The Promotion Effect And Mechanism Of Common In-Group Identity On Ethnic Psychological Compatibility

Common In-group Identity Model(CIIM)is rooted in the social categorization perspective of intergroup behavior and believes that through the establishment of the common superior identity,the identity of group members changes from “we”(in-group)and “they”(out-group)to a more inclusive“we”(common in-group)and thus extend the preference of in-group to out-group members,and changes the attitude and behavior of out-group.This model has been supported by many studies,but few studies focus on the improvement of ethnic relations by community identity.China is a multi-ethnic country,ethnic relations affect national political stability and harmonious development of social relations.Ethnic psychological compatibility is a state of psychological preparation in which different ethnic groups accept each other and are willing to coexist harmoniously.The degree of this compatibility represents the development of ethnic relations.It is not only a deep-seated ethnic blending but also the foundation for the forming of Chinese community consciousness.The study of the promoting effect of common in-group identity on ethnic psychological compatibility has great theoretical and practical value for creating a strong sense of Chinese nation community and strengthening the national integration.At present,the research on the promotion of the ethnic psychological compatibility by common in-group identity is still in the primary phase,and there are some problems worthy of further exploration:First,it has been found that common in-group identity enables in-group members to regard out-groups members as “some of us”,which can not only promote positive emotions and positive behaviors such as forgiveness,self-disclosure and help of the out-group,but also increase the pro-social motivation and the intimacy among group members and thus make people more willing to reduce social and physical distance.But can these functions of common in-group identity enhance positive attitudes towards other ethnic groups and promote ethnic psychological compatibility?Second,by constructing the common superior identity,common in-group identity weakens the inter-ethnic boundary and perceives other ethnic groups(members of out-group)as members of in-group,and thus the positive bias of in-group will be extended to other ethnic groups.However,will it be possible to promote ethnic psychological compatibility by improving the positive interpretation bias of other ethnic information? Interpretation bias can be classified into automatic interpretation bias,iterative interpretation bias and off line interpretation bias.If common in-group identity can improve the positive interpretation bias of the ethnic information and promote the ethnic psychological compatibility,is it generated at the stage of initial meaning activation of cognitive processing(automatic interpretation),the stage of the meaning selection of information(iterative interpretation)or the stage of information interpretation(off line interpretation)?Third,the cognitive process of ethnic psychological compatibility promoted by common in-group identity is explored from the perspective of interpretation bias,and the self-report method or taking the reaction time as the index is used to measure the interpretation bias and ethnic psychological compatibility,but they cannot accurately reflect the cognitive process of ethnic psychological compatibility.Event-Related Potentials(ERP)technology has a high time sensitivity,which can reflect the fine processing stage from the perspective of time process and reveal the neurophysiological mechanism of cognitive activities from the perspective of the cognitive processing time process.If common in-group identity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility,what is the neurophysiological mechanism of cognitive processing ?Based on the above problems and the different attitudes of minority groups and majority groups towards common superior identity,this study divided all the participants into two different groups,namely minority and minority group,minority and majority group,to explore the promoting effect of common in-group identity on ethnic psychological compatibility and its mechanism respectively.Firstly,the behavioral experiment method was used to explore the promoting effect of common in-group identity on the psychological compatibility of the minority and minority group and the minority and majority group.Secondly,to reveal the cognitive process of common in-group identity’s promotion of ethnic psychological compatibility,behavioral experiment method is used to explore the psychological mechanism of promoting the psychological compatibility of the minority and minority group and the minority and majority group from the perspective of interpretation bias.Finally,to provides the information on the neurophysiological mechanism for the cognitive process of common in-group identity promoting ethnic psychological compatibility,ERP technology is used to further explore the neuromechanism of common in-group identity promoting the psychological compatibility the minority and minority group and the minority and majority group.The above problems were discussed through 10 sub-experiments in three studies.Study 1,including experiment 1 and experiment 2,explored whether common in-group identity can effectively and stably promote ethnic psychological compatibility through multiple methods within multiple groups.Experiment 1 explored whether common in-group identity can promote ethnic psychological compatibility.The explicit attitude and the implicit attitude may be two different psychological structures,which may be separated.Therefore,experiment 1 explored the promoting effect of common in-group identity on the explicit and implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities through experiment 1a and experiment 1b respectively.Experiment 1a measured the explicit ethnic psychological compatibility and re-categorized the common in-group identity of participants from Zhuang ethnic group and Miao ethnic group and found that the common in-group identity significantly promoted the explicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities.Primed with the common in-group identity of participants from Zhuang ethnic group and Miao ethnic group,experiment 1b adopted the Single Category Implicit Association Test(SC-IAT)to measure the implicit psychological compatibility.The results of experiment 1b found that the common in-group identity significantly promoted the implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities.Experiment 2 explored whether the common in-group identity can promote the explicit and implicit psychological compatibility of the minority and the majority ethnic group through experiment 2a and experiment 2b.Primed with the common in-group identity of the participants from Zhuang ethnic group and Han ethnic group,Experiment 2a measured the explicit ethnic psychological compatibility.The results showed that the common in-group identity significantly narrowed the explicit psychological distance between the minority and the majority ethnic group.When there is a competition between groups,there may be a negative group attitude among the two groups.Experiment 2b introduced the interactive situation of the ethnic groups(with or without competition)and re-categorized the common in-group identity of participants from zhuang ethnic group and Han ethnic group.GO / NO-GO Association Test(GNAT)was used to measure the implicit psychological compatibility in Experiment 2b,and the results indicated that common in-group identity significantly reduced the implicit psychological distance between minorities and the majority group.Study 2,which includes experiment 3 and experiment 4,explored the psychological mechanism of ethnic psychological compatibility promoted by common in-group identity from the perspective of interpretation bias.Experiment 3 explored the role interpretation bias plays in the process of common in-group identity promoting the explicit and implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities through experiment 3a and experiment 3b.Experiment 3a repeatedly verified the results of experiment 1a,and at the same time,also increased the measurement of automatic interpretation bias,iterative interpretation bias and off line interpretation bias.It aims to explore whether common in-group identity can improve the positive interpretation bias of ambiguous events of ethnic minorities,and promote the explicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities.The results showed that common in-group identity promotes the explicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities through the automatic interpretation of positive bias and off line positive interpretation bias.Experiment 3b,which also increased the measurement of automatic interpretation bias,iterative interpretation bias and off line interpretation bias(the same as experiment 3a),was repeated to verify the results of experiment 1b.It explored whether the common in-group identity can improve the positive interpretation bias of ambiguous events of ethnic minorities and thus promoted the implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities.The results showed that common in-group identity promoted the implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities through the automatic interpretation of positive bias.Experiment 4 explored the role of interpretation bias in promoting the explicit and implicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities and the majority ethnic group with experiment 4a and experiment 4b.Experiment 4a,which repeatedly verified the results of Experiment 2a and added the measurement of automatic interpretation bias,iterative interpretation bias and off line interpretation bias(similar to experiment 3a,only replaced participants of Miao ethnic with Han ethnic),was designed to explore whether the common in-group identity can improve the positive interpretation bias for ambiguous events of ethnic groups and thus promoted the implicit psychological compatibility between ethnic minorities and majority ethnic groups.The results of experiment 4a showed that common in-group identity promoted explicit psychological compatibility between ethnic minorities and the majority ethnic groups through the automatic interpretation of positive bias and iterative positive interpretation bias.Repeatedly verifying the results of experiment 2b and adding the measurement of automatic interpretation bias,iterative interpretation bias and off line interpretation bias(the same as experiment 4a),Experiment 4b explored whether the common in-group identity can improve the positive interpretation bias of ambiguous events of ethnic groups and promote the implicit psychological integration of ethnic minorities and majority ethnic groups.The results found that the common in-group identity promoted the implicit psychological integration of ethnic minorities and majority ethnic groups through the automatic interpretation of positive bias and iterative positive interpretation bias.By the use of ERP technology,Study 3,which included experiments 5 and experiments 6,explored the neuromechanism of common in-group identity promoting ethnic psychological compatibility.Experiment 5 primed the common in-group identity of participants from Zhuang ethnic group and Miao ethnic group and used SC-IAT to measure the implicit ethnic psychological compatibility.ERP technology was employed to explore the neuromechanism of the psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities promoted by common in-group identity.It was found that enhanced attention(P2)and deep processing(LPC)to relevant information of the target ethnic group may be the neuromechanism by which common in-group identity promoted the psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities and the anterior part of the brain may be the main area where common in-group identity promoted the psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities.Experiment 6 re-categorized the common in-group identity of participants from Zhuang ethnic group and Han ethnic group,and measured the implicit ethnic psychological compatibility by employing GNAT method.ERP technology was used in this experiment to explore the neuromechanism of common in-group identity promoting the psychological compatibility between ethnic minorities and majority ethnic groups.It was found that early attention to relevant information of target ethnic group(N1)and reduced inhibition in the middle stage(N2)may be the neuromechanism by which common in-group identity promoted psychological compatibility between the ethnic minorities and the majority ethnic groups.The anterior region of the brain may be the main area where cognitive control played a role in the common in-group identity group,and it has the left-brain advantage in processing the information of the “target ethnic group”.In conclusion,this research which targeted at different ethnic groups(Zhuang,Miao,Han),has proved that common in-group identity can effectively and stably promote ethnic psychological compatibility by using different manipulating paradigm(re-categorization,common in-group identity primes)and different ethnic psychological compatibility method(explicit,SC-IAT,GNAT)in different groups interactive situation(competition,no competition).The psychological mechanism of ethnic psychological compatibility promoted by common in-group identity mainly includes the stage of initial meaning activation of cognitive processing(automatic interpretation),the stage of meaning selection of information(iterative interpretation)and the stage of information interpretation(off line interpretation).The explicit psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities promoted by common in-group identity happens at the stage of meaning activation of cognitive processing and the stage of information interpretation,and the implicit psychological compatibility happens at the stage of meaning activation of cognitive processing,and the explicit and implicit psychological compatibility between the ethnic minorities and the majority at the stage of meaning activation and meaning selection.The enhanced attention and deep processing of relevant information about the target ethnic groups may be the neuromechanism of psychological compatibility of ethnic minorities promoted by the common in-group identity.The early attention to the target ethnic group information and the reduced inhibition at the middle stage may be the neuromechanism that promotes the psychological compatibility between the minority group and the majority ethnic group.The anterior part of the brain may be the main area where common in-group identity promotes ethnic psychological compatibility.In a word,under the current experimental conditions,common in-group identity can steadily and effectively promote ethnic psychological compatibility.The influence of group size on the psychological mechanism of ethnic psychological compatibility promoted by common in-group identity mainly occurs at the stage of meaning selection.The anterior part of the brain may be the main area where common in-group identity plays a role.It can promote ethnic psychological compatibility in two paths.One is to increase attention and deepen positive information processing;the other is to decrease alertness and weaken the processing.Group size is the key to the path selection.This study confirms the validity of SC-IAT and GNAT paradigm in the research of psychological compatibility and constructs a two-level and three-way psychological compatibility measurement system.At the same time,the model of common in-group identity is extended from the explicit level to the implicit level,and is also extended from the perspective of cognitive processing.This study constructs a processing model of how common in-group identity promotes ethnic psychological compatibility,which is useful for us to understand the cognitive processing process of how common in-group identity promotes ethnic psychological compatibility.This study provides a reference for the cultivation and construction of the common in-group,the consolidation of the consciousness of the Chinese national community and the promotion of ethnic integration.This research has certain theoretical and practical value,but there are still some limitations.For example,participants of this study are from Miao ethnic,Zhuang ethnic and Han ethnic.Since language and religion is also an important part of ethnic culture,it is necessary to consider the possible role of language and religion in ethnic psychological compatibility in future research.The psychological mechanism by which common in-group identity promotes ethnic psychological compatibility may be influenced by both social cognition and social emotion.This study investigates the influence of interpretation bias as a cognitive factor.Future studies may explore the psychological mechanism by which common in-group identity promotes ethnic psychological compatibility from other cognitive factors and emotional factors.In this study,ERP technology was used and it was found that the anterior region of the brain may be the main region where common in-group identity plays a role.In future studies,f MRI and other technologies could be used to further reveal the brain spatial location of the common in-group identity when it comes to play.