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Updated: Sep 12, 2025

The Social Dimension of Stress: Experimental Manipulations of Social Support and Social Identity in the Trier Social Stress Test
Published on: November 19, 2015
Conflicting identities and cooperation between groups: experimental evidence from a mentoring programme
Antonio M Espín1, Maria Paz Espinosa2, Maria J Vázquez-De Francisco3,4
1Department of Applied Economics, Universidad de Granada, Granada, Andalucia, Spain.
Abstract:
Well-functioning human societies require the integration of vulnerable minorities, yet leading scientific theories conflict on how easily diverse groups cooperate. We experimentally investigate cooperation in 14 centres of a mentoring programme where participants have two possible natural identities-individuals raised under legal guardianship, suffering a negative stereotype (G; n = 112) and users without such a social stigma (NG; n = 82). Participants played a prisoners' dilemma game with an anonymous partner from the same centre (centre-ingroup) and from another centre (centre-outgroup). For individuals without a history within-centre interaction, we find centre-outgroup favouritism among G and centre-ingroup favouritism among NG. However, the longer G individuals have been in the centre the more centre-ingroup favouritism they display, while the opposite is true for NG. Regardless of within-centre history, both G and NG individuals cooperate less with the centre-ingroup (versus outgroup) as the probability that the centre-ingroup is G increases. Thus, we observe patterns of centre-outgroup and natural-outgroup favouritism among G which challenge theoretical frameworks exclusively focusing on ingroup favouritism. Our findings highlight the roles of system-justification and stereotypes in intergroup cooperation and have implications for the integration of vulnerable groups and the optimization of social policy programmes.
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