Effects of group identity on ingroup bias and intergroup stereotyping

Abstract

This research investigated the effects of group identity on ingroup bias and intergroup stereotyping in the perception of artificial social groups. The group identity was considered through its affiliative parameters (group membership and ingroup assimilation with majority or minority), as well as its motivational component (level of subjective importance of information about the target groups). Ingroup bias was treated via prototypicality (i.e., the tendency to perceive one’s own ingroup as more prototypical of a superordinate category than the outgroup). Stereotyping was defined as the tendency to describe the representatives of target groups in "trait-manner" instead of "behavior-manner". The study was conducted on the samples of 206 and 103 students from 17 to 22 years old. Information about the social groups was presented in the text looked like the media article. After reading the text, the subjects were asked to identify themselves with one of the groups, as well as characterize the typical representatives of these groups through a set of personality characteristics and behavioral description. The procedure was organized in the logic of a quasi-experimental design, using ANOVA for processing the data. The obtained facts supported Tejfel’s minimal groups theory and revealed that ingroup bias and intergroup stereotyping could appeared even under random and objectively motiveless choice of group membership. It has been found that the subjective assignment of the ingroup to the majority, and also increased importance of subjective information about the target groups could strengthen ingroup bias, but did not impact the processes of intergroup stereotyping.