Social Judgment of Abortion: A Black-Sheep Effect in a Catholic Sheepfold

Abstract

ABSTRACT. French Catholic participants (N = 340) with high or low religious identification read 1 of 8 scenarios presented as an interview with a female target 2 months after she had had an abortion. The experimental device varied situational pressure (pressure vs. no pressure), the target's religious social identity (Catholic vs. neutral), and the consequences of abortion for the target (positive vs. negative). The participants then rated the acceptability of the target's decision. The participants judged abortion more negatively in the no-pressure condition. Moreover, the participants with high religious identification judged abortion more negatively than did those with low religious identification. In partial support of a black-sheep effect, the participants with high religious identification judged the Catholic target more negatively than they judged the neutral one in some conditions (pressure, negative consequences). In other conditions (no pressure, both positive and negative consequences), the participants with low religious identification judged the Catholic target more positively than they judged the neutral one.

An Examination of the Association Between Gender and Reporting Intentions for Fraudulent Financial Reporting

“…Reversals, however, of in-group favoritism have been reported. When one seriously violates the group norms, several studies report that the in-group may assess this behavior even more harshly than it would that of a non-group member (Barry et al, 2006;Begue, 2001;Mathews and Dietz-Uhler, 1998).…”

When Black Sheep Make us Think: Information Processing and Devaluation of In- and Outgroup Norm Deviants

“…However, when such prescriptive norms are undermined, efforts are made to protect the group's overall positivity-by derogating those deviant ingroup members. The BSE (see Marques & Paez, 1994, for a review) was replicated in various intergroup contexts with a broad range of dependent variables (e.g., Bègue, 2001;Chekroun & Nugier, 2005;DeCremer & Vanbeselaere, 1999;Marques et al, 2001;Matthews & Dietz-Uhler, 1998;Oishi & Yoshida, 2002), and supported the social identity perspective on the BSE (for a review, see Marques & Paez, 1994). It is moderated by ingroup identification (Branscombe, Wann, Noel, & Coleman, 1993) and other group-based factors such as group members' status (Pinto et al, 2010), accountability (Abrams, Rutland, Cameron, & Ferrell, 2007), or perceived entitativity of the ingroup (Lewis & Sherman, 2010).…”

Time Heals All (Shallow) Wounds: A Lesson on Forgiveness of Ingroup Transgressors Learned by the Feyenoord Vandal Fans

“…Thus far, studies considering the black sheep effect have not investigated the willingness to reconcile with the ingroup transgressors (Bettencourt et al 2015). To the best of our knowledge, there are only few studies in this field that used real occurring transgressions (Begue 2001;Coleman et al 2016).…”

“…Nevertheless, the severity of judgment and punishment attributed to ingroup perpetrators is obviously commensurated with several factors such as a clear intention to harm showed by the transgressors (Wang et al 2016;Marques et al 2001b;Abrams et al 2000), the strength of identification with the ingroup (Biernat et al 1999;Branscombe et al 1993;Rullo et al 2015Rullo et al , 2017Otten 2009;Begue 2001) or the impact of the transgression on the overall group' s stereotype (Biernat et al 1999;Castano et al 2002;Abrams et al 2000).…”