Article summaries for Intergroup Relations - RUG

People argue that human faces have been shaped by selection (Darwin) to serve as a communication medium. One can ‘read’ the internal emotions of another person. The researchers of this study argue that emotional expressions may also influence the social category to which somebody is assigned.

Sometimes people can be easily assigned to certain groups. Usually you recognize in which group a person fits best. Sometimes, however, some stigmatised social identities can be concealed, like homosexuality. Race can also be ambiguous. There are different skin colours, eye colours and hair colour and they are not perfect markers of race. The stereotype of African Americans includes hostility. Somebody with an ambiguous identity (is he black or is he white?) will be more likely to be categorized as an African American when he displays a hostile facial expression than when he displays a happy one. This is what the researchers of the study propose. They also think that the extent to which stereotypes will affect categorization depends on the level of prejudice. People who are high on prejudice will be more likely to activate and apply stereotypic information.

In study 1 participants got to see racially ambiguous faces on the computer and they were asked to categorize each face as either Caucasian or African American. Each face was presented twice, once with an angry expression and once with a happy expression. They also completed some questionnaires to measure their racial attitudes. The results supported the hypothesis: high-prejudiced people were more likely to rate an ambiguous face as African American when this face was angry. The relationship between prejudice and categorization was stronger for angry than for happy faces.

In 1999, a 16-year-old Dutch girl named Marianne Vaatstra was found raped and murdered in a meadow. People quickly suggested that the murderer was likely to be found in the refugee centre near the village where the girl was killed. Many people thought that only someone from abroad could commit such a crime. In 2013, the murderer was finally identified and it turned out to be a local farmer. People were shocked that the crime was committed by a member of their community. The mother of the victim and others even refused to believe that it was true and they criticized the DNA methods that were used to solve the crime. Other people complained that the sentences in the Netherlands were not harsh enough to punish the ingroup murderer. When people are confronted with such behaviour, they often ask themselves ‘Was it one of us?’ People often think positively about themselves and the groups they belong to and they are likely to assume that only members of other groups could possibly be responsible. The question is, what happens when people learn that it was actually one of them who did something wrong. A plausible reaction could be finding excuses for the ingroup perpetrator or downplaying the severity of the event. The opposite reaction is also likely. The ingroup perpetrator could be rejected and punished more harshly than perpetrators from outgroups engaging in the same misconduct. It seems that both types of reaction occur. The writers of this article assume that both reactions are driven by the same motive: a striving for a positive social identity. The motive is stable, but the way in which it is strived for will vary as a function of several moderating variables. In this article, the model of Coping with Ingroup Deviance (CID) will be introduced. The writers argue that when relevant moderators are take into account, it can be predicted whether people will show very mild or very harsh reactions when dealing with ingroup deviance.

Categorization and ingroup favouritism

People often categorize their social world into broad categories, like children versus adults or men versus women. An important distinction people make when categorizing the social world is between ingroups (us) and outgroups (them).the Social Identity Theory states that people derive part of their identity from their membership in social groups. Who we are is determined by our nationality, gender and/or professional affiliation. People tend to strive for positive self-regard, but they will also strive for positive evaluations of their group memberships. The positive social identities are often achieved by perceiving the ingroup as comparatively better than other groups. Many studies have found this ingroup favouritism. The positive bias towards ingroups is robust, but it is not unconditional. It has to be responsive to reality constraints. One study found that soccer supporters whose team just lost miserably in competition with another team will not be prone to brag about the superior quality of their team’s soccer performance. They will be likely to try and reduce the damage of their own group’s defeat (for example, due to core player injuries). The responsiveness of ingroup bias to reality constraints is crucial for understanding differences in how people cope with negative ingroup deviance.

People are interested in a positive social identity and it therefore doesn’t seem strange that people tend to be positively biased when confronting an ingroup member who shows unacceptable behaviour. Group members will have to motivation to take the perspective of such an ingroup deviant as well as give the benefit of the doubt if possible. They may therefore downplay the harm that is done or make situational attributions rather than assuming that harm was done intentionally. In this way, the deviant ingroup member does not endanger the positive perception a person has of the ingroup, because the person is able to find excuses for the deviant behaviour. A biased interpretation of the negative event doesn’t really require an extensive effort on the part of the perceiver. Studies have shown that people have an automatic tendency to perceive their own groups positively. This positive default towards the ingroup can spontaneously and unconsciously affect evaluations of the ingroup and the members of the ingroup. If one sees ingroup members as positive at the outset, then such a default may override the potential negative evaluations that might occur when ingroup members violate norms. Some researchers have looked at real instances of intergroup violence between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. They found out that violence enacted by ingroup members was predominantly attributed to external, situational factors. They also found that violence enacted by outgroup members was mostly attributed to dispositional (personality-related) factors. It seems that ingroup violence can be conceptualized in terms of unusual circumstances, while outgroup violence is a matter of hostile people with bad characters.

Group members can also react very negatively to the misbehaving ingroup member and may respond even more negatively than towards outgroup members performing the same behaviour. by doing this, they can show that the deviant’s behaviour departs strongly from the norms of the group. This is labelled the Black sheep effect.’ One study showed that people, who were portrayed as dislikable and norm-deviant, received more disapproval when categorized as an ingroup rather than outgroup member. Some argue that the Black sheep effect can be seen as a sort of sophisticated ingroup favouritism. By strongly distancing the average group members from the ingroup deviant and by harshly criticizing the deviant’s conduct, group members can act as if the deviant is not typical for the group. According to the Subjective Group Dynamics Model, negative reactions to ingroup deviants are functional because people can retain the perception that the group as a whole is benevolent despite a bad person in the group.

These arguments show that a striving for positive ingroup distinctiveness, as postulated in Social Identity Theory, makes both options equally plausible and functional. The question is under which circumstances ingroup deviants will be viewed more positively or more negatively than outgroup deviants. The writers of this article believe that there are three important classes of moderating variables, that involve characteristics of the misconduct, characteristics of the group member evaluating the misconduct and characteristics of the group member committing the misconduct. This reasoning is also behind the writers’ Coping with Ingroup Deviance (CID) model. In the rest of this article, this model will be used to organize and discuss existing evidence on positively or negatively biased reactions to ingroup perpetrators. The writers will consider evaluations and punishment recommendations and they will refer to evidence on the specific emotions elicited by ingroup deviant behaviour. Different emotions are likely to prompt different behavioural reactions.

Negative ingroup deviance and moderators

The three moderators mentioned above were characteristics of the misconduct, characteristics of the group member and characteristics of the evaluator. All three will be discussed in some detail below.

Characteristics of the misconduct

In one study on the Black sheep effect, the researchers manipulated whether the deviant group member was offending either a general norm (that applies to everyone) or a norm that characterizes the ingroup. The results showed that only the ingroup-defining norm deviation elicited the Black sheep effect. However, later research found that offenses to generic norms can also sometimes elicit strong derogation of ingroup members. The writers think it’s safe to say that both distinguishing group norms and generic humanity norms can produce the Black sheep effect conditions.

Once a person is identified, people try to figure out whether the behaviour was intended or not. The case may be that as long as it isn’t determined whether a norm violation was actually intended, a person can continue to feel good about the ingroup without harsh evaluations of the person engaging in the misconduct. This means that the Black sheep effect may be less likely to occur if intent is ambiguous. Studies on this have been conducted. One study showed that if the intention to do harm was ambiguous, an ingroup perpetrator was rated less negatively than an outgroup perpetrator. When the intent was unambiguous, the pattern reversed: an ingroup perpetrator was viewed more negatively than an outgroup perpetrator. Other studies found that when guilt was certain, feelings of anger and hostility were stronger towards an ingroup perpetrator than an outgroup perpetrator. If guilt was uncertain, the ingroup perpetrator aroused less anger and hostility than the outgroup suspect. Also, as long as guilt was uncertain, the ingroup perpetrator was given the benefit of the doubt with respect to recommended punishment. Many studies reveal that perceivers are attentive to cues to intent ambiguity. If intentions to do harm are not ambiguous, then there is no positive bias towards ingroup deviants. Negative evaluations seem to serve the purpose of distancing most of one’s group from the perpetrator. These processes seem less important if outgroup members are involved. Anger seems to be a relevant mediator of evaluative and behavioural response to ingroup deviants.

Characteristics of the person committing the misconduct

Three types of group members are distinguished. There are newcomers who have just entered the group and who are in the socialization phase of their membership. There are full member who have successfully completed socialization and this gives them more privileges and responsibilities for the group and its goal achievements. There are also marginal members who lost their full member status by not fulfilling group standards. These members may re-socialize and become ingroup members again or they may psychologically exit the group. Researchers have argued that full members are particularly representative of the group and its positive image. These full members are therefore evaluated most strictly when they do wrong and they receive most praise when they engage in normative behaviour. Research has found that evaluations of the deviant ingroup member were more negative when the target was a full rather than new member. Behaviours that were directed towards the target depended on the group member. If the target was a new member, the goal was to get the target to change his/her behaviour. If the target was a full member, people desired to punish this target. These studies show that group members have a strong interest in the maintenance of norms that contribute to the ingroup’s positive identity. They will therefore perceive negatively deviant behaviour by fellow ingroup members as threatening and react accordingly. This will be less true for deviant members who do not possess full membership status.

Research has also looked at the power that ingroup members possess. Researchers say that leaders typically earn their status for being prototypical. Anti-normative behaviour should therefore strongly violate expectations and be evaluated more negatively. However, as power is associated with leadership status, the leader has permission to deviate. Some researchers argued that which of these two phenomena will apply may depend on the phase of leadership the deviant group member is in. These researchers distinguish between past, current and future leaders. In groups with future leaders, the group should give leaders innovation credit and provide them with permission to deviate from what is currently normative. Current leaders that deviate from the norm will be evaluated in terms of their failure to represent group expectations and this will result in more negative appraisals. Past leaders are no longer in the centre of attention and they should therefore elicit weaker negative reactions than current leaders. Research has shown that past leaders expressing opposing attitudes were evaluated less negatively than current leaders and the greatest deviance tolerance occurred for future leaders. Studies have also found that when the leader’s anti-normative behaviour was severe (like sexual harassment) he/she elicited harsher reactions (stronger punishment intentions) than non-leaders performing the same behaviour. But when the severity of anti-normative behaviour was minor (like being late for a meeting), there was a greater leniency for the leader than non-leader. Some studies have shown that, under some conditions, leaders within the group might be treated more leniently than regular group members showing the same negatively deviant behaviour. If the leader’s behaviour is driven by the goal to serve the group’s interest, the group has a double standard. When a leader acts deviantly, it might be considered as justified by the necessities of the situation, but if a non-leader acts this way it might be disapproved upon.

Characteristics of the evaluator

According to research, the strength with which a person identifies with an ingroup should matter. Not ambiguous anti-normative behaviours exhibited by ingroup members should be more threatening as identification with the group increases. As a result of the greater group identification, evaluations of deviants should be harsher. Studies have also found evidence for the idea that the ingroup bias can be seen as sort of default reaction. It operates automatically to protect ingroup positivity. This means that when a person is categorized as an ingroup member, the motivated tendency to view the person with benevolence should be elicited. But if this is the case, how can we then account for the Black sheep effect? Research on this topic has found that derogating deviant ingroup members requires cognitive effort. It is a strategic, deliberate response in situations when the ingroup’s reputation is endangered and positive expectations about ingroup members are challenged.

Conclusion

The writers of this article have shown that people are guided by a positive bias toward the ingroup and its members. The bias can take two forms. One form downsizes the misbehaviour and the other form punishes the member more harshly. The writers offered a model of CID and this can be used as a tool to better predict which form reactions to ingroup deviance will take. The writers provided three groups of moderators, but obviously, there are more moderators of reactions to deviance. For example, the context in which the deviance occurs (in front of an outgroup or ingroup audience) could be relevant. All findings in the current article are consistent with the assumption that people’s coping with ingroup deviance is guided by the motivation to maintain or re-establish the ingroup’s positive regard. The nature and circumstances of the misconduct will determine how it is fulfilled.

In the last few decennia there has been an increase in the representation of women in the workplace, but disparities in the status of women relative to men persist. Many scholars think that stereotypes have to do with this type of discrimination. Stereotypes are characteristics associated with a particular social group and discrimination is the biased treatment of others based on their group membership. Some scientists have shown that men may be chosen more often than women for supervisory roles in employment contexts, because power and leadership are qualities associated with men and gentility and submissiveness are associated with women. So one way of decreasing sex discrimination may be to reduce stereotypes.

Two basic processes are involved in stereotypes. Stereotype activation involves the increased cognitive accessibility of characteristics associated with a particular group and stereotype application represents the use of stereotypes when responding to a group member. One goal of this study is to examine sex discrimination in an experimental setting and to explore a strategy of reducing the activation of stereotypes. In the past stereotype activation has been described as a bad habit. Recently, extensive training in negating category-trait associations has been used to reduce automatic stereotype activation. Some scientists found that practice is essential to unlearning the stereotype associations. The present study wants to examine whether the training strategy that can reduce stereotype activation would also ameliorate the preference of men over women for managerial positions. Training seems to be a good strategy in reducing stereotype activation, but it’s not clear what the impact of training would be on behavioural responses to group members (discrimination). The training may be effective in reducing the activation of stereotypes, but can people control their evaluations? One research shows that reducing automatic activations may not necessarily reduce a more controlled form of bias. Implicit measures of stereotyping are related to spontaneous responses and are not correlated with deliberative responses because these responses may be different. This means that it’s important to examine the impact of strategies related to the reduction of biases on explicit and implicit processes separately.

Research on mental correction has shown that when people are motivated and able, they may modify their assessments in a direction opposite to the perceived bias. If the participant thinks that the training will bias his/her decision in favour of female job candidates, he/she may try to minimize this influence and be less favourable towards a female than towards a male candidate. So if people correct for the anticipated impact of the training, they may exhibit a level of sex discrimination which is similar to participants in the no-training condition. But, in order for correction to occur, people must first recognize that they have been influenced and then have the mental resources to control their response. If they are not aware of an unwanted influence and/or if they’re not able to adjust their responses because they lack the cognitive capacity, they will not modify their response. The writers of the current article examined whether correction processes could moderate the effects of training on subsequent hiring decision. They questioned participants in a pilot study about their awareness of the potential impact of training and their anticipated reactions. The participants indicated that they were aware that the training could systematically influence their responses and that they believed that the experimenter expected the training to reduce sex biases. According to correction theory, it is therefore possible that participants would modify their responses to adjust for that influence under controlled processing conditions. The writers therefore decided that in the ‘real’ study, the possible influence of correction processes related to non-stereotypic association training would be examined in two ways: disassociating the two tasks and adding a cognitive load manipulation. The writers expected that participants would correct for the effect of the perceived training when they received training and then directly performed the candidate selection task. They also expected correction processes to be reduced when the training was disassociated from the job application task by including a filler task. They thought that if the relationship between the non-stereotypic association training and the candidate selection task was less obvious, participants would be less likely to correct for the training. The writers thought that without the correction processes the non-stereotypic association training would be effective in reducing sex discrimination against women in the candidate selection task.

Mental resources are also needed for correction to occur. In previous studies, researchers showed that when not under cognitive load, participants corrected for the prime and formed less favourable impressions following the positive than the negative prime. In the current research researchers gave some of the participants a secondary task to impede their ability to correct, while they were reviewing the applicants during the job application phase. They thought that participants under cognitive load would be less able to correct. The goal of the present research was to investigate whether non-stereotypic association training would be effective in reducing sex discrimination and to explore the potential moderating role of correction processes that might limit the effectiveness. The writers thought that participants in the training condition would show levels of discrimination equivalent to that of the no-training control group when hiring decision directly followed non-stereotypic training. In this condition and the no-training condition, participants were expected to prefer male over female candidates. But, when the tasks were separated in time by an unrelated intermediate task or when participants were unable to correct because they were impeded by cognitive load, the training was expected to be effective in ameliorating sex discrimination. In these last two conditions, bias against female candidates was expected to be reduced in the latter two conditions and participants were expected to select women and men in the same extent.

The study

In this experiment, the main independent variable, Training, included four levels: no training, non-stereotypic association training, non-stereotypic association training plus filler task and on-stereotypic association training plus probe reaction task. Participants were seated behind a computer and they were presented with a series of photographs of men and women. The participants were told that underneath each photograph there would be two traits, one on the left and one on the right. They had to select the trait that was not culturally associated with the gender category in the photograph and to press the appropriate button on the button box. All participants were presented with the job application task. Participants in the no-training condition performed only the job application task. Participants in the non-stereotypic association training condition first completed the training task and then immediately after that the job application task. Participants in the non-stereotypic association training plus filler task condition, performed an intermediate task before proceeding to the job application task. Participants in the non-stereotypic association training plus probe reaction task condition received a probe task between the training and job application task. This probe task was designed to utilize some of the participants’ cognitive capacity and deplete resources for conscious control during the candidate selection phase.

The results indicated that with practice participants showed improvement in learning new, non-stereotypic associations. However, the selection of male or female candidates for a managerial position showed no difference between non-stereotypic association training and no-training conditions. The writers counterbalanced the sex of the candidate and the specific credentials and given the same documented qualifications, women were recommended for the position less often than men. This shows there is a prevalence of sex discrimination. In the non-stereotypic association training plus filler task condition and the non-stereotypic association training plus probe reaction task condition, participants showed less sex discrimination.

This research shows that researchers interested in interventions to stop/reduce bias should consider the effects of strategies aimed at changing stereotypes on different levels. Strategies aimed at changing the automatic activation of stereotypes will not necessary result in reduced discrimination. When the intervention is obvious, its effectiveness may be compromised. Therefore, the target task need not to come immediately after the first task. Also, when the conditions allow conscious control of responses and deliberation, the effectiveness of the training will not be so great. High cognitive load is needed to stop this conscious control and deliberation. Future research needs to examine ways to stop the stereotype habit under both automatic and controlled processing conditions.

Many researchers believe that humiliation is often a driving-force behind social conflicts. Scientists have stressed the role that humiliation plays in international politics and high school shootings. The experience of humiliation is often described as a strong emotional reaction to being ostracized or rejected in the sense of being made to feel small or worthless. Humiliation signals to victims that they are rejected in the sense that they are seen as inferior. Research has shown that rejection by a potential romantic partners conveys a message that a person is perceived to lack sufficient desirable qualities to be a worthy partner and this induces humiliation. Experiences of social rejection can create serious deficits in the satisfaction of social needs, even potential of pathological consequences. In this paper, the interest is in rejection and humiliation in intergroup settings. The question is whether it is possible to feel humiliated by just observing members of one’s ingroup being rejected. In this article, the writers examine the possibility of vicarious group-based rejection and the possibility that vicarious rejection triggers emotional responses that are similar to being rejected oneself.

Powerlessness, anger and humiliation

Powerlessness is central to the experience of humiliation. The victim is forces into passivity. Some have suggested that this loss of power may lead to inertia. This is the tendency toward inaction that suppresses aggressive responses and it should be accompanied with action-inhibiting emotions like fear and shame. But, in line with previously findings on social rejection, the writers believe that humiliation is more likely to be associated with action-oriented emotions, like anger. The writers think that humiliation is associated with feelings of powerlessness and anger.

Vicarious group-based humiliation

Studies have found similarity of personal and group-membership based experiences. Research has shown that being ostracized by a member of an outgroup on the basis of one’s group membership triggers levels of distress equal to those triggered by being ostracized as an individual. Regardless of what the perpetrator represents. The writers know of only one study in which group-based humiliation was empirically examined. The researchers of this study found that feelings of humiliation were associated with powerlessness and with anger. The writers of this current article want to go a step further and they propose that humiliation can also be experience vicariously, that means after just observing the rejection of members of the ingroup rather than being personally rejected as an individual or member of a group. Empathy studies have shown that people may vicariously experience other people’s pain. Vicariously experienced pain activates the same brain regions as directly experienced pain and it triggers associated responses. Research on vicarious social pain is also emerging. Studies have shown that observing ostracism activates relevant brain regions and corresponding feelings in observers. This means that witnessing others being ostracized can make the observer feel ostracized himself. The same results have been found for vicarious embarrassment. However, empathic responses to vicarious rejection depend on emotional closeness to the victim. People closer to the victim will show more empathic responses. The writers expect that similar results will be found when the person’s relationship with the victim is defined by group membership. Some studies have shown that situations that involve members of one’s ingroup but not the person himself/herself can trigger emotional reactions that are similar to those of people who are directly involved.

Study 1

The goal of this study was to test the experimental rejection paradigm for inducing humiliation by examining whether people who are rejected indeed feel humiliated and whether this humiliation is associated with anger and powerlessness. The participants were assigned to one of two treatments: being included or ostracized in a game of Cyberball. In the Cyberball paradigm, the participants believe themselves to be playing a ball-toss game with two or three other players, who are actually computer-programmed confederates. Some of these are programmed to initially include and then exclude the participant. This creates rejection. If the participants are repeatedly excluded, one can speak of ostracism. Previous research with this paradigm has shown that being ostracized in the game leads people to feel angry and sad. In this first study, the writers also included a between-subjects factor (exposure: public vs. private) in order to explore whether the sensation of being publicly exposed enhances humiliation after rejection. In the public condition, webcams were attached to the screen and participants were told that the interaction would be observed by a group of psychology students. This was, of course, not true. After the game, participants were asked to rate on a Likert-scale how they felt during the game. Humiliations, powerlessness, shame, fear, happiness and anger were measured.

The results showed that humiliation was predicted by the ostracism manipulation. Being ostracized triggered stronger feelings of humiliation than being included. Ostracized participants also felt more powerless than included participants. They also experienced more anger. The people in the inclusion condition felt happier than people in the ostracism condition.

Study 2

In this study the research paradigm of Study 1 was used to test the proposition that vicarious group-based rejection can cause feelings of humiliation. The writers included an extra condition in which subjects observed other ingroup members being rejected by members of a salient outgroup. Previous research has shown that even if people are rejected by members of a despised outgroup (like the KKK) they show strong rejection effects. The writers of this article predicted that vicarious group-based humiliation is mainly ingroup-based. This means that it is more strongly triggered when members of an outgroup reject members of the ingroup than when they reject members of an outgroup. The Cyberball paradigm was used with three condition. In the personal rejection condition, the participant himself/herself was ostracized by two members of an outgroup. In the vicarious ingroup rejection condition, participants observed one ingroup member being ostracized by two outgroup members. In the vicarious outgroup rejection condition, participants observed one outgroup member being ostracized by two members of another outgroup. The same dependent measures as in study 1 were taken after the game.

The results show that more humiliation was experienced when participants were ostracized or when members of their ingroup were ostracized than when members of an outgroup were ostracized. Feelings of powerlessness were significantly higher after personal rejection than after rejection of ingroup members or than after rejection of outgroup members. Anger in response to personal rejection was stronger than anger in response to vicarious ingroup rejection or vicarious outgroup rejection. No significant difference was found between vicarious rejection of the ingroup and of the outgroup.

Study 3

In the third study, the number of perpetrators and victims were balanced. In this study, a procedure in which participants were first included and in the next round explicitly rejected, or in which they watched others being rejected, was applied. The participants were told specifically that the perpetrators did not consider them worth interacting with. The writers predicted that both personal rejection and observed rejection of ingroup members would trigger higher levels of humiliation, powerlessness and anger than observed rejection of outgroup members or no rejection.

The results yet again showed that participants experienced more humiliation when they were personally rejected or when members of their ingroup were rejected than when members of an outgroup were rejected or when no rejection happened. People also felt more powerless when they personally were rejected or when someone from their ingroup was rejected than participants in the other conditions. Participants also felt angrier when they were rejected or when members of their ingroup were rejected than when no rejection occurred or members of an outgroup were rejected.

These results show that people can experience humiliation vicariously after observing ingroup members (but no outgroup members) being rejected. They also show that humiliation is accompanied by anger and powerlessness.

When you look at a person, different aspects play a role. Individual characteristics and social categories will play a role in this. Another distinction to be made relates to the sensory domain. Psychologists have concentrated on one of many aspects at a time, when they try to understand person perception. The visual domain has obviously played a major role and because of this, some other sensory domains have been left more in the background. However, people we meet are not just static pictures but they talk and they reveal much about themselves with their speech styles and language. The writers of this text investigated whether regional accents result in more negative evaluations of candidates in a job interview independently of their qualifications.

There has been a lot of progress in understanding face perception since Bruce and Young’s face recognition model. This model states that there are identity specific and unspecific aspects of face recognition. Categorical information, like race and gender, can also be extracted during the face-encoding process and these aspects need to be integrated into a comprehensive person perception model. The categorical approach is more common in social psychology. Of course, in this field, the focus of interest is more on social categories the individual belongs to than on the unique individual. Categorical processing appears to be faster than identity processing and it should occur before individualization. Identity recognition and categorization influence each other. Categorizing a person is likely along primary social categories, like gender, age and ethnicity that are almost automatically activated. In social psychology, it is important to understand the different underlying processes that contribute to the activation of one category over the other. The importance of a given category can vary based on the context and the type of information available. The face reveals information about the person, but the voice also plays an important role.

If we want full understanding of person perception, the voice and speech perception need to be integrated with visual person perception. The face is at the centre of the face recognition model, but the model also includes a part called ‘facial speech analysis.’ This opens the door for speech and voice perception. The face and voice are strongly linked. Also, the face and voice contribute to identifying a familiar speaker’s identity. Speech differences also indicate in which social group somebody belongs (gender and age). Some differences are predominantly due to differences in physiology, but others are cultivated, like the use of lower pitch frequencies of American compared to British speakers. You can infer a variety of information from speech, like personality traits and voice attractiveness can influence the ascription of personality traits. It seems that people automatically appear to use voice and speech to infer information about the speaker. Theories of language attitudes distinguish between standard and non-standard varieties of given language. When a language develops, it will undergo a series of changes and among the many varieties within this language, one will be established as the standard one, while others become non-standard. There is social pressure to use standard language, and it acquires superiority on different dimensions that seem to be accepts and used by those speaking that language. Social status is one attribute associated with different language varieties. Using a regional accent or dialect, may indicate lower social status. In one study, American participants perceived British speakers as more intelligent and of higher social status than American speakers. With the use of the Speech Dialect Attitudinal Scale (SDAS), studies have found that dialect speakers were perceived as having lower socio-intellectual status and minor dynamic qualities compared to standard language speakers. This also goes for regional accents. Accents lead to the perception of speaker group membership, which in turn provokes a judgment of group status and of speaker status.

There is pressure to use standard language, but therefore it seems surprising that non-standard dialects and languages persist. One reason they do persist, is because they are an essential part of one’s (ethnic) identity. There are different dynamics between people based on the type language they use. This is explained with the communication accommodation theory. Different speech strategies can be context-based. You’ll probably speak differently to a friend than during a job-interview. Independently of those dynamics, each language variety (standard or non-standard) results in an evaluation of the speaker. Studies have shown that in general, standard language speakers are evaluated more positively across different dimensions, but these differences also varied based on the context as well as the country of the studies. One study found that people speaking with a non-standard dialect were attributed higher loyalty and integrity. It is somewhat difficult to compare some studied, because some concentrate on dialects and others on regional accents. Dialects comprise different words and grammar compared to standard language, so some differences found between the negative perceptions of people with a dialect were due to incomprehension. Speech styles seem to be irrelevant for manual labour positions, but they play a more important role for management positions. Accents should be unrelated to job performance, but they are salient cues within communication and influence evaluations of others.

The experiments

Much evidence shows that different factors influence the evaluation of speakers differently and the writers of this text wanted to test whether accent alone would be sufficient for discrimination in the context of a job interview. They used regional accents versus standard German accent. The aim of this article was to test whether hirability, competence and socio-intellectual status judgments of speakers depend on their regional accents, given only auditory information.

Experiment 1

The aim of the first experiment was to test the influence of different regional accents on speaker’s perceived competence, hirability and socio-intellectual status. They writers wanted to know whether there were differences in job interview outcome when regional accents are compared to a standard German accent. They writers thought that people speaking standard German would be judged as having the highest competence as well as having the highest chance to be hired. They also thought that regional accent speakers should be assigned lower socio-intellectual status.

In the first study, six different speakers were used, four of which had different accents (one woman and three men) and also a man and a woman who spoke standard German. A pilot-study revealed that participants were unable to tell if a voice belonged to the same or a different person (from the same gender). Participants were first told that they would hear part of a job interview and would have to imagine they were the employer and judge the speaker based on what they heard during the interview. After that, participants were presented with the job announcement and the job interview. Afterwards, participants had to rate traits of the speakers on a Likert-scale. Then, participants were told that they would hear the speaker again shortly and they needed to concentrate on their speech style and indicate their impression about the personality of each speaker. The last thing they had to do is to provide demographic information about themselves.

The results showed that speakers with a standard German accent were perceived as more competent than regional accent speakers. No difference was found between different regional accents. Standard German speakers were also rated as more hireable than regional accent speakers. Standard German speakers were also assigned higher socio-intellectual status compared to regional accent speakers. Bavarian speakers were assigned high socio-intellectual status while the Berlin and Saxon speakers were not. Accents can activate very complex set of stereotypes linked to a group and perhaps socio-intellectual status was linked with the general knowledge that Bavaria is a strong economic region of Germany.

Experiment 2

This second experiment was conducted to exclude any possible confound of individual voice characteristics on the findings. In this study, six speakers with regional accents were used and they had to record six statements (one each). All of them were also recorded saying the same sentence in standard German. This resulted in 12 statements, half spoken in standard German and half with different regional accents. Each participant had to evaluate one set. So, one participant heard only one version of each speaker. The participants were told to evaluate different speakers as if they were recruiters. After hearing each speaker, the participants evaluated the speaker on a Likert-scale.

The results show that speakers with a standard German accent were rated as more competent than regional accent speakers. Also, speakers with standard German accent would be hired with a higher probability than the same speakers with a regional accent. The same voices were used for standard German and for regional accents, and the writers can thus conclude that the differences they found were due to accent type and not any other voice or speech characteristics.

In experiment 2, no specific position description was provided. So it seems that the outcome can’t not only be generalized to management positions, but also other positions. However, future research should look into jobs which prefer regional accents and see whether the findings reverse in such contexts. These two experiments also don’t yield a hint that gender is used as a cue for competence ascriptions.

People reduce the complexity of the world by using (group) categorization. This will facilitate the information processing, but this may also result in stereotyping. Stereotypes may have a huge impact when the perceiver doesn’t know the target personally. People have different features and belong to different social categories. A lot of research is dedicated to stereotyping, but not a lot of research focuses on multiple social categories. Researchers want to know why sometimes one category influences perceivers’ views about another person and why sometimes another category influences their views. They also wonder how this may affect the information that is being recalled.

This study wants to research whether subtle cues of a target’s different social categories (gender and ethnics) will make salient different stereotypes about a person and whether this influences reviewer recall during an interview. In this study, participants needed to review the college application materials of an Asian American female. Some participants had her gender category (female) cued, some had her ethnic category (Asian) cued and others had neither category cued. One stereotype about Asian Americans is that they have superior quantitative skills compare to other ethnic groups. A common stereotype about women is that they have inferior quantitative skills compared to men. The researchers hypothesize that participants would recall lower math SAT scores for the applicant if the gender was cued, compared to participants who had the ethic category or neither category cued. They also think that the opposite is true: participants will recall higher math SAT scores for the applicant if the ethnicity was cued.

The researchers got to read some information about the applicant, like the SAT scores and other presentations and afterwards would be put in the experimental condition. During the debriefing all participants said that they really believed they were reviewing an applicant. The results supported the hypothesis: people recalled a lower math SAT score in the gender-cue situation than in the other situations and they recalled a higher math SAT score in the ethnicity-cue situation than in the other situations. One important thing to note is that in every situation, participants recalled lower math SAT scores than had been presented. This is maybe because gender is a more chronically accessible category than ethnicity. If this study would have been done with a male applicant, the recalled scores of the math SAT test would maybe not be much lower than presented.

Are there psychological consequences of perceiving that you have been a target of prejudice or believing that you have been discriminate against because your ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation? Many studies show that being the target of prejudice is associated with reduced well-being. Correlational studies show that people who see themselves as victims of discrimination also have poorer well-being than people who do not. Perceiving yourself as a target of discrimination is associated with depression and lower self-esteem. The provocative hypothesis states that awareness of the possibility of being a target of discrimination may provide the stigmatized with a means of self-esteem protection when they are faced with negative outcomes. The scientists behind this hypothesis state that the availability of prejudice as a plausible external cause of negative outcomes might allow the stigmatized person to discount their own role in producing those outcomes. Crocker and Major also hypothesized that, because prejudice is external to the self, attributing negative outcomes to prejudice should protect self-esteem. This is based on models of emotion that posit that attributing negative vents to causes external to the self protects affect and self-esteem and attributing negative outcomes to causes internal to the self for which the person is responsible leads to negative affect and low self-esteem.

There are some scientists who challenge the attribution to prejudice as an external attribution. They think that because one’s group membership is an aspect of the self, attributions to prejudice have a strong internal component. Some also dispute the hypothesis that attributions to discrimination protect self-esteem. These scientists think that because attributions to discrimination threaten one’s social identity, making such attributions will heighten and not decrease negative affect for members of stigmatized groups. They also say that attributions to discrimination are less damaging for members of high-status groups than for members of low-status groups because discrimination has a different meaning for the high-status groups than for the low-status groups. The conducted experiments by these scientists show that attributions to prejudice contain both an internal and an external component.

The discounting hypothesis does not require that attributions to discrimination are exclusively external. Attributing rejection to discrimination should be less painful than attributing it to internal, stable, global factors such as a lack of ability. It protects self-esteem under some circumstances. Research on this hypothesis showed that attributions to discrimination can protect self-esteem from rejection or failure. There is evidence that the perception of injustice is associated with the emotional response of anger. Anger is also a frequent response to perceiving that you’re being discriminated. There, you might expect people who blame rejection on discrimination to be angrier than people who blame rejection on a lack of ability or a jerk.

One of the goals of this study is to test the discounting hypothesis. The writers of this article believe that judgments of responsibility also play a role in determining when attributions to prejudice will protect self-esteem. Attributions to prejudice should be self-protective. This means that they should shift responsibility for negative events away from the self and toward discrimination. They lead individuals to discount their own responsibility for producing negative events. The writers predict than the more people discount a negative event (blaming it on prejudice more than on themselves) the higher their self-esteem is.

The study

This study tested the key theoretical assumptions of the discounting hypothesis and the self-blame discounting hypothesis. Male and female participants read a vignette in which a professor of the other sex rejected their request to enrol in a course. One third of the participants read that the professor was sexist and that he/she excluded only members of the participant’s gender. This is the so-called prejudice condition. Another third of the participants read that the professor was a jerk and that he/she excluded everyone who tried to admit the class. The last third group read that the professor thought they were stupid and excluded only the participant from the course in the personal rejection condition. Participants were then asked to indicate the extent to which the rejection was due to discrimination, internal causes, external causes and also how much they were to blame for the rejection. The writers also looked ad potential depressed, anxious and hostile emotions and they also examined the impact of rejection condition on the types of emotions. The writers thought that ratings of self-blame would be lower in the prejudice condition compared to the personal rejection condition. They also tested whether attributions to internal causes were lower and attributions to external causes were higher in the prejudice condition compared to the personal rejection condition. They also tested whether discounting would mediate the depressed emotion effect.

The results showed that participants in the prejudice condition rated the rejection as significantly more due to discrimination than did participants in the personal rejection condition. Participants in the personal rejection condition rated the rejection as significantly more due to discrimination than did those in the everyone rejected condition. Women were also more likely to blame the rejection on discrimination than were men. Participants in the prejudice condition were less likely to imagine blaming themselves for the professor’s refusal to let the in the course than were participants in the personal rejection condition. Also, participants in the prejudice condition anticipated attributing the rejection less to internal causes than did those in the personal rejection condition. Participants in the personal rejection and prejudice conditions attributed more to external causes than did participants in the everyone rejected condition. Participants in the personal rejection condition anticipated feeling more depressed than those in the everyone rejection condition. Also, participants in the prejudice condition anticipated feeling less depressed than those in the personal rejection condition. Participants in the prejudice and personal rejection conditions imagined feeling more hostile affect than the other group. Also, participants in the personal rejection condition expected to feel more anxiety than participants in the everyone rejected condition. The ratings in the prejudice conditions fell between these two.

The findings show the complex nature of attributions to discrimination. Being rejected because of prejudice against one’s group implicated the self, but it does not lead to as much self-blame and is not regarded as being due as much to internal causes as is being rejected because of lack of ability. People who were asked to imagine that a prejudiced professor rejected them anticipated feeling less depressed than people who imagined being personally rejected because of assumed intelligence. This self-protective effect of prejudice relative to personal deserving could be found among women and men. Different types of attributions are associated with distinct emotional responses. The discounting hypothesis also received support. This means that the more people blamed rejection on discrimination relative to blaming it on themselves, the less depression they experienced. Self-esteem is protected by blaming rejection on prejudice compared to blaming it on a lack of personal ability. It is not protected by blaming rejection on prejudice compared to blaming it on an indiscriminate jerk who excludes everyone. It makes people angrier to feel like a target of prejudice than to feel like a target of a person who excludes everyone. Self-esteem is only protected by attributing outcomes to prejudice against one’s social group when it serves to protect an even more core component of the self. Members of stigmatized and non-stigmatized groups can feel better about themselves if they attribute a negative outcome to discrimination rather than to a lack of personal deservings.

A limitation of this study was the use of a vignette paradigm rather than a paradigm in which people were actually exposed to prejudice.