Categorization is not enough: Intergroup discrimination in negative outcome allocation

Abstract

Social psychological research concerned with ingroup favoritism in outcome allocation has primarily focused on group members' distribution of positive outcomes (e.g., money). In this article, two studies are presented which examine ingroup favoritism and fairness in negative outcome allocations. Study 1 tested whether mere categorization into ingroup and outgroup is sufficient to elicit ingroup favoring behavior even when a negative outcome (i.e., noise) is distributed. We assumed that intergroup discrimination would be less defensible in the case of negative outcome allocation and therefore expected fairness to have a much stronger impact on subjects' distribution choices than ingroup favoritism. As expected, fairness was the pervasive distribution strategy. But somewhat surprisingly no ingroup favoritism occurred at all. In the second study, it was predicted that group members would favor ingroup over outgroup even in negative outcome (i.e., unpleasant task) allocations, provided group members were particularly motivated to assure positive social identity. We manipulated relative group size and relative group status assuming that minority and low status group membership would confer an unsatisfactory social identity. As predicted, only minority and low status group members favored the ingroup over the outgroup. These studies should be read as a caveat against the silent generalization of research findings from the realm of positive to the realm of negative outcome allocations. Finally, we briefly discuss two orthogonal dimensions or axes along which various forms of intergroup discrimination can be distinguished.