Intergroup bias: status, differentiation, and a common in-group identity.

The present research examined factors that moderate and mediate the reduction of intergroup bias. Two 3-person laboratory groups, which had first worked separately on a task, were informed prior to intergroup contact that (a) the groups were equal or unequal in status based on their task performance, and (b) they had been working on the same or on different task dimensions. Consistent with M. Hewstone and R. J. Brown's (1986) mutual intergroup differentiation model, bias was eliminated when the groups' areas of expertise were differentiated and equally valued (i.e., in the equal status-different dimensions conditions). Moreover, as expected on the basis of the common in-group identity model, more inclusive group representations mediated this effect. The findings of the present research thus offer a theoretical integration that can suggest interventions to facilitate positive intergroup contact.

Extending the Benefits of Recategorization: Evaluations, Self-Disclosure, and Helping

The Common Ingroup Identity Model proposes that if members of different groups conceive of themselves more as a single group rather than as two separate groups, intergroup bias will be reduced through processes involving pro-ingroup favoritism. The present research extended work on this model by investigating the effects of recategorization on intergroup behavior, specifically helping and self-disclosure, as well as evaluations. Participants first worked as members of two three-person groups, and then the two groups interacted under conditions designed to enhance a two-group representation or recategorization with an inclusive one-group representation. As expected, the manipulation of the intergroup contact situation that created stronger impressions of one group reduced intergroup bias in evaluations, self-disclosure, and helping. Furthermore, ratings of the extent to which the six participants felt like one group mediated the reduction in bias, particularly for evaluative bias. Conditions facilitating the generalization of the benefits of recategorization to group members not present and to other groups are considered.

How Do Logical Inference Rules Help Construct Social Mental Models?

Starting from recent approaches in mental model research, it is argued that (1) logical inference rules are used in order to construct mental cliques from learned sentiment relations, and (2) social context cues (operationalized as primes) play a crucial role in activating such rules. Transitivity and antitransitivity are taken as examples, and are shown as core constituents of such models. In a first experiment, priming was achieved by announcing the sorting of fictitious persons in either two or three cliques. Thirty-one subjects studied eight sets of sentiment relations among these persons that either did or did not satisfy their primed clique expectations. They showed longer study times and more requests for additional information in the case of inconsistent fits between prime and set. Their sorting solutions also showed clear priming effects. A second experiment (n = 30) showed that when undergoing a recognition test after seeing the relation sets, subjects tended to confuse model-consistent distractors with information they had actually seen. In a third experiment (n = 30) the results from Experiment 1 were replicated using more realistic learning materials.