Responses to Endorsement of Commonality by Ingroup and Outgroup Members: The Roles of Group Representation and Threat

Two experiments integrated research on the roles of common identity and social norms in intergroup orientations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that learning that ingroup members categorized the ingroup (Spaniards) and outgroup (Eastern European immigrants) within a common identity (European) produced more positive intergroup orientations toward immigrants. By contrast, learning that outgroup members held the same position elicited less positive orientations compared with a condition in which the information came from a neutral source. The effects were mediated by one-group representations. Experiment 2 also found that endorsement of a common identity generated more positive intergroup orientations when it was expressed by ingroup than outgroup members and revealed how this effect may be sequentially mediated by personal one-group representations and symbolic threat.