Perspective-Taking Decrease Negative Cognitive Responses Induced By Intergroup Threat-an Experimental Study

Intergroup threat will be experienced when members of in-group perceive the potential harm induced by out-group (Stephan, Ybarra,&Morrison,2009). The harm involves damages to body or resources (realistic threats), and challenges to beliefs, values of in-group (symbolic threats)(Stephan&Renfro,2002). Intergroup threat would induce many negative cognitive responses (Stephan, Ybarra,&Morrison,2009), such as cognitive biases, which include ultimate attribution error (Pettigrew,1979), communicative and memory biases (Maass, Ceccarelli,&Rudin,1996), and stereotype disconfirmation bias (Ybarra, Stephan, Schaberf,&Lawrence,2003). In addition, people under threat are more likely to forgive extreme behaviors, and justify violence toward out-group members (Stephan et al.,2009). When threatened, people would more likely to oppose a policy which is advantageous to out-group (Renfro, Duran, Stephan,&Clason,2006; Sawires&Peacock,2000). The opposition induced by intergroup threat, will probably impede the execution of a positive policy, and restrict the out-group to advance. Negative cognitive responses induced by intergroup threat potentially do harm to intergroup relations and need to receive our attention (Stephan et al.,2009). About moderation of the negative cognitive responses induced by intergroup threat, much research has shown perspective-taking can decrease stereotyping and prejudice that concerns an out-group (e.g., Batson, Polycarpou et al.,1997; Galinsky&Moskowitz,2000; Yee&Bailenson, 2006; Wang et al.,2014). Perspective-taking is about thinking from another’s viewpoints, imagining another’s circumstances, and "walking a mile in the person’s shoes"(Galinsky&Ku,2004). When taking another’s perspectives, we would likely to understand their feelings, perceptions and motivations (Galinsky, Magee, Inesi,&Gruenfeld,2006). In the present study, we conducted three experiments to explore the effect of perspective-taking on moderating negative responses that stem from intergroup threat.Study1tried to explore the effect of intergroup threat by requesting participants to judge a policy advantageous to out-group. The results showed that participants in the threat condition opposed the policy more so than those in the control condition. This highlights that intergroup threat can indeed induce negative cognitive response. Study2tried to prove study l’s finding and explore the predictive effect of perspective-taking. We measured realistic threat, perspective-taking tendency and the attitude toward a similar policy. The results showed that realistic threat significantly predict the opposition to that policy. However, the relationship between perspective-taking and the opposition on that policy was not significant. In order to explore the effect of perspective-taking directly, in study3, we manipulated perspective-taking to demonstrate its effect on moderating negative cognitive responses induced by intergroup threat. The results showed that when threatened by an out-group, participants in the perspective-taking condition were significantly less opposed to the policy than those in the control condition. That is, perspective-taking positively moderates the negative cognitive response induced by intergroup threat. In addition, in study1and study3, we manipulated execution time as an independent variable, and found that people significantly opposed that policy executed sooner than later.In summary, the present study explored the relationship of perspective-taking, intergroup threat, and negative cognitive responses. The conclusions are as the following:1) intergroup threat can induce negative cognitive response;2) when instructed to take the perspective of out-group, negative cognitive response induced by threat can be decreased;3) time will influence the attitude toward a policy advantageous to out-group:the sooner it comes, the more strongly people oppose.