Outgroup Perceptions Research Articles

Green and Good? Examining Intended and Unintended Effects of Morally Framed Climate Messages

ABSTRACT Based on Moral Foundations Theory, message framing, and the Sacred Values Protection Model, this pre-registered experiment tested the effects of five different moral frames in climate change messages among N = 715 U.S. adults. Contrary to prior research, we did not find evidence that matching a message’s moral frame to individuals’ endorsements of moral foundations enhances intended positive outcomes, including perceived message effectiveness (PME) and policy support. However, a moral frame mismatch did reduce PME. Also contrary to scholarly warnings about potential negative effects of moralized communication, we did not find evidence for unintended consequences of moral frame matching for outgroup perceptions. Political ideology did moderate the effect of moral framing on desired social proximity (i.e. willingness to interact with moral outgroup members) and perceived message effectiveness. Our findings raise questions about the benefits of using moral frames that invoke only one moral foundation in climate change communication.

Unveiling the Paradox of Selflessness: Exploring Perceptions of Hypocrisy and Priority Outgroup in Intergroup Moral Dilemmas.

This study examines the impact of prioritizing the out-group in intergroup moral dilemmas. The research aims to achieve three primary objectives: 1) investigating the relationship between out-group prioritization and perceptions of hypocrisy, 2) exploring the influence of perceived hypocrisy and negative emotions on moral judgments, and 3) uncovering the underlying reasons for perceiving outgroup prioritization as hypocritical. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 involved presenting Chinese participants with out-group rescuers and in-group rescuers and asking them to rate the two on three dimensions: level of hypocrisy, level of morality, and negative emotions toward the rescuers. In Experiment 3, the degree of similarity between participants and rescuers was manipulated to control for the level at which participants projected their own intrinsic motivations (ie, self-interest) onto the rescuers. Experiments 1 and 2 jointly showed that participants perceived the out-group rescuer as more hypocritical and immoral compared to the in-group rescuer, and that participants had stronger negative emotions toward the out-group rescuer. Mediation analysis also demonstrated that the perception of hypocrisy and negative emotions largely mediated the relationship between the different rescuers and participants' evaluation of the rescuers' morality. In Experiment 3, participants gave higher hypocrisy ratings to high projection out-group rescuers compared to low projection out-group rescuers. In intergroup dilemmas, choosing to sacrifice the in-group to rescue the outgroup is perceived as more hypocritical, immoral, and objectionable. Perceived hypocrisy arises from an incongruity between individuals' subjective judgments of the rescuers' self-interest motives and the altruistic choice made by the rescuers to rescue the out-group.

Towards a typology of European migration attitudes across time and space: a person-centred approach

ABSTRACT Citizens’ attitudes towards migration have received ample scholarly and public attention in recent years. While there is a growing consensus on what is driving such migration attitudes, we know little about the heterogeneity of these attitudes. Several scholars have used and operationalised terms such as ‘migration mood’, ‘policy preferences’, or ‘anti-foreigner sentiment’ interchangeably, while others have argued that citizens have distinct preferences, depending on the type of immigrant, and on what policies, or consequences of migration are studied. We shed new light on this debate, by suggesting a person-centred approach. We investigate if a typology of attitudes towards migrants and migration at the individual and country level is present, by applying multilevel latent class analysis to European Social Survey data (2002–2020). We uncover three distinct profiles of migration preferences at the individual level, and three specific country level clusters. Altogether, Europeans make a distinction between policy preferences, and their threat perceptions of out-groups, though most Europeans are either generally in favour or against immigration. Further, we demonstrate that there has been a shift in attitudinal profiles at the individual and at the country level: the group of Europeans that is generally positive about migration has grown in size.

Respondents with more extreme views show moderation of opinions in multi-year surveys in the USA and the Netherlands

People with extreme political attitudes are often assumed to be more resistant to change than moderates. If this assumption is true, extreme attitudes would ossify and continuously aggravate intergroup conflict and polarization. To test this assumption of stubborn extremists, we use large-scale panel surveys of attitudes towards policy issues and general ideologies across up to 13 years (combined N = 16,238). By tracking the same people across multi-year periods, we are able to ascertain whether extreme attitude holders exhibit less change in policy attitudes than moderates. The results revealed that extreme attitude holders are more likely to change their attitudes than moderates across various policy issues and general ideologies, and tend to directionally moderate over time. A final experiment finds that lay people incorrectly believe that extreme attitudes holders are more resistant to change, contrary to the results found here. We discuss the implications of this finding for understanding the evolution of extreme attitude holders, the misperception of ideological and policy differences, and the role of inaccurate out-group perceptions in shaping polarization and intergroup conflict.

“We are One Team”: An evaluation of an intervention for improving relations between Turkish local and refugee adolescents

Increasing research has evidenced the negative intergroup relations in Turkey between locals and refugees. “We are One Team” (Biz Bir Takımız, WAOT) is designed as a multimodal intervention to improve the attitudes of local and refugee adolescents toward each other. WAOT utilizes sports, direct contact in a camp setting, socio-cognitive skills training, and social categorization as prejudice reduction strategies. The present study (n = 157 for Turkish locals; n = 112 for refugees, mostly Syrians and Afghans) evaluated, first, the efficacy of this project on participants’ intergroup contact intentions, outgroup perceptions, outgroup affect, and intergroup closeness by adopting a pre-and post-test design with a control group. Second, the study analyzed the role of certain participant characteristics (i.e., age, positive and frequent intergroup contact in the pre-intervention period and during the camp, and empathy levels) as moderating the intervention impacts. Findings indicated that the intervention increased both groups’ personal closeness toward outgroup members. However, while WAOT improved the outgroup perceptions of refugees, it worsened those of the locals. The intervention did not produce heightened intergroup contact intentions, positive outgroup affect, and group-level affinity for either group. Camp contact moderated the refugee and local adolescents’ gain scores regarding most intergroup variables. The moderator effects of age on outgroup perceptions and empathy on contact intentions emerged only for Turkish citizens. Lastly, pre-intervention contact moderated gain scores in all intergroup variables (except for contact intentions) only among refugees. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

A war on prejudice: The role of media salience in reducing ethnic prejudice.

Ethnic prejudice poses a great challenge to the cohesion of current multicultural societies. Prior research has found that media portrayals of immigration-related issues might skew individual attitudes and feelings toward ethnic minorities. While these studies have focused on negative representations of ethnic minorities, less is known about the effects of media reports of unfortunate events affecting the victims of war, as in the case of the Ukrainian group in the Russia-Ukraine war. Therefore, the current research aims to examine whether media salience of this situation might change adolescents' ethnic prejudice against the Ukrainian minority. A total of 1016 ethnic-majority Italian adolescents (Mage = 15.66, SDage = 1.17, 49.61% females) completed online questionnaires during school hours before (T1: January/February 2022) and after (T2: April/May 2022) the Russia-Ukraine war onset. Additionally, the media salience of the war was quantified separately for the national newspaper and Twitter. Levels of prejudice significantly decreased from T1 to T2 for multiple ethnic minority groups but especially so for the Ukrainian group. The results of bivariate Latent Change Score models highlighted that increased salience of the war in the national newspaper was significantly associated with decreased prejudice against Ukrainians, regardless of adolescents' levels of self-reported newspaper consumption. Conversely, changes in the salience of the war on Twitter were not associated with changes in prejudice. These findings highlight the importance of media attention for the war's victims in skewing individuals' outgroup perceptions and feelings.

Exemplar typicality in interventions to reduce public stigma against people with mental illness

AbstractA large number of studies support the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing public stigma, which has numerous deleterious effects on the lives of people with mental illness. Missing from research literature, however, is an examination of intervention characteristics which may enhance their effectiveness. Drawing from the broader literature concerned with changing perceptions of social outgroups, the present research program explores the role of exemplar typicality—the degree to which the characteristics of outgroup members who participants read about or interact with adhere to stereotypes about their group. Scholars have arrived at divergent conclusions regarding the level of typicality that is the most beneficial, prompting experimentation into this issue. In three studies concerned with stigma against people with mental illness, participants read about (n = 262) or had contact with (E‐contact, n = 248; imagined contact, n = 506) a typical, moderately atypical, or extremely atypical exemplar. Overall, the results suggested typical exemplars to be detrimental or less effective, while atypical exemplars appeared to produce lower public stigma. But there were inconsistent findings regarding the difference between the moderately and extremely atypical exemplars. These results call for intergroup contact scholars to reexamine the claim that typical exemplars are ideal, given their potential to aggravate biases toward some vulnerable social groups. The findings also suggest that organizations implementing prevalent interventions such as contact and personal narratives to reduce mental health stigma should carefully attend to the characteristics of the outgroup exemplars involved.

Fan Sponsor Acceptance: So, You Want to Join Our Sports in-Group?

This research introduces the notion of sponsor acceptance and examines its role in an emerging sport, the Australian Big Bash League T20 cricket. Sports sponsors want to achieve consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) outcomes. However, the achievement of CBBE outcomes depends on sponsor acceptance. Using quantitative survey data from BBL television viewers, we developed and tested a model of sponsor acceptance. We compared fan in-group and out-group perceptions, finding that both groups viewed the sponsorship positively. There were no significant differences between the groups in terms of our model of sponsor acceptance. Commercial outcomes of the financial services sponsor validated findings.

They Saw a Debate: Political Polarization Is Associated with Greater Multivariate Neural Synchrony When Viewing the Opposing Candidate Speak.

With rampant polarization in current U.S. politics, it seems as though political partisans with opposing viewpoints are living in parallel realities. Indeed, prior research shows that people's impressions/attitudes toward political candidates are intertwined with their political affiliation. The current study investigated the relationship between political affiliation and intersubject neural synchrony of multivariate patterns of activity during naturalistic viewing of a presidential debate. Before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 20 individuals varying in political affiliation underwent functional neuroimaging while watching the first debate between candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Pairs of participants with more polarized political affiliations were higher in neural synchrony in a system of brain regions involved in self-referential processing when viewing the opposing candidate speak compared with that candidate's supporters regardless of which extreme of the political spectrum they occupied. Moreover, pairs of political partisans matching in the candidate they supported were higher in neural synchrony when watching the candidate they opposed compared with the one they both supported. These findings suggest that political groups' shared understanding may be driven more by perceptions of outgroups than of their own party/candidates.

Warmth, competence, and subtle dehumanization: Comparing clustering patterns of warmth and competence with animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization.

The way in which people dehumanize may vary based on perceptions of social outgroups. This study explores how outgroups may be more animalistically or mechanistically dehumanized based on perceived stereotype content. This work compares competing theoretical perspectives regarding the relationship between the dual model of dehumanization with dimensions of warmth and competence. We predicted that participants would dehumanize high warmth, low competence outgroups more animalistically, and dehumanize low warmth, high competence outgroups more mechanistically. Results instead supported the stereotype content view of dehumanization, such that graded dehumanization occurred with the removal of warmth and competence. This work helps to clarify previous research and provides insight into way in which people evaluate outgroup stereotype content and the dehumanization of such outgroups. Implications and limitations of the work are discussed.

Social Distance and Intergroup Contact

The effects of intergroup contact in reducing prejudices have been well documented, but few studies have investigated the importance of the broader context within which contact occurs. This article examines the predictors of social distance from Muslims in a large sample of (non-Muslim) German university students (N = 404). Intergroup contact was an important predictor of reduced social distance even after demographics and perceptions of parents, tertiary institutions, media and broader intergroup dynamics were taken into account. The contact-social distance relationship was, however, mediated in part by perceived parental support for intergroup relations and perceived fairness of media representation. Students’ perceptions of broader group dynamics relating to assigning positive and negative attributes largely impeded the relationship – more so for male students than female. The findings attest to the importance of the broader context within which contact occurs. Having contact with outgroup members leads to reduced social distance from the outgroup, but perceived norms and outgroup perceptions play a pivotal role in explaining this relationship.

Disasters and intergroup peace in sub-Saharan Africa

How do disasters affect intergroup peace and conflict? Existing research shows that disasters can have opposing effects on how we perceive others: they can exacerbate existing tension in some cases or serve as catalysts for peace and cooperation in others. Yet we know little about the conditions under which we should expect one or the other. In this study, we estimate the impact of disasters on perceptions of out-groups. We combine a dataset of mass disasters with tens of thousands of individual-level survey responses recorded in Round 6 of the Afrobarometer data between 2014 and 2015. Using a difference-in-differences approach exploiting spatial and temporal proximity to disaster occurrences, we estimate the degree to which disasters affect public opinion toward out-groups. As disaster occurrence is plausibly exogenous to interview dates or respondent locations, our approach allows for an improved test of how the shock from disaster can impact public perceptions. Moreover, we show such impact varies by considering the differences in political salience of out-group identities and short- versus long-term differences in the impact on group dynamics. The implications of our findings for understanding the aftermath of past disasters and effects of future disasters on intergroup peace and conflict are discussed.

Changing In-Group Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the United States

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new out-group change the in-group’s perceptions of other out-groups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of other minorities as in- or out-groups depending on perceived distances across groups. We test this framework by studying how Mexican immigration to the United States affected white Americans’ attitudes and behaviors toward Black Americans. We combine survey and crime data with a difference-in-differences design and an instrumental variables strategy. Consistent with the theory, Mexican immigration improves whites’ racial attitudes, increases support for pro-Black government policies, and lowers anti-Black hate crimes while simultaneously increasing prejudice against Hispanics. Results generalize beyond Hispanics and Blacks, and a survey experiment provides direct evidence for recategorization. Our findings imply that changes in the size of one group can affect the entire web of intergroup relations in diverse societies.

How Social Ties with Undocumented Immigrants Motivate Latinx Political Participation.

Prior research suggests social ties with undocumented immigrants among Latinxs may increase political engagement despite constraints undocumented social networks may introduce. We build on prior research and find across six surveys of Latinxs that social ties with undocumented immigrants are reliably associated with collective, identity expressive activities such as protesting, but not activities where immigration may not be immediately relevant, such as voting. Moreover, we assess a series of mechanisms to resolve the puzzle of heightened participation despite constraints. Consistent with prior research at the intersection of anti-immigrant threat and Social Identity Theory, we find Latinxs with strong ethnic identification are more likely to engage in political protest in the presence of social ties with undocumented immigrants, whereas weak identifiers disengage. We rule out alternative mechanisms that could link undocumented social ties with participation including political efficacy, a sense of injustice, linked fate, acculturation, outgroup perceptions of immigration status, partisan identity, conducive opportunity structures, and prosociality. Our contribution suggests the reason social ties with undocumented immigrants are not necessarily a hindrance to political engagement among Latinx immigrants and their co-ethnics is because they can draw from identitarian resources to overcome participatory constraints.

Who’s to Fear? Implicit Sexual Threat Pre and Post the “Refugee Crisis”

ABSTRACT The perceived sexual threat of ethnic outgroups has been argued to contribute to anti-immigrant attitudes within societies. The current study investigates to what extent news media might contribute to such negative outgroup perceptions by analyzing implicit sexual threat associations in Dutch news. The study draws on a sample of more than two million news articles published between 2008 and 2018 in five major Dutch newspapers. To identify implicit bias in this corpus, we use word embeddings—an advanced language modeling technique in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The results show that ethnic outgroups (i.e., nationalities that were most prominently represented among asylum applications in the Netherlands during the refugee crisis) are associated more strongly with sexual threat than ethnic ingroups. These findings proved robust across a diverse set of outgroups and ingroup nationalities and names, and point to the existence of considerable implicit bias in the coverage of ethnic minorities. Moreover, the sexual threat associated with Arabic names has grown stronger since the “refugee crisis”. Such implicit biases reflect and potentially reinforces individuals’ implicit associations between ethnic minorities and sexual threat, potentially explaining growing anti-immigration attitudes, especially since the refugee crisis.

Inclusion reduces political prejudice

Political inclusion is when someone receives a fair chance to voice one's opinions in a discussion of political topics with political outgroup members. In three preregistered studies (total n = 799), we test if political inclusion reduces or increases prejudice toward the political outgroup using either an imagined scenario (Study 1) or an experience in an ostensible online political discussion (Studies 2 & 3). Across all studies, participants who were politically included by political outgroup members reported reduced prejudice toward their political outgroup compared to participants in a neutral control condition (Cohen's ds ranging from −0.50 to −0.27). Study 3 showed that this effect extends to non-political inclusion. The effects of political and non-political inclusion were mediated by perceptions of the political outgroup as fairer and less dissimilar in their worldviews. Our results indicate that inclusive political and non-political discussions reduce political prejudice.

Making America Great Again? National Nostalgia's Effect on Outgroup Perceptions.

Nostalgia is a fond longing for the past that has been shown to increase feelings of meaning, social connectedness, and self-continuity. Although nostalgia for personal memories provides intra- and interpersonal benefits, there may be negative consequences of group-based nostalgia on the perception and acceptance of others. The presented research examined national nostalgia (a form of collective nostalgia), and its effects on group identification and political attitudes in the United States. In a sample of US voters (N = 252), tendencies to feel personal and national nostalgia are associated with markedly different emotional and attitudinal profiles. Higher levels of national nostalgia predicted both positive attitudes toward President Trump and racial prejudice, though there was no evidence of such relationships with personal nostalgia. National nostalgia most strongly predicted positive attitudes toward president Trump among those high in racial prejudice. Furthermore, nostalgia's positive relationship with racial prejudice was partially mediated by perceived outgroup threat. Results from this study will help us better understand how the experience of national nostalgia can influence attitudes and motivate political behavior.

Ingroup Bias with Multiple Identities: The Case of Religion and Attitudes Towards Government Size

Group identity is known to exert a powerful socio-psychological influence on behaviour but to date has been largely explored as a uni-dimensional phenomenon. We consider the role of multiple dimensions of identity, asking what might happen to ingroup and outgroup perceptions and the resulting implications for cooperation. Carefully selecting two politically charged identity dimensions documented to have similar strength and to be largely orthogonal (religious belief and views about government size), we find that priming individuals to consider both dimensions rather than one has a noticeable effect on behaviour. Moving from one to two dimensions can produce a significant increase in ingroup allocations at the expense of fairness to outgroup individuals, although the effect varies as we switch from primarily considering religion to government size. Evidence suggests that the heterogeneity of such effects is related to the degree of harmony between groups in the dimensions concerned.

Changing Ingroup Boundaries: the Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the US

How do social group boundaries evolve? Does the appearance of a new outgroup change the ingroup's perceptions of other outgroups? We introduce a conceptual framework of context-dependent categorization, in which exposure to one minority leads to recategorization of other minorities as in- or outgroups depending on perceived distances across groups. We test this framework by studying how Mexican immigration to the US affected White Americans' attitudes and behaviors towards Black Americans. We combine survey and crime data with a difference-in-differences design and an instrumental variables strategy. Consistent with the theory, Mexican immigration improves Whites' racial attitudes, increases support for pro-Black government policies and lowers anti-Black hate crimes, while simultaneously increasing prejudice against Hispanics. Results generalize beyond Hispanics and Blacks and a survey experiment provides direct evidence for recategorization. Our findings imply that changes in the size of one group can affect the entire web of inter-group relations in diverse societies.

Stigma & dirty work: In-group and out-group perceptions of essential service workers during COVID-19.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on essential service workers has given rise to their newfound "hero" status, resulting in a dramatic shift of their occupational value. Service work has been long envisioned as "dirty work", and further, stigmatized by members of society (the Out-Group), until recently. This study utilized occupational stigma theory to identify the mechanisms under which both essential service workers and society at large came to unify around the importance of perceived dirty work in the United States. Critical discourse analysis was employed as a qualitative methodology, particularly examining the In- and Out-Group's coping mechanisms for coming to terms with the value of "dirty" service work heroes. Theoretical implications include the utilization of stigma theory for Out-Groups, and revealed a previously undetected Out-Group coping tactic. Practical implications include the urgency for keeping the "hero" story alive so that all service workers benefit from the movement.