The Effect Of Group Status On Ingroup Favorsitism:The Moderate Role Of Intergroup Relations

Differences in economic status between groups have been a topic of high social concern,and the government has been trying to reduce the income gap between groups with different social status.Group status has an important impact on people’s attitudes and behaviors.In addition,in-group favoritism vary among members of different groups,and previous research findings on this issue are inconsistent.Some studies have shown that members of advantaged groups have higher ingroup favoritism,others have found that members of disadvantaged groups have higher in-group favoritism.This study will address the contradictory points of previous studies.Moreover,the context of intergroup relations can moderate such preferences,but previous research has focused more on competitive relation,and how in-group preferences exist in cooperative relation has yet to be studied.Therefore,this study will explore the effect of group status on in-group favoritism and further explore the moderating role of intergroup relations in it.This study consists of two experiments,Experiment 1 initially explores in-group favoritism of group members with different status.The experiment used one-way between-subjects design,with the independent variable being group status(advantaged group/disadvantaged group/control group),the dependent variable being in-group favoritism,and the measure being the mean difference in amount of money.A total of 170 valid subjects completed the money allocation task in the experiment,and the results revealed that groups with different status showed higher in-group favoritism than the control group,and the disadvantaged group showed higher in-group favoritism than the advantaged group.Experiment 2 added the moderating variable being intergroup relations based on Experiment 1.The experiment used a 2(group status: advantaged group/disadvantaged group)*2(competition/cooperation)between-subjects design,with the independent variable being group status,the moderating variable being intergroup relations,the dependent variable being in-group favoritism,and the measure being the mean difference in amount of money.A total of 135 valid subjects completed the money allocation task in the experiment.The results showed significant main effects of group status and intergroup relations,and significant interactions of group status and intergroup relations.A further simple effects analysis revealed that both advantaged and disadvantaged groups showed higher in-group favoritism under the competition condition,but no significant difference in in-group favoritism between the two groups;Under the cooperation condition,different groups showed lower in-group favoritism,and the advantaged group showed lower in-group favoritism.