Not one of us predictors and consequences of denying ingroup characteristics to ambiguous targets

Running Head “NOT ONE OF US”   1  ‘Not one of us’: Predictors and Consequences of Denying Ingroup Characteristics to Ambiguous Targets Nour Kteily* Kellogg School of Management Sarah Cotterill* Harvard University Jim Sidanius Harvard University Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington Harvard University Robin Bergh Uppsala University Word Count: 12,996 * These authors contributed equally to this manuscript [IN PRESS AT PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN] “NOT ONE OF US”   2  Abstract We investigated individual difference predictors of ascribing ingroup characteristics to negative and positive ambiguous targets Studies and investigated events involving negative targets whose status as racial (Tsarnaev brothers) or national (Woolwich attackers) ingroup members remained ambiguous Immediately following the attacks, we presented White Americans and British individuals with the suspects’ images Those higher in social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism— concerned with enforcing status boundaries and adherence to ingroup norms, respectively— perceived these low status and low conformity suspects as looking less White and less British, thus denying them ingroup characteristics Perceiving suspects in more exclusionary terms increased support for treating them harshly, and for militaristic counterterrorism policies prioritizing ingroup safety over outgroup harm Studies and experimentally manipulated a racially ambiguous target’s status and conformity Results suggested that target status and conformity critically influence SDO (status) and RWA (conformity)’s effects on inclusionary vs exclusionary perceptions Keywords: Group categorization; Ingroup Overexclusion; Social dominance orientation; RightWing Authoritarianism; Terrorism  “NOT ONE OF US”  3  On the 15th of April, 2013, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring two hundred and eighty others Surveillance footage quickly determined two primary suspects, captured in grainy photos wearing backpacks near the incident Speculation immediately abounded about their background and potential motivations, fueled by the ambiguity of their skin color and the difficulty in determining whether the incident was carried out by foreign or American actors Shortly thereafter, the FBI released the names of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Unusually, although we quickly learned more about their life histories, many of the outstanding questions about the motivation behind the attacks, and the racial and ethnic status of the perpetrators, remained unanswered (Walsh, 2013) A complex picture emerged: although their names clearly sounded foreign to most Americans, we learned that they had been living in the United States for many years Moreover, in spite of the fact that they did not quite fit the physical profile and background of the average White person familiar to Americans, their ethnic background was from the North Caucasus, the very region that gave name to the term ‘Caucasian’ In light of their ambiguous background, the question of whether or not the bombers were White became highly salient and hotly debated by social commentators and media members For example, David Sirota wrote in Salon the day after the attacks (prior to their identities being known) about his hope that the terrorists were White and homegrown He argued that if the bombers turned out to be White, they would be perceived as an aberration or an anomaly and would not provoke aggressive responses toward other groups by the U.S government (Sirota, 2013) This prompted significant backlash among individuals bothered by the assertion that a White individual could be capable of these attacks (Walsh, 2013) Nevertheless, even after the images of the brothers were released, their racial identity was the subject of much debate, as evidenced by headlines such as “Are the Tsarnaev Brothers  “NOT ONE OF US”  4  White?” (Walsh, 2013), “Are the Tsarnaevs White?” (Beinart, 2013), and “The Unbearable Whiteness of the Brothers Tsarnaev” (First Post, 2013) In sum, the potential Whiteness of the Tsarnaev brothers became a highly salient dimension in the aftermath of the Marathon attacks, and one that we assumed would be highly relevant to White Americans.1 Shortly after the attack in Boston, another incident occurred in Woolwich, a workingclass neighborhood in southeast London, United Kingdom In this case, the suspects— Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale— were racially unambiguous Nevertheless, in the immediate aftermath of their suspected lethal attack on a British soldier, their national status (as British citizens or as foreigners) remained unclear Thus, although there were important differences in the nature and context of the terrorist attacks, an important and unusual similarity between these two events was the fact that the status of the perpetrators as members of individuals’ own group or members of an external group was ambiguous These two incidents provided naturalistic settings in which to investigate an important question: namely, the variables predicting the perception of ambiguous targets in ingroup vs outgroup terms Indeed, the issue of imbuing targets with ingroup characteristics is one with important consequences, both for the individuals being characterized and for the groups involved Research in intergroup relations has long shown that categorization into groups results in a preference for one’s own group over the outgroup (Allport, 1954; Gramzow & Gaertner, 2005; Sherif, 1967) This bias manifests itself in terms of increased positive regard and                                                          These debates about the Tsarnaev brothers’ Whiteness took place both in parallel and in concert with discussions about their ‘Americanness’ Given research suggesting that, for many individuals America is equated with White (Devos & Banaji, 2005), it is not unlikely that, for some, these concepts were intertwined Nevertheless, one of the unique and noteworthy factors about the Tsarnaev brothers was specifically the fact that they might have been White, which we expected (and media reports confirmed) to matter to White Americans in addition to any concerns about their Americanness per se  “NOT ONE OF US”  5  favoritism towards the ingroup relative to the outgroup (Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), increased empathy and prosocial behavior towards members of the ingroup (Hornstein, 1976; Piliavin, Dovidio, Gaertner, & Clark, 1981), construal of other ingroup members as closer to the self (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, Wetherell, 1987), and increased levels of trust and cooperation (Miller, Maner and Becker, 2010) In sum, group members’ orientation towards other individuals is importantly influenced by whether they perceive these individuals in ingroup versus outgroup terms The determination of who belongs to the ingroup also matters for the group itself Individuals are motivated to hold their group in positive regard (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and are concerned with its level of overall functioning, as well as its status and standing in society (Stelzl, Janes, & Seligman, 2007) These concerns should influence the ascription of ingroup membership to others Firstly, we would expect individuals to be sensitive to how those they admit to the ingroup influence its operation Thus, they should attempt to ensure that those ascribed ingroup status will conform to the norms and practices of the group and support its smooth functioning and cohesiveness (Feldman, 1984) Secondly, we expect that group members will employ strategies to enhance and protect its image: one such strategy is to ascribe group membership to valued individuals and deny it to undesirable others (Castano, Yzerbyt, Bourguignon, & Seron, 2002; Leyens & Yzerbyt, 1992) Examples of this include the conferral of honorary degrees to venerated individuals by universities, and companies dropping celebrity endorsees who engage in egregious, socially undesirable behavior from their ‘corporate family’ Consistent with the notion that group members are concerned with the consequences for their group of granting membership to others, Castano and colleagues (2002) argue that individuals take care when making ingroup categorizations Such caution helps avoid the  “NOT ONE OF US”  6  ‘contamination’ of the ingroup and any damage to its functioning or status that that might ensue (see also Ho, Sidanius, Cuddy, & Banaji, 2013; Stelzl et al., 2007; Leyens & Yzerbyt, 1992) At the same time, it may pay not only to exclude negative ambiguous targets that may contaminate the group but also to include positive ambiguous targets, and thus to ‘bask in their reflected glory’ Indeed, consistent with both exclusion of negative and inclusion of positive ambiguous targets, Stelzl et al (2007) found that Canadians were more likely to see Ben Johnson (a Jamaican-born Canadian sprinter) as Canadian after he won the gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, but as Jamaican after he was subsequently disqualified for steroid use Individual differences in the conferral of ingroup characteristics Although our reasoning suggests that all group members should show some concern with determining who does and who does not belong to their group, there is nevertheless theoretical reason to expect individual differences in how discriminating individuals are in ascribing others with ingroup characteristics, a question that has received scant empirical investigation (but see Blascovich, Wyer, Swart, & Kibler, 1997; Ho et al., 2013; Krosch, Bernsten, Amodio, Jost, & Van Bavel, 2013) In this work, we considered the role of two individual difference variables— social dominance orientation (SDO; Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer, 1981)— that both relate to a wide variety of socio-political attitudes and behaviors (e.g., racism, sexism, support for war, support for the death penalty; Altemeyer, 1981; Kteily, Ho, & Sidanius, 2012) Although these variables predict prejudice towards similar groups in practice, they so independently of one another, and for unique reasons (Duckitt, 2001)  “NOT ONE OF US”  7  Whereas being high in RWA reflects a concern with traditionalism, submission to established authorities, and aggression towards those who violate the social norms of the ingroup, individuals high in SDO favor the maintenance of anti-egalitarian, hierarchical relationships between social groups, and the domination of ‘inferior’ groups by ‘superior’ ones As such, when it comes to perceiving ambiguous targets in inclusionary vs exclusionary terms, it is important to consider the role of both ideological orientations rather than either one alone Individuals high in RWA should be especially sensitive to the conformity of ambiguous targets in their ascription of ingroup characteristics As such, we expected individuals high in RWA to see nonconformist individuals as potential threats to group cohesion and thus to be more willing to perceive them in exclusionary terms (Duckitt, 2001; Thomsen, Green & Sidanius, 2008) On the other hand, if our expectation about the role for ambiguous target conformity is correct, such exclusionary perceptions may not be extended by high RWA individuals to more conformist ambiguous targets Unlike RWA, individuals high in SDO should be primarily concerned with the status of ambiguous targets, given high SDO individuals’ concerns about maintaining and reifying group status boundaries (Ho et al., 2013) Thus, individuals high in SDO should tend to exclude low status ambiguous targets who they might perceive as threats to the status boundary between their group and inferior groups In contrast, including higher status ambiguous targets should not blur (and may in fact sharpen) group status boundaries, and thus, we would not expect high SDO individuals to see such targets in exclusionary terms Whereas a few studies (Ho et al., 2013; Krosch et al., 2013) have investigated a role for SDO in the realm of hypodescent research (the tendency to categorize half-racials, a specific case of ambiguous target, as members of the low status group), no studies have investigated the  “NOT ONE OF US”  8  relationship between RWA and the ascription of ingroup characteristics to ambiguous targets Finally, no studies have looked at individual differences in the ascription of ingroup characteristics to positive ambiguous targets The present work We tested our ideas across four studies In studies and 2, we assessed the role of SDO and RWA in the ascription of ingroup characteristics to low status and low conformity (i.e., negative) ambiguous suspects in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks By collecting data within days of the attacks, we were able to examine our hypotheses in the context of highly salient real-world incidents By assessing two different contexts, and two different bases of ingroup membership, we were also able to investigate the generalizability of our hypotheses Thus, we examined the role of SDO and RWA in influencing perceptions of the Whiteness of the racially ambiguous Tsarnaev brothers (study 1), as well as investigating perceptions of the Britishness of Michael Adebolajo (study 2), one of the suspected Woolwich attackers These targets’ actions were perceived, in no uncertain terms, to be extremely low in status and conformity Because individuals high in RWA tend to reject nonconformist behavior that challenges established authorities and threatens group cohesion, we hypothesized that White individuals high on RWA would downplay the ‘Whiteness’ of the Tsarnaev brothers, and British individuals high on RWA would similarly downplay the ‘Britishness’ of the Woolwich suspects Because individuals high in SDO seek to avoid blurring group status boundaries, we also expected that high SDO would be associated with exclusionary perceptions of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Woolwich suspects Distancing them from the ingroup in this way allows individuals high in SDO to avoid having the status of their group ‘contaminated’ by an association with the  “NOT ONE OF US”  9  extremely low status targets Because RWA and SDO have been frequently observed to operate in parallel, we expected each construct to contribute uniquely to exclusionary perceptions targeted at the negative ambiguous targets In studies and 4, we sought to extend our examination to more positive ambiguous targets and in so doing, assess our claims about the reasons for SDO and RWA’s effects Specifically, we experimentally manipulated the status (study 3) and conformity (study 4) of a racially ambiguous target to be low or high Consistent with our expectation that individuals high in SDO would be influenced by target status, we expected ambiguous targets’ status to moderate the effect of high SDO (but not high RWA) on individuals’ ascription of ingroup characteristics Consistent with our expectation that individuals high in RWA would be influenced by target conformity, we expected high RWA (but not high SDO) individuals’ ascription of ingroup characteristics to be moderated by information about how conformist vs nonconformist the ambiguous target was Our central theoretical interest in this work was determining the predictors of perceiving ambiguous target in ingroup terms Nevertheless, we also expected that ingroup characteristcs— once ascribed or denied— would have important consequences We assessed these ideas in our first two studies We expected the perception of the Tsarnaev brothers and the Woolwich attackers in ingroup vs outgroup terms to matter Previous work has described the benefits ingroup members receive from their membership within the group (e.g., trust: Brewer, 2008; empathy: Piliavin et al., 1981; altruism: Stürmer, Snyder, Kropp & Siem, 2006) On the other hand, being a member of an outgroup subjects one to the potential application of any of a number of processes—such as stereotyping, prejudice, and dehumanization— that can be used to justify aggressive attitudes and behavior, much more difficult to justify towards members of the  “NOT ONE OF US”  10  ingroup Thus, we hypothesized that the perception of the Tsarnaev brothers and Woolwich attackers as outgroup (as opposed to ingroup) members would be associated with harsher judgments about the punishments they deserve.2 Along these same lines, characterizing negative ambiguous targets who have harmed the group as outgroup members might contribute to the justification of aggressive policies towards outsiders more generally Perceiving the ingroup to have been targeted from the outside may increase group members’ support for policies and institutions designed to protect the ingroup, at the expense of outsiders, shifting group members’ moral calculus to further prioritize ingroup over outgroup outcomes (Stürmer et al., 2006; see also Lickel et al., 2006) As such, we hypothesized that perceptions of the Tsarnaev brothers as less White and the Woolwich attackers as less British would relate to support for aggressive counter-terrorism measures: measures with the stated aim of protecting the ingroup, but that nevertheless had the potential for grave consequences and negative outcomes for those not belonging to the group (see also Asbrock & Fristche, 2013) Study In a first study testing these hypotheses, we conducted a two-wave survey with White American participants in the direct aftermath of the Boston Marathon attacks Two days                                                          Our predictions may at first appear to be in contrast with the “Black sheep effect” (Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988), which argues that individuals will punish ingroup deviants more heavily than outgroup deviants However, this perspective suggests that an important reason why individuals punish ingroup members more heavily is to dissociate the group from the reputational costs of deviants’ behavior When a negative target is undoubtedly an ingroup member, punishing them heavily signals to others that their behavior is unacceptable to, and uncharacteristic of, the group, thus restoring the group’s reputation When a negative target’s membership is ambiguous, however, distancing can be accomplished by denying the target ingroup characteristics and reframing their actions as abhorrent outgroup behaviors worthy of punitive response    “NOT ONE OF US”  39  group Thus, as a general orientation towards hierarchy in society (e.g., Kteily et al., 2012; Sibley & Liu, 2010) that is not redundant with the desire for ingroup dominance (Pratto et al., 1994), it is plausible that even high SDO members of third-party groups unrelated to the target (e.g., high SDO Chinese individuals judging the Woolwich suspects) may perceive low-status ambiguous targets in such a way as to minimize their association with high-status groups In this way, these high SDO individuals could prevent the general blurring of status-boundaries between groups in society Although such a pattern would be consistent with research on SDO, we would nevertheless expect those high SDO individuals for whom the target is more relevant to apply their social dominance drives to group membership judgments more strongly (see Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, for a discussion of how SDO tends to be applied most strongly to the most contextually-relevant issues) Similarly, one might argue that even though high RWA individuals outside the group might judge those who not submit to authority (such as the nonconformist targets in our studies) more negatively, RWA should be especially active when it is our group’s rules that are contravened Such research, in addition to research looking at the role of ingroup identification with larger sample sizes, may help definitively determine the extent to which our findings are specific to group motives or reflect more system-relevant concerns Conclusion We demonstrated, both in the context of real-world high profile incidents and experimental vignettes, that individuals’ ideological orientations influence the ways in which they perceive ambiguous targets We provided evidence for the role of theoretically-relevant moderators of these effects We further showed that the perception of targets in ingroup versus outgroup terms matters: seeing ambiguous perpetrators of an attack in outgroup terms was  “NOT ONE OF US”  associated with endorsing harsher treatment of the attackers themselves, as well as greater support for aggressive policies that prioritize ingroup over outgroup outcomes 40   “NOT ONE OF US”  41  References Allport, G W (1954) The nature of prejudice Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Altemeyer, B (1981) Right-wing authoritarianism Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press Asbrock, F., & Fritsche, I (2013) Authoritarian reactions to terrorist threat: who is being threatened, the Me or the We? 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Salon Retrieved from http://www.salon.com   70  Whiteness ratings (0‐100)  65  60  55  Low SDO  50  Mean SDO  45  High SDO  *  40  35  30  Low status  High Status    Figure 1. Whiteness ratings of ambiguous targets as a function of target status and  social dominance orientation at low levels of participants suspicion. * p