Group-reference Effect Triggers Feeling Of Familiarity

Since Johnson, C and Gadon,O (2002) has examined the group-reference effect which was based on the self-reference effect, researchers have found that the self in group not only affects the cognitive process.but also influences the individual emotion and motivation process. According to self-categorization (Brewer and Gardner,1996) theory, people may self-categorize at different levels ranging from the more personal to the more social and potentially to the most inclusive superordinate categories and then in-group will become a very important component of the self, it will make the cognition process of stimulation, which refers to the in-group.more easier and also make the stimulation more favorable.In this study we want to use Positive-cue-familiarity effect which was used in the study of Meghan.K & Housley (2010) to investigate whether the words(we, Monolian-ethnic minority).which relevant to the in-group and which was also used in the group-reference effect, are positive enough to trigger the feeling of familiarity. In our study we found that to Mogolian subjects, both "we" and "Monolian-ethnic minority" are positive enough to trigger the feeling of familiarity. In our experiment 3. we use the word "mother" to investigate, whether it is positive enough to trigger the feeling of positive. Because, we assume that mother is relevant to self, and at the same time it is the membership of family which is also inclusive to the group concept. Unfortunately, we could not get the result which we expect. The reason of this needs further investigation.