When personal identities confirm versus conflict with group identities: Evidence from an intergroup paradigm

Permissions were not obtained for sharing the full text of this article.This study provides an experimental investigation of the consequences of conflict between children's personal identities and experimentally manipulated group identities. Elementary-school-aged children (N = 82, ages 5-11) attending a summer school program rated their own academic and athletic abilities and were then randomly assigned to one of two novel groups. Children's views of the academic and athletic skills of the novel groups were assessed both before and after information about the groups' academic and athletic skills was manipulated via posters placed in their classrooms. Following the manipulation, children's self-views, ingroup identification, and intergroup attitudes were assessed. Results indicated that (a) in the absence of information about the novel groups, children projected their personal identities onto their ingroup identities, (b) children maintained their ingroup identities in the face of new information that should have altered their ingroup identities, and (c) more positive personal identities predicted ingroup bias, which in turn predicted happiness with one's ingroup membership. The latter finding suggests that a tendency for children to generalize from their idiosyncratic positive self-views, rather than an indiscriminate desire for self-enhancement or positivity, may be responsible for ingroup bias

Dispelling negative expectancies: The impact of interaction goals and target characteristics on the expectancy confirmation process

The present study examined the impact of the interaction goals of perceivers and the characteristics of targets of a negative expectancy on the expectancy confirmation process. Perceivers were led to expect that their future interaction partner might have difficulty performing well under pressure. Perceivers were also placed in an interaction setting that made one of two interaction goals relevant: whereas some were encouraged to consider the partner as a possible teammate for a cooperative game; others were encouraged to have a casual conversation. Orthogonal to the interaction manipulation, subjects interacted with a target whose expectancy-relevant characteristics, if discovered during the interaction, could either support or refute the expectancy. Results indicated that the interaction goals perceivers inferred from the interaction setting influenced the extent to which they probed for information relevant to their negative expectancies. Their search strategies influenced what they discovered about the target, and these strategy-dependent discoveries, in turn, shaped their final impressions of the target. From this we argue that both the interaction goals of the perceivers and the characteristics of the targets of a negative expectancy are critical determinants of the fate of negative expectancies.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/27441/1/0000481.pd