Attitude Of Urban And Rural University Students To Group Preference And Relationship Between The Attitude And Implicit Inferiority

Social identity theory proposes that: By the process of self-categorization, individuals tell the difference between in-group and out-group; and by the process of social comparison, members within a group tend to exaggerate the difference between the 2 groups in some dimensions, in order to give a more positive evaluation to the in-group; but when the individual is a member of a vulnerable group, out-group preference possibly occurs. According to the social identity theory, members of vulnerable groups have a weak sense of identity to their in-groups, and the weaker the sense, the higher the possibility they would prefer the out-groups. Based on the theory, this study aimed to investigate the characteristics and differences of group preference between urban and rural origin university students.The subjects of this study were urban and rural origin university students. In study 1, a Group Preference Questionnaire was developed to measure the urban and rural origin students'in-group and out-group preference levels explicitly; in study 2, the Affect Misattribution Procedure was used to explore implicit attitudes of university students to the urban and rural groups; in study 3, the CFII scale was used to measure the levels of implicit inferiority of urban and rural origin students and the relationship between the implicit inferiority and implicit group preference was explored.Through the above three studies, the following conclusions were reached:(1) By the explicit Group Preference Questionnaire, both urban and rural origin college students showed greater in-group preference;(2) Through the implicit measurements, urban origin college students showed more in-group membership preference, while the attitude of rural origin students was not significant;(3) For rural origin students, there was a significant correlation between implicit inferiority and implicit group preference, which showed that the higher the level of implicit inferiority, the more the out-group preference; but for urban origin students, the correlation was not significant.