On the Crucial Role of Mental Ingroup Representation for Ingroup Bias and the Ingroup Prototypicality-Ingroup Bias Link

Abstract

Previous research suggested that relative ingroup prototypicality is a basis for ingroup bias. To test the boundary conditions of this phenomenon, we hypothesized that people particularly rely on relative ingroup prototypicality as a basis for ingroup bias if the prototypicality information is derived from a homogeneous and simple ingroup representation. We, therefore, predicted increased ingroup bias together with a stronger relation between prototypicality and ingroup bias if the ingroup is formed of consistent group members only. In two experiments, we used different subtyping manipulations and showed that the exclusion of inconsistent parts of the ingroup leads to a strong relation between relative ingroup prototypicality and ingroup bias, whereas this relation was nonsignificant without subtyping. Furthermore, ingroup bias was more pronounced after subtyping. These results confirm that the homogeneity and the simplicity of the ingroup representation is an important moderator for the relation between ingroup projection and intergroup judgments.