Comparison Focus in Intergroup Comparisons: Who We Compare to Whom Influences Who We See as Powerful and Agentic

Abstract

In intergroup comparisons one group usually becomes the implicit norm that other groups are compared to. Three studies address the consequences that the direction of the comparison has for perceptions of the compared groups. For real groups (Experiment 1) and fictitious groups (Experiments 2 and 3) participants perceived a group as more powerful and higher in status when it had been the norm rather than the effect to be explained in a text comparing two groups. Moreover, norm groups and their “typical” members were perceived as more agentic and less communal than comparison groups, and these attributions were mediated by the ascription of power. The authors conclude that systematic ways of explaining one group rather than another could serve as a subtle tool to perpetuate the status quo of intergroup power relations.

Status, power, and intergroup relations: the personal is the societal

“…Targets of these ambivalent stereotypes are not unaware of this coded language: In interpersonal interactions, high-status targets compensate for their stereotypic coldness by downplaying their own competence to appear warmer, while low-status targets pursue the opposite strategy, compensating for stereotypic incompetence by downplaying their own warmth to appear more competent (32, see also Yzerbyt, this issue). When status-based stereotypes have a positive side, such as strength in academics at a higher-status school or strength in athletics at a lower-status school, higher- and lower-status individuals stake their claim to these strengths, while judging their outgroup peers as weaker on the ingroup-favoring dimension (33, 34).…”

Why is the History of Heterosexuality Essential? Beliefs About the History of Sexuality and Their Relationship to Sexual Prejudice

“…Such asymmetric explanations have consequences for stereotyping. When one group is linguistically positioned as the norm and another as "the effect to be explained," readers draw the conclusion that the former group is the one with greater power and agency (Bruckmüller & Abele, 2010;Bruckmüller, Hegarty, & Abele, 2012). As such, the advice to focus explanatory attention on heterosexuality appears to be sound, but difficult to follow in practice.…”

The ISI Change phenomenon: When contradicting one stereotype changes another

“…Artificial stereotypes are necessarily newly learned; as compared to real-life stereotypes they thus also lack the personal involvement that render people motivated to maintain them. However, various studies yielded similar results in studies on artificial groups as in studies on real-life groups (Bruckmüller & Abele, 2010;Spencer-Rodgers et al, 2007), thus attesting to the ecological validity of the former. Yet in followup research we will test whether the ISI Change phenomenon holds for firmly grounded and long-held stereotypes as it does for artificial and newly learned ones.…”