How do people react to opinion conflict occurring within an ingroup? Whereas some work suggests that dissenting ingroup members evoke more negativity than equivalently dissenting outgroup members (termed the black sheep effect), other research instead finds that people are more receptive to dissent from within the group relative to the same opinion originating from outsiders (termed the intergroup sensitivity effect). We sought to integrate these largely independent lines of work by investigating how people react to opinion conflict within and between groups based on U.S. political party affiliation. Participants read about a target person, “Robert C.,” with whom they shared or did not share party affiliation. Robert C. criticized (Study 1; N = 637; preregistered) or insulted (Study 2; N = 647; preregistered) the Democratic or Republican party. Ingroup members who criticized or insulted the ingroup elicited more negativity than outgroup members who criticized or insulted the outgroup, representing the black sheep effect. Moreover, criticism and insults targeting the ingroup elicited more negativity when they originated from an outgroup (vs. ingroup) member, representing the intergroup sensitivity effect. Taken together, the present studies demonstrate that whereas ingroup critics are at times perceived as black sheep, they are also afforded a degree of benefit of the doubt. We suggest that both of these effects may be driven by social identity concerns.

Swearing is stereotypically associated with socially undesirable traits and behaviors, including limited verbal ability, disagreeable personality, and alcohol use. We sought to demonstrate that, contrary to such stereotypes, swear word fluency (i.e., ability to generate swear words) does not arise from a lack of verbal skills. We also explored whether swear word fluency might serve as an index of personality traits related to drug use. Accordingly, we conducted a preregistered study in which 266 undergraduates at a U.S. university (mean age = 19.36; 66.9% self-identified as women and 49.6% as White) completed measures of swear word fluency, verbal fluency (i.e., overall ability to generate words), vocabulary, Big Five traits, sensation seeking, and drug use. We observed positive associations between swear word fluency and verbal fluency, vocabulary, Openness, and Extraversion, and a negative association with Agreeableness. Moreover, swear word fluency accounted for unique variance in self-reported drug use over-and-above that accounted for by personality and general verbal ability. Swear word fluency might serve as one of few tasks where higher scores predict more drug involvement, justifying further work linking this measure with other aspects of personality and drug use.

Debate over the appropriateness of discussing racism in U.S. educational settings is ongoing. Whereas some believe discussing racism will improve race relations, others argue that such discussions are divisive and cause unnecessary distress, especially among White students. In a preregistered study, we investigated whether people who do not identify as Black or African American indeed experience emotional distress in response to the suggestion that they may have acted in a manner indicating subtle anti-Black bias. Non-Black U.S. college students (N=326; mean age=18.86; 69.0% women, 30.4% men, and 0.6% reported another gender; 56.1% White, 16.9% Asian/Pacific Islander, 16.6% Hispanic, 2.1% reported another race/ethnicity, and 5.7% reported multiple racial/ethnic identities) imagined committing two interpersonal transgressions, one of which was race-related. For each transgression, participants reported their feelings about the situation, including how responsible they would feel for perpetrating the transgression and whether they would feel negatively about themselves. Overall, many participants reported feeling responsible and negatively about themselves when imagining committing a race-related transgression. However, this response was more common among participants who scored higher on measures of habitual concern about behaving in nonprejudiced ways, and these participants also tended to report on an open-ended measure that they would react by apologizing and correcting their behavior. Our results suggest that, when discussing racism, those most likely to experience distress are people who are already concerned about expressing prejudice. Accordingly, discussions of racism may benefit from mentioning ways to reduce prejudice.

Prior work suggests that some cisgender people do not consider gender identity when thinking about what being transgender means, and that exposure to a definition of transgender can reduce negative attitudes toward transgender people. In two studies, we sought to integrate these lines of research by examining whether anti-transgender attitudes are associated with how cisgender people define the term transgender. In Study 1, 293 participants (132 female and 157 male; four participants did not report their sex/gender) recruited via Mechanical Turk were randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Participants in one condition first read a definition of “transgender” that referred to gender identity and then reported their attitudes toward transgender people. Participants in the other condition did not read the definition and instead simply reported their attitudes toward transgender people. Contrary to predictions, exposure (vs. lack thereof) to the definition did not affect attitudes. However, participants who identified gender identity as a central component of the definition of transgender on a manipulation check endorsed more positive attitudes. In Study 2, 295 cisgender participants (165 women and 130 men; recruited via Mechanical Turk) wrote down their own definitions of transgender. Participants who spontaneously included (vs. did not include) gender identity in their definitions reported distinctively positive attitudes. Observed effects held over and above individual differences in cognitive style, gender identification, contact with transgender people, and participant gender. How cisgender people think about gender identity may thus index their attitudes toward transgender people.

Some cisgender women oppose policies granting transgender women access to women-only bathrooms. We examined whether this opposition stems from perceiving that transgender women threaten the distinctiveness of the social category “women” (gender distinctiveness threat). Cisgender women (N=520) read about a state bill enabling transgender women to use women’s bathrooms. Participants further read that enacting the bill would mean their state officially believes that “transgender women are real women” or “transgender rights are human rights”; in the control condition, this information was omitted. Participants reported their support for the bill and level of gender distinctiveness threat. Cisgender women who read that the bill would imply their state believes transgender women are real women (vs. transgender rights are human rights) reported lower bill support, and this effect was mediated by distinctiveness threat. Perceived threat to the distinctiveness of womanhood may help explain cisgender women’s reluctance to include transgender women in women-only spaces.