Linguistic intergroup bias: Evidence for in-group-protective motivation.

Abstract

Linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) is the tendency to describe positive in-group and negative out-group behaviors more abstractly than negative in-group and positive out-group behaviors. Two experiments investigated the role of in-group-protective motives, by varying threat to ingroup identity of hunters vs. environmentalists (Experiment 1, N = 160) and northern vs. southern Italians (Experiment 2, N = 212). Participants whose in-group had or had not been threatened described positive and negative behaviors of in-group and out-group protagonists. In both experiments, the LIB was greater under identity threat. Experiment 1 also showed that LIB was positively related to postexperimental but not to preexperimental individual and collective self-esteem. Results suggest that the magnitude of LIB depends on in-group-protective motivation and that in-group-favoring language may be functional to self-esteem maintenance. Recently, there has been increasing interest in the role that language may play in the transmission and maintenance of positive in-group perceptions and negative out-group perceptions (Graumann & Wintermantel, 1989; Hamilton, Gibbons, Stroessner, & Sherman, 1992; Maass & Arcuri, 1992; Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989). In particular, the linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) model developed by Maass et al. (1989) identifies a systematic bias in language use that may contribute in a subtle way to the maintenance of stereotypes. The main prediction states that positive behaviors are described in more