Racismo, essencialismo e ameaça do estereótipo.

In M. L. Lima, P. Castro, & M. Garrido (Eds.

Stratégies de revalorisation de l'identité : l'affirmation de soi et de son groupe chez les personnes stigmatisées.

In J. C. Croizet & J. Ph. Leyens (Eds.)

Dilution of stereotype-based cooperation in mixed-motive interdependence

Expanded the finding that nondiagnostic information about a target reduces the impact of stereotypes on person perception and social judgment by examining this dilution effect in settings of mixed- motive outcome-interdependence and by studying stereotype-based cognition as well as cooperative behavior. Three experiments involving a total of 250 undergraduates and employing Prisoner's and Chicken Dilemma Games revealed that people cooperate less when category information suggests that the other is competitive and immoral rather than cooperative and honest, but not when nondiagnostic attribute information is added. Exp 3 showed that people try to interpret attribute information as consistent with their stereotype-based beliefs; dilution occurs only when it is impossible to construe attribute information as consistent with the stereotype.

Perspective taking in an intergroup context and the use of uniquely human emotions: Drawing an E on your forehead

Intersecting theories of essentialism and ethnocentrism, Leyens and his colleagues (2000) recently documented people\u2019s tendency to infra-humanize (some) outgroups. Specifically, they observed that people were more reluctant to attribute or associate uniquely human emotions to the outgroup than to the ingroup. The present paper aims at investigating the behavioral consequences of people\u2019s tendency to infra-humanize the outgroup in the realm of perspective taking. Derived form the theory of Leyens et al. (2000, 2001) and previous research (Vaes et al., 2003), it was hypothesized that participants would take the perspective of an ingroup target more easily than that of an out-group target, when they described their past week in terms of uniquely human emotions. Perspective taking was measured with the drawing-an-E-on-your-forehead procedure (Hass, 1984) and the intergroup context was induced experimentally through a subjective essentialism manipulation. Also, participants were asked to report their familiarity with the target. Results confirmed the hypothesis even when participants\u2019 familiarity was controlled for. The role of essentialism and familiarity in intergroup relations is discussed and some suggestions for future research are made

Infra-humanization: The wall of group differences

Infra-humanizing outgroups involves considering outgroups less human and more animal-like than the ingroup, which is perceived, in essence, as fully human. In this article, the first section presents the theoretical background of infra-humanization and distinguishes it from related concepts, such as dehumanization. The three basic hypotheses of the theory are then presented with a summary of empirical evidence. Social implications follow. Reasons for the pervasiveness of the phenomenon are examined as well as conditions that lead a specific outgroup to be infra-humanized. We also explore the consequences of infra-humanization, such as a lack of forgiveness for the outgroup and the ingroup's justification for past misdeeds against the outgroup, rather than guilt. Policy issues center on ways to combat essentialism, walls of difference between groups, and irrational symbols of superiority. The roles of egalitarian values and of deprovincialized intergroup contact are emphasized