The Influence Of Group Identity And Interaction Performance On The Preference-Categorization Effect

The Preference-Categorization Effect refers to the fact that people will conduct more detailed classification and processing of the objects they like and prefer,which is manifested in the fact that people will use more refined scale when evaluating the objects they like and prefer.On the basis of predecessors,this study migrates the effect of preference classification from the field of consumption evaluation to the field of intergroup evaluation.Through three studies,this paper discusses how group identity and interaction performance affect the classification effect of preferences in intergroup evaluation.Study 1 preliminarily verified the existence of the preference classification effect in the context of Chinese culture.Study 2 discussed the evolution trend of people’s evaluation of the internal and external group members in four different situations,namely,initial contact,learning of competitive intention,competitive success and competitive failure.Study 3 discusses the evolvement trend of people’s evaluation of group members in four different situations:initial contact,learning of cooperative intention,cooperative success and cooperative failure.In the first study,the existence of preference classification effect in intergroup situation was preliminarily verified by the method of investigation and experiment.Firstly,342 college students were randomly divided into 4 groups,and the results basically verified the existence of the preferential classification effect by evaluating the in-group and out-group from different dimensions.In the field of intergroup evaluation,the subjects used a relatively high scale when evaluating the inner group,that is,the inner group had a finer distinction.At the same time,we found that compared with the scale of negative dimension,the subjects used the scale of positive dimension to conduct the intergroup evaluation,and the scale of higher grade was adopted.In study 2,the influence of group identity and interactive performance on preference classification in competitive situations is discussed by means of investigation and experiment.Taking 400 college students as subjects,they were randomly divided into 4 groups.Each subject was required to evaluate the performance of in-group or out-group in 4 different situations,including initial contact,learning of competitive intention,competitive success and competitive failure.The results show that in the competitive situation,the group identity and the interaction performance have no significant influence on the preference classification effect.In study 3,the influence of group identity and interactive performance on preference classification in the competitive situation was discussed by the method of investigation and experiment.269 college students were randomly divided into four groups.Each subject was asked to evaluate the performance of in-group or out-group in four different situations:initial contact,learning of cooperative intention,cooperative success,and cooperative failure.The results showed that in the cooperative situation,when the subjects evaluated the inner group with the scale of negative dimension,the evaluation score of the subjects in the cooperative success stage was significantly lower than that in the initial contact stage.In the context of cooperation,with the emergence of the performance results of cooperation success,the evaluation score showed a trend of gradual improvement when the subjects adopted the positive dimension scale for evaluation.Based on the above research,the following conclusions can be drawn.In the context of cooperation,both the in-group and out-group were evaluated by individuals.With the success of their own group and out-group teamwork,when the positive dimension scale was used for evaluation,the subjects gradually adopted more refined scale evaluation.