The Characteristics And Interventions Of Intergroup Favoritism In Lower-status Group

In social reality,individuals usually classify people into different groups through social comparison,that is,categorize as members of ingroup or outgroup,in order to simplify the cognition of the world and the construction of social relations.And in social interactions,individuals normally exhibit intergroup biases,mainly referring to the phenomenon of ingroup favoritism.Specifically,individuals have a positive bias towards their groups and members,and a series of empirical studies have corroborated the prevalence of ingroup favoritism.Social Identity Theory suggests that ingroup favoritism plays an essential role in the individuals’ mental and physical health,which profits self-enhancement,maintains the integrity of the self-concept,improves physical health,and has important survival and adaptive value.But the actual intergroup attitudes are more complex than expected.The low status groups have relatively more complex intergroup preferences.In low-status groups,the individuals tend to display more preference for out-groups,and even only outgroup favoritism without ingroup favoritism.And this favoritism is not only expressed in the explicit level,but also in the implicit level.However,most of the existing studies have mainly focused on the general relationship between the positive and negative dimensions of the target group,and most of them have focused on one of intergroup attitudes or single attitudes,Which can’t fully explore the cognitive evaluation characteristics of intergroup favoritism among low-status groups.In addition,ingroup is a part of individual self-concept,and ingroup favoritism profits self-enhancement,maintains the integrity of the self-concept,and has important survival and adaptive value.For low-status groups,it is a trouble for their self-efficacy and even physical health that they have less favoritism toward to their own group.Fortunately,in accordance with behavioral studies on intergroup attitudes and beliefs,the ingroup attitudes of implicit and explicit are malleable.Dasgupta et al(2013)found that the negative ingroup stereotypes can be changed by exposure to atypical positive ingroup members.Neuroimaging studies have also suggested that intergroup biases is largely influenced by the function of different brain regions,that is,the physiological basis may also have a key role in the ingroup favoritism.Among them,the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex(dmPFC)may be one of the important brain area associated with intergroup biases.However,most of studies have focused more on behavioral interventions,but paid less attention to the role of physiological changes such as the cerebral cortex,specifically how it work for the changes of intergroup attitudes.Thus,the present study focused on both the single-group favoritism and intergroup favoritism of low-status groups,combined the stereotype content model,and through three experiments to survey the implicit and explicit cognitive evaluation characteristics of intergroup favoritism among low-status groups,and used high-definition intensity transcranial direct current stimulation(HD-tDCS),to explore how different activation levels of the dmPFC affect the intergroup bias in low-status groups and to find the possibility of improving intergroup favoritism from the physiological level.Experiment 1 adopted the procedure dissociation procedure(PDP)and explored the intergroup favoritism among low socioeconomic status groups.The results found that the low-status groups had outgroup favoritism at the explicit level,but no ingroup favoritism.At the implicit level,the low-status groups had no group bias in either ingroup or outgroup.Experiment 2 avoided the influence of words in experiment 1,adopted the task separation paradigm,and combined the stereotype content model to further explore the specific mode of intergroup favoritism among low socioeconomic status groups in stereotyped content models.The results show that,compared with the stereotype content model,at the explicit level,the low-status groups had no group bias in either ingroup or outgroup both in competence and warmth dimensions.At the implicit level,the low-status groups had outgroup favoritism and ingroup derogation on the competence dimension;while they had outgroup derogation on the warmth dimension.Experiment 3 used high-definition intensity transcranial direct current stimulation(HD-tDCS)and combined the stereotype content model to explore how different activation levels of the dmPFC affect the intergroup bias in low-status groups.The results found not only anodal stimulation of dmPFC but also cathode stimulation of dmPFC all have not effect ingroup favoritism of the low socioeconomic status group,at explicit and implicit levels.Through the above experiments,this study shows that:(1)at the explicit level,the low-status groups had outgroup favoritism,but no ingroup favoritism.(2)At the implicit level,the low-status groups had outgroup favoritism and ingroup derogation on the competence dimension;while they had outgroup derogation on the warmth dimension.(3)There is a separation of processing level and social cognitive dimension in the intergroup favoritism of the low-status groups.(4)Not only anodal stimulation of dmPFC but also cathode stimulation of dmPFC all have not effect ingroup favoritism of the low-status groups,at explicit and implicit levels.