Abstract
According to social identity theory people are viewed as prototypical of a group to the extent that they possess ingroup characteristics but not outgroup characteristics. Based on this, previous research demonstrated that high-status group members (e.g., in the occupational field: men) may profit from failure in low-status domains, that is, domains in which members of a low-status group (e.g., in the occupational field: women) outperform high-status group members. In this case individual failure of a high-status group member appear highly prototypical for the high-status ingroup and therefore leads to the attribution of future occupational success (so called Failure-as-an-Asset effect). The current work extends this reasoning, by taking into account that perceived prototypicality of an individual group member is assumed to depend on meta-contrast based perception, meaning the ratio of differences between in- and outgroup characteristics and similarities of the ingroup and the respective group member. Therefore, the present study investigated how manipulated differences in ingroup prototypicality (i.e., meta-contrast quotient) of a failing male individual affect attributed occupational success. Thus, we predicted perceived prototypicality to moderate the Failure-as-an-Asset effect. In line with our hypothesis, we found that increased ingroup prototypicality lead to higher attributed occupational success.
Highlights
Failure has been shown to be linked to decrease feelings of self-worth (e.g., Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003; Crocker & Park, 2004; Crocker, Sommers, & Luhtanen, 2002)
Under certain circumstances, research evidenced a phenomenon called Failure-as-an-Asset (FA) effect: In a series of studies by Reinhard, Stahlberg, and Messner (2008), participants had to evaluate the occupational success of a male target person
When participants were told that the male target person scored poorly on a test in which women generally outperform men, this information rendered the target person as typically masculine, which in turn led to higher attributed occupational success because men are assumed to be the high-status group according to the think-manager–think-male phenomenon (e.g., Schein, 2001)
Summary
Failure has been shown to be linked to decrease feelings of self-worth (e.g., Crocker, Karpinski, Quinn, & Chase, 2003; Crocker & Park, 2004; Crocker, Sommers, & Luhtanen, 2002). Considering the principle of meta-contrast perception (Oakes et al, 1998), we assume that in addition to the similarity of the person to the category (“men”) the perceived difference between this category and a relevant comparable category (“women”) is of importance for judging typicality. The higher the value of the MCQ the more group A is perceived as a group sharing the same social identity Transferring this assumption, the FA effect should always show if the difference between the member of a high-status group and his ingroup regarding the relevant characteristics is very low and, at the same time, the difference between the average characteristics of in- and outgroup is very high. As the relevant attribute we used the ability in “logical reasoning”
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