup Helping as a Tool to Communicate Ingroup Warmth
Esther van Leeuwen & Susanne Täuber
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The authors extend previous research on the effects of metastereotype activation on outgroup helping by examining in more detail the role of group impression management motives and by studying direct helping (i.e., helping the outgroup believed to hold a negative view of the ingroup). Data from three experiments provided full support for the communicative nature of direct outgroup helping by demonstrating that outgroup helping in response to a negative metastereotype was predicted by participants' concern for the image of their ingroup, but not by their self-image concerns. Moreover, group image concerns predicted outgroup helping but not ingroup helping and predicted outgroup helping only when a negative metastereotype was activated, compared with a positive metastereotype, or a (negative or positive) autostereotype. The results also ruled out an alternative explanation in terms of denying the self-relevance of the metastereotype.