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Priming In-Group Favoritism: The Impact of Normative Scripts in the Minimal Group Paradigm

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Abstract

Results of experiments employing the minimal group paradigm (MGP) (Tajfel et al., 1971) have provided evidence that mere categorization can—at least on average—lead to in-group favoritism, i.e., allocating more resources to in-group members than to out-group members. This effect is often explained by sociomotivational processes in which persons favor their own group in order to enhance their social self-esteem (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1986). However, in-group favoritism in the MGP can alternatively be explained by assuming that persons simply follow social norms or scripts that are currently accessible and provide behavioral prescriptions for the task at hand. This explanation was tested by experimentally varying the accessibility of behavior scripts with a priming procedure within a MGP. As expected, priming of “loyalty” compared to priming of “equality” led to (a) higher perceptions that loyalty is expected by in-group members, (b) increased in-group favoritism, (c) increased expression of in-group identification. Moreover, while self-esteem ratings were positively correlated with in-group favoritism after priming of loyalty, this relation was reversed after priming of equality.

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    This research was partially supported by a postdoctoral grant funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (He 2745/1-2) to the first author. We thank Janlekha Bhmornwal, Lauren Kramar, Eliza Krzewski, and Taneka Jones for their help during data collection.

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    Address correspondence and reprint requests to Guido Hertel, University of Kiel, Institut für Psychologie, Olshausenstr. 40, D-24 098 Kiel, Germany; Fax: +49 431 880 1559 or Norbert Kerr, 433 Baker Hall, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected].

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