Cognitive and affective experiences of minority and majority members: The role of group size, status, and power

Group status, minorities and trust

“…It is clear that the psychological research is right to suggest that low status group members value own group membership less, and are more deferential to high group status subjects as a result. Our study also replicates the psychological finding that low status subjects get lower satisfaction from group membership than on high status subjects (e.g., Ellemers et al 1988Ellemers et al , 1992Sachdev and Bourhis 1987); so do minority subjects, with minorities generally being perceived more negatively than majorities (Lücken and Simon 2005;Seyranian et al 2008).…”

“…6 Our focus is on a simple, financially incentivized, deception-free behavioral experiment that implements our experimental treatment manipulations in a minimal way. We differ from experimental psychology research looking at relative group size and status effects as the latter's focus is typically (a) on attitudes rather than behavior (e.g., Ellemers et al 1992;Jost and Burgess 2000;Lücken and Simon 2005;Voci 2006); (b) when behavior is involved, deception is systematically used in invoking the connection between responses and behavior (e.g., Bourhis 1985, 1991); (c) deception is more generally and systematically employed in treatment manipulations and elsewhere in the experimental design (e.g., all the studies listed under parts a and b). This is not to say that this psychological research is not useful: it clearly is; our aim is simply to complement it using an experimental economic methodology.…”

Dimensions of Majority and Minority Groups

“…These studies suggest that majority and minority groups can vary in terms of power, distinctiveness, opinions, and ingroup-outgroup status, as well as size. A consideration of real-life groups has led some researchers to acknowledge that representations of majority and minority ought to be multidimensional (Crano, 2001;Pérez & Mugny, 1987), and certainly more complex (Kerr, 2002;Lücken & Simon, 2005) than typical laboratory experiments would suggest. Even so, size predominates research on infl uence (Wood et al, 1994) and relations between majorities and minorities (Mullen, Brown, & Smith, 1992).…”

In matters of opinion, what matters is the group: Minority group members’ emotional reactions to messages about identity expression

“…These findings might be explained by the fact that outgroup members arguing for expression are perceived to act less out of self-interest, and are expressing support across group boundaries. Given that minority group members are often aware that their group has less power in society (Lücken & Simon, 2005), such support and weak self-interest among the majority might be welcomed. Indeed, to fulfill their political goals, minorities are often dependent on the support of the majority.…”

“…Because minorities might be less powerful than majorities (Lücken & Simon, 2005), fear may also seem a likely emotion in response to this outgroup threat (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). However, in the situations studied here fear will be less likely, as fear usually results from a lack of coping responses with a threat (Lazarus, 1991), or from the threat of direct physical harm (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005).…”