Perceived outgroup threat makes it harder to attribute complex identities to minority groups

Abstract

Recent experimental interventions aimed at reducing the intergroup bias have employed the potential of dually identified minority group members to act as a socalled “gateway” between two groups they represent. In a typical intervention, minority members (e.g. Bosniaks from the Sandžak region) are portrayed as strongly identified both with Bosniak ethnicity and Serbian nationality. Learning this generalizes to less prejudice against Bosniaks as a group. There are two ways to employ these interventions: [a] the majority ingroup perspective – participants are presented with the descriptive norm according to which majority members (Serbs) perceive the minority (Sandžak Bosniaks) as dually identified, or [b] the minority outgroup (OG) perspective – participants are presented with the story in which minority (Sandžak Bosniaks) describe themselves as dually identified. The precondition for both types of interventions to generalize is for participants to endorse the idea that a minority group can be dually identified. To this end, we contrasted the effectiveness of the two interventions in a single design. Additionally, we tested whether OG feelings and perception of OG as a threat affect their effectiveness. Participants (N = 145, ethnic Serbs) first filled in an intergroup threat scale (9 items, α = .92) and indicated their feelings towards Bosniaks using the Feeling thermometer. Then they were randomly exposed to either [a] intervention based on the ingroup descriptive norm, or [b] intervention based on the outgroup’s experience of dual identity. Finally, they indicated the extent to which they perceive Sandžak Bosniaks as having Serbian and Bosniak identity; we computed the dual identity perception score that ranged 0-100. Hierarchical linear regression analysis showed that the two interventions were equally effective in inducing the perception of the minority group’s dual identity (Step 1). However, we observed strong effects of both OG threat perception and OG feelings that accounted for 40% of the variance (p < .001) of dual identity perception (Step 2). There was no interaction between intervention type and threat or feelings (step 3). Although our results are encouraging in that they show that both interventions successfully induced the idea of dual identity of a minority group, they call for caution as this effectiveness is reduced in people who perceive the minority as a threat and are more prejudiced (i.e. in the very people that should be targeted).