In-group relevance facilitates learning across existing and new associations

Zahra Zargol Moradi, Jie Sui, Miles Hewstone, Glyn William Humphreys

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Citations (SciVal)
115 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Studies have shown that attention prioritizes stimuli associated with the in-group. However, the extent to which this so-called in-group favoritism is driven by relevance is not clear. Here, we investigated this issue in a group of university rowers using a novel perceptual matching task based on the team label–color associations. Across three experiments, participants showed enhanced performance for the in-group stimulus regardless of its familiarity level. These findings confirmed the role of relevance in in-group favoritism. In a further control study, the advantage for certain stimuli was not found in an independent sample of participants who were not identified with the teams but were familiar with the label–color associations, indicating that in-group relevance was necessary for the in-group favoritism. Together, these findings suggest that in-group relevance facilitates learning across existing and new associations. The consequences of these findings for understanding in-group effects on perceptual processing are discussed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)763-774
Number of pages12
JournalEuropean Journal of Social Psychology
Volume47
Issue number6
Early online date23 May 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Oct 2017

Keywords

  • in-group favoritism
  • in-group relevance
  • perceptual matching

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Psychology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'In-group relevance facilitates learning across existing and new associations'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this