Facing Europe

Abstract

Individuals perceive their own group to be more typical of a shared superordinate identity than other groups are. This in-group projection process has been demonstrated with both self-report and indirect measures. The two studies reported here extend this research to the visual level, specifically, within the domain of faces. Using an innovative reverse-correlation approach, we found that German and Portuguese participants' visual representations of European faces resembled the appearance typical for their own national identity. This effect was found even among participants who explicitly denied that one nation was more typical of Europe than the other (Study 1). Moreover, Study 2 provides experimental evidence that in-group projection is restricted to inclusive superordinate groups, as the effect was not observed for visual representations of a category ("Australian") that did not include participants' in-group. Implications for the in-group projection model, as well as for the applicability of reverse-correlation paradigms, are discussed.

Visualising mental representations: A primer on noise-based reverse correlation in social psychology

“…Below we review each briefly. Researchers have used reverse correlation tasks to identify features diagnostic for Black and White faces (Fiset, Wagar, Tanaka, Gosselin, & Bub, 2007;Krosch & Amodio, 2014), Moroccan faces (Dotsch et al, 2008, Chinese faces (Dotsch et al, 2008), European and Australian (Imhoff, Dotsch, Bianchi, Banse, & Wigboldus, 2011), as depicted in Figure 4. Various studies have focused on visualising the gender of faces (see Figure 5; Mangini & Biederman, 2004;Nestor & Tarr, 2008;Dotsch et al, 2011) and of bodies (Johnson, Iida, & Tassinary, 2012;Lick, Carpinella, & Preciado, 2013).…”

“…projection (Imhoff et al, 2011) and self-projection have been investigated by asking European participants to complete a reverse correlation task to visualise a European face. In Imhoff et al (2011), there were two participant samples: German and Portuguese.…”

“…In Imhoff et al (2011), there were two participant samples: German and Portuguese. The visualised European CI looked more German than Portuguese for German participants, and vice versa for Portuguese participants (Figure 4).…”

Complex inclusive categories of positive and negative valence and prototypicality claims in asymmetric intergroup relations

“…Bianchi, Mummendey, Steffens and Yzerbyt (2010) showed that both German and Italian participants implicitly associated more attributes of their ingroup with the word European than the respective other group of participants did. And Imhoff, Dotsch, Bianchi, Banse, and Wigboldus (2011) found in a reversed correlation paradigm that German participants' imagination of a typically European face resembled more a typically German face than Portuguese participants' imagination of a typically European face did. Overall, there is good evidence that prototypicality judgments depend on group membership, with a general tendency of ingroup projection (Waldzus, Mummendey, Wenzel & Boetcher, 2004;Waldzus et al, 2005).…”

“…Hence, highly identified White Americans may portray the prototype of Americans as even 'Whiter', whereas highly identified African Americans may regard it as more 'Black'. Or, highly identified Germans in particular may perceive themselves as more prototypically European than others see them (Bianchi et al, 2010; see also Imhoff et al, 2011;Waldzus et al, 2003).…”