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The Impact of Helping Behavior on Outgroup Infrahumanization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2013

Naira Delgado ,
Verónica Betancor ,
Armando Rodríguez-Pérez  and
Eva Ariño
Naira Delgado
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
Verónica Betancor
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
Armando Rodríguez-Pérez
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
Eva Ariño*
Affiliation:
Universidad de La Laguna (Spain)
*
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eva Ariño Mateo. Facultad de Psicología, Universidad de la Laguna. 38205 - Tenerife (Spain). E-mail: earino@ull.es
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Abstract

Infrahumanization research has verified that in intergroup contexts, there is a strong tendency to attribute secondary emotions, which are uniquely human, to the ingroup, while limiting that attribution in outgroups. Experiments have shown it to be as common as ingroup bias. However, it is not yet known what characteristics may mitigate this trend. This paper presents two studies. The first analyzes the impact of helping behavior on attributions of human traits to two fictitious groups. The second study's objective was to determine if members of the Spanish ingroup would infrahumanize an Ethiopian outgroup less when that outgroup performs prosocial behavior towards another group. Infrahumanization was determined by a lexical decision task, using the names of ingroup and outgroup members as priming. The results demonstrate that describing a fictitious group in altruistic terms increases their human profile (experiment one) and reduces infrahumanization (experiment two).

Los estudios sobre infrahumanización han confirmado que hay una sólida tendencia en los escenarios intergrupales a atribuir al endogrupo la capacidad de experimentar sentimientos, una emoción exclusivamente humana, a la vez que se restringe esa posibilidad a los exogrupos. Aunque se trata de un fenómeno tan común como el favoritismo endogrupal, aún se sabe muy poco sobre las características que pueden atenuar esta tendencia. En este artículo se presentan dos investigaciones. En la primera se estudia el impacto de la conducta de ayuda en la atribución de rasgos humanos a dos grupos ficticios. El objetivo de la segunda fue determinar si hay una menor infrahumanización del exogrupo etíope, frente al endogrupo españoles cuando aquel lleva a cabo una conducta prosocial respecto a otro grupo. La infrahumanización se determinó mediante una tarea de decisión léxica empleando como priming nombres de miembros del endogrupo y del exogrupo. Los resultados muestran que describir en términos altruistas a un grupo ficticio incrementa su perfil humano (experimento uno) y reduce su infrahumanización (experimento dos).

Keywords

infrahumanizationingroupoutgroupprosocial behaviorsecondary emotionsinfrahumanizaciónendogrupoexogrupoconducta prosocialemociones secundarias
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 1099 - 1109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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