The double negative effect: the (almost) paradoxical role of the individual self in minority and majority members'...

The authors examined the interactive influence of accessibility of the individual self and relative in-group size on group-level as opposed to individual-level information processing. In Expt 1, the authors predicted and found that, when accessibility of the individual self was low, minority members tended more towards group-level information processing than did majority members. This was not true when accessibility of the individual self was high. Contrary to the authors' hypothesis, however, the disappearance of the minority-majority effect in the high-accessibility condition did not result from a decrease in group-level information processing among minority members, but from an increase among majority members. Experiment 2 replicated this unexpected effect using two different measures of group level information processing. It also provided additional data on the dynamic interplay of the individual self and the collective self which seems to be responsible for the observed effects.