The Effect Of Perceived Intergroup On Out-Group Helping

Groups are important to group members in a way that they can satisfy their psychological needs. When members of a group perceive that an out-group is in a position to cause them harm, they will experience intergroup threat. Intergroup threat is ubiquitous in our society. The perception of intergroup threat would not only promote or generate negative social attitude and behavior, but would also undermine or reduce positive social attitude or social behavior. Previous studies found that intergroup threat would have negative influence on in-group members’ helping attitude and behavior toward out-group members, which included violation to in-group members’ value, competition of job opportunities between in-group and out-group members, group status instability of the in-group and actions conducted by out-group members that would do harm to in-group members’ health. Whereas prior studies focused on on-going or just-happened intergroup threat, which is classified as realistic intergroup threat, the present study focused on intergroup threat related to events happened long ago, which is classified as historical intergroup threat. Specifically, the present research attempted to test whether prior conflicts between groups would undermine out-group helping. Prior conflicts were found to be a resource of intergroup threat. Group members that had prior conflicts would be much likely to perceive intergroup threat. Therefore, we presumed that intergroup threat caused by prior conflicts would undermine out-group helping, just as realistic intergroup threat does.Two experiments were conducted to test our hypothesis. Both experiments were conducted in a natural disaster context. In Experiment1, participants were presented with photos taken from earthquake disaster scenes, in order to make them involve into the helping context. Japan served as the prior conflict intergroup threat out-group as it had prior conflicts with the in-group.South Korea served as the realistic economic competition intergroup threat out-group as it competes with Chinain economic domain currently. And a fictitious out-group named Kelu served as the unthreatening out-group as it had no interaction with the in-group. We tested participants’perceived intergroup threat to confirm that Japan was perceived as the threatening out-group and Kelu as the unthreatening out-group. The results showed that:(1) participants were more likely to help the unthreatening out-group than the threatening out-group;(2) participants donated more money to the unthreatening out-group than the threatening out-group.Experiment2was conducted in a laboratory context with anonymous out-groups to explore the relationship between intergroup threat caused by prior conflicts and out-group helping. Prior conflicts and realistic territory dispute were directly manipulated and perceived intergroup threat was tested for manipulation check, which implied that the threat manipulation was successful. Besides, in order to rule out the effect of out-groups’need of help on out-group-helping, we tested participants’ perceived need-of-help of the target out-group. The rating showed that there’s no difference of need-of-help among three out-groups. The results showed that:(1) participants were more likely to help the unthreatening out-group than both threatening out-groups (prior conflict threatening out-group and realistic territory dispute threatening out-group);(2) participants donated more money to the unthreatening out-group than both threatening out-groups.By the results of Experiment1and Experiment2, we tested the hypothesis that intergroup threat caused by prior conflicts would undermine in-group members’ help toward out-group members, just as realistic intergroup threat does. We extended previous studies in a way that intergroup threat affected on out-group helping not only included on-going or just-happened events, but also included events happened long ago. Prior conflicts between groups happened a long time ago; somehow it still have negative impact on present intergroup helping behavior. It is of high importance and practical meaning to find ways to undermine peoples’ perceived intergroup threat cause by prior conflict and to enhance intergroup helping.