Ingroup-stereotypic explanatory bias: Assessment and enhancement of ingroup stereotyping

Not only do individuals stereotype people belonging to outgroups, but they also stereotype people who share their group membership. How does this ingroup stereotyping emerge, and like outgroup stereotyping, can it occur non-consciously? What conditions influence non-conscious (i.e., implicit) ingroup stereotyping, and what functions might it serve? Three experiments are presented to examine a form of implicit ingroup stereotyping, the Ingroup Stereotypic Explanatory Bias (Ingroup-SEB), and the factors that give rise to this process. In Experiment 1, Ingroup-SEB was evinced in the form of dispositional attributions for stereotype-consistent behavior and situational attributions for stereotype-inconsistent behavior when the stereotypic behaviors were familiar to participants. Experiment 2 showed that the Ingroup-SEB effect was stronger for positive than negative ingroup stereotypes. In both Experiments vs. instance-based) did not affect Ingroup-SEB, but influenced the extent to which participants explicitly endorsed ingroup stereotypes. Experiment 3 investigated the potential functions of the Ingroup-SEB response, and found that a type of collective self-esteem (i.e., the importance of an ingroup identity to the self-concept) was enhanced by exposure to information reflecting Ingroup-SEB for members of both achieved and ascribed groups. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to social identity motives and intra-group relations on an implicit versus an explicit level.