title: The Politics of Affirmation Theory: When Group-Affirmation Leads to Greater Ingroup Bias.
abstract: It has been well established in the literature that affirming the individual self reduces the tendency to exhibit group-favoring biases. The limited research examining group-affirmation and bias, however, is inconclusive. We argue that group-affirmation can exacerbate group-serving biases in certain contexts, and in the current set of studies, we document this phenomenon directly. Unlike self-affirmation, group-affirmation led to greater ingroup-favoring evaluative judgments among political partisans (Experiment 1). This increase in evaluative bias following group-affirmation was moderated by political party identification and was not found among those who affirmed a non-political ingroup (Experiment 2). In addition, the mechanism underlying these findings is explored and interpreted within the theoretical frameworks of self-categorization theory and the multiple self-aspects model (Experiments 2 and 3). The broader implications of our findings for the understanding of social identity and affirmation theory are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Syracuse University, NY, USA gaehrlic@syr.edu.
authors.forename: Gaven A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Ehrlich
authors.affiliation: Syracuse University, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Richard H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Gramzow
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011057:Politics; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012933:Social Identification; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: group-affirmation; ingroup bias; intergroup processes; self-affirmation