AFFECTIVE PRIMING IS SENSITIVE TO INGROUP AND OUTGROUP COMPARISON WITHIN VARYING MODES OF INTERGROUP DYNAMIC

Abstract

Past research has shown that people automatically converge on the emotions of ingroup members and diverge from the affect of outgroup members. Extant research, however, has not investigated how readily these processes occur (e.g., in minimal groups), and how they are affected by different intergroup dynamics. We exposed participants to faces of members of two novel, competing minimal-type groups. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which: they simply learned about the groups, they were a member of one of the groups, or they were a member and the groups were temporarily goal-aligned. We examined affective convergence/divergence with an affective priming task. Participants who simply learned about the two groups displayed emotional convergence to both. In contrast, participants who belonged to one of the groups evidenced convergence to the ingroup and indifference to the outgroup. When goal-aligned, however, there was a trend towards affective divergence from the ingroup and affective convergence to the outgroup.