The Influence Of "I" And The Motivation On Sexual Preference In Gender

As human being, we always live in groups. Often the case is, once we are labeledas a member of one group, we will become biased in making decisions whenmembers of that group are involved. The word bias here often refers that we evaluateour group or group members more favorably or positively. In social psychology, thisphenomenon is called ingroup favoritism. Past researches often defined the group byvacation, ethnicity, and location, seldom have studied the gender group, which is thetopic this study tries to work on. In this paper, three experiments were conducted,which target to unveil relevant mechanisms.Study1comprises two experiments, which aim to find out whether there existsingroup favoritism in gender groups and what kind of role mating motive plays in it.In experiment1a,34female college students took part in the experiment. Afterentering into laboratory, participants first viewed a movie clip, which was used toelicit relevant motive based which group the participants were in. In experiment group,a loving movie clip was played, which was used to induce mating motive; in controlgroup, a cartoon movie clip was played. Length of the movie clips was matched. Also,in case that the movies induced different emotions between different groups,participants were asked to fill in a self-report emotion questionnaire (PANAS), then tofinish a go/no-go task, which was used to measure implicit ingroup favoritism basedon gender group. Experiment1b is similar to1a in procedure, except the participantshere were males and some materials in the go/no-go task were changed. Accordingthese two experiments, we found (1) these existed ingroup favoritism based on gendergroup in females;(2) males didn’t show ingroup favoritism based on gender group;(3)when the mating motive was primed, females would show stronger ingroup favoritismbut only when the group members are highly attractive, evaluating them as morepositive;(4) male participants’ ingroup favoritism would not be influenced by matingmotive or group members’ facial attractiveness.Study2tries to answer why female shows ingroup favoritism based on gendergroup. We hypothesized it was because of the intimate link between “self” and“female” in female’s mental structure. Here the logic is “for I am good, and I am a girl,so the girl is good”. To test this hypothesis, we recruited40female college students totake part in the study. As in experiment1and experiment2, we used go/no-go task tomeasure participants’ ingroup favoritism. Also, because we hypothesized the linkbetween self and female played an important role in the production of ingroupfavoritism, if the link between self and female is prominent, then participants shouldshow much stronger gender-ingroup favoritism. To induce the stronger link, we askedparticipants to complete a conditioning connection task. After finishing the formertask, participants were asked to complete another go/no-go task, which was used to measure participants’ implicit self-attitude. The result showed (1) when the linkbetween self and female was prominent, participants would show more intensegender-ingroup favoritism;(2) participants’ implicit self-attitude was positivelycorrelated with the gender-ingroup favoritism level. If the participants held morepositive attitudes towards themselves, they would also show higher gender-ingroupfavoritism level.Based on study1and study2, we draw the following conclusion:(1) There exists ingroup favoritism based on gender division, but only in females.(2) Mating motive can affect female’s gender-ingroup favoritism level: under thecondition of group members with high facial attractiveness, when the mating motiveis primed, individuals will show much stronger gender-ingroup favoritism.(3)“Self” plays as a moderator in the production of female’s gender-ingroupfavoritism.