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Self-activation and out-group contrast.

Natalie R Hall¹, Richard J Crisp

¹Department of Psychology, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Science, University of Reading, Berkshire, United Kingdom. Natalie.Hall@reading.ac.uk

The Journal of Social Psychology

|November 10, 2010

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Higher identifiers primed with an out-group stereotype show personal self-activation, leading to contrastive behavioral responses. This suggests the personal self, not just the social self, influences reactions to out-groups.

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Area of Science:

Social Psychology
Self-Perception Research

Background:

Higher identifiers primed with out-group stereotypes may exhibit contrastive behaviors due to in-group, social-self activation.
Priming the personal self can also induce contrastive judgments in individuals.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if personal self-activation occurs in higher identifiers when primed with an out-group stereotype.
To explore the role of personal self-activation in contrastive responding.

Main Methods:

An experiment was conducted involving participants identified as higher identifiers.
Participants were primed with either an out-group stereotype or an in-group condition.
Response times to self-words were measured under different priming conditions.

Main Results:

Higher identifiers primed with an out-group showed significantly faster response times to self-words compared to those primed with the in-group.
This indicates that the personal self is activated even when an out-group stereotype is presented.

Conclusions:

Personal self-activation is evident in higher identifiers when primed with an out-group.
This personal self-activation may be the underlying mechanism driving their contrastive behavioral responses.