The Influence Of Meta-stereotype On Cooperative Behavior: Inter-group Anxiety And The Role Of Imaginary Intergroup Contact

As China has been changing from traditional society to modern society,the social structure has undergone profound changes,and ideology has undergone profound changes.In this process,the establishment of harmonious interpersonal relationships is the key to building a harmonious society.In the society there are a variety of groups,the relationship between groups affect the whole society harmony and stability,so the issue of intergroup relations has been widely studied.Previous studies have found that prejudice and discrimination between groups have seriously affected intergroup relations.Researchers from the perspective of meta-cognition put forward the concept of meta-stereotypes,and that the meta-stereotypes have an impact on intergroup relations.In the past two decades,the researchers have carried out a lot of research on meta-stereotype,and found that the meta-stereotypes have a significant influence on the intergroup relationship.As an important social cognitive factor influencing intergroup relations,meta-stereotype is prevalent among many groups and threatens intergroup relations.For example:women think that in the eyes of men they are weak,dependent,and sentimental and so on.Because the contents of meta-stereotypes are mostly negative,so in most cases will damage the intergroup relationship.Cooperative behavior as an important way of interpersonal interaction,there are also the possibility of being influenced by meta-stereotype.And intergroup anxiety,as a latent potential mechanism of meta-stereotype,played a mediate role in the relationship between meta-stereotypes and cooperative behavior.At the same time,in order to eliminate the negative effects of meta-stereotypes on intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior,according to the contact theory proposed by Allport(1954),we used the imagining intergroup contact strategy to intervene.Therefore,this study explored the influence of meta-stereotypes on the intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior of women and liberal arts students,and analyzed.the role of intergroup anxiety in the effect of meta-stereotypes on cooperative behavior(study 1 and 2).On this basis,attempting to use imagining the intergroup contact strategy buffered the negative effects of meta-stereotypes(study 3).Combined with previous studies,this study using experimental methods,women and liberal arts students as subjects,respectively,through three experiments systematically explored the effect of meta-stereotypes on cooperative behavior,underlying mechanism and intervention strategy.In the study 1,women,as the participants,were randomly assigned to meta-stereotype group and control group.Then all the subjects completed the intergroup anxiety questionnaire and the ultimatum game,which measured the participants' the level of intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior.The results showed that the level of intergroup anxiety of meta-stereotype group was significantly higher than that of the control group,and the rejection rate in the ultimatum game was also significantly higher than that of the control group,that is,participants in the meta-stereotype group showed less cooperation behavior.Further analysis of the relationship among meta-stereotypes,intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior showed that intergroup anxiety plays a mediate role in the effect of meta-stereotype on cooperative behavior.The study 2,the liberal arts students as the participants,science students as the out-group,and the experimental process basically the same as study 1,has got results consistent with the study 1.That is,compared with the control group,participants in the meta-stereotype expressed higher level of intergroup anxiety and less cooperative behavior,and intergroup anxiety play a mediate role in the relationship between the meta-stereotype and cooperative behavior.In study 3,female,also as the participants,were randomly assigned to three groups:the meta-stereotype group,imagining intergroup contact group and the imagining scenery group.All participants were activated meta-stereotype,and then accepted the different manipulation.Participants in meta-stereotype group directly completed intergroup anxiety questionnaire and the ultimatum game.However,participants in the imagining intergroup contact group and imagining scenery group imagined positive intergroup activities and outdoor landscape,respectively,after which to complete the group of anxiety and the ultimatum game.The results showed that participants in the meta-stereotype group expressed significantly higher level of intergroup anxiety than that of the imagining intergroup contact group,but it was not different from the imagining scenery group.In the ultimatum game,the rejection rate of participants in meta-stereotype group was significantly higher than that of the imagining intergroup contact group,but that was no difference from the imagining scenery group.That is to say,it is assumed that imagining intergroup contact can alleviate the negative effects of meta-stereotype on intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior,but only to imagining positive scenery did not work.This result further confirmed the covariant relations among meta-stereotypes,intergroup anxiety and cooperative behavior.