When group members dissent: A direct comparison of the black sheep and intergroup sensitivity effects

Abstract

How do people react to opinion conflict occurring within an ingroup? Whereas some work suggests that dissenting ingroup members evoke more negativity than equivalently dissenting outgroup members (termed the black sheep effect), other research instead finds that people are more receptive to dissent from within the group relative to the same opinion originating from outsiders (termed the intergroup sensitivity effect). We sought to integrate these largely independent lines of work by investigating how people react to opinion conflict within and between groups based on U.S. political party affiliation. Participants read about a target person, “Robert C.,” with whom they shared or did not share party affiliation. Robert C. criticized (Study 1; N = 637; preregistered) or insulted (Study 2; N = 647; preregistered) the Democratic or Republican party. Ingroup members who criticized or insulted the ingroup elicited more negativity than outgroup members who criticized or insulted the outgroup, representing the black sheep effect. Moreover, criticism and insults targeting the ingroup elicited more negativity when they originated from an outgroup (vs. ingroup) member, representing the intergroup sensitivity effect. Taken together, the present studies demonstrate that whereas ingroup critics are at times perceived as black sheep, they are also afforded a degree of benefit of the doubt. We suggest that both of these effects may be driven by social identity concerns.