The strategic confirmation of meta-stereotypes: how group members attempt to tailor an out-group's representation of themselves.
This article is concerned with the influence of the group membership of an audience on the description of the in-group. Negative meta-sterotypes (stereotype of the in-group believed to be held by members of a relevant out-group) have aversive consequences on the self (Vorauer, Main, & O'Connell, 1998). Group members may therefore try to modify the meta-sterotype to their advantage by confirming positive traits and disconfirming negative ones. Such a strategy is not relevant when one addresses in-group members because one does not expect them to adhere to the content of the meta-stereotype. The study varied the salience of the meta-stereotype orthogonally to the group membership of the audience (out-group vs. in-group). Participants (N = 75) were asked to pick traits that applied to their group. As predicted, participants selected more positive traits belonging to the meta-stereotype and fewer negative ones when addressing out-group members than in-group members, but this occurred only when the meta-stereotype was salient. Both low and high identifiers displayed this tendency. These results suggest that stereotypes can be used as political weapons.
Klein
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Belgian National Foundation for Scientific Research and Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. oklein@ulb.ac.be
Azzi
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D000339:Affect; D006801:Humans; D012649:Self Concept; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires