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In case of death, cling to the ingroup
Author(s) -
Castano Emanuele
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.211
Subject(s) - psychology , ingroups and outgroups , categorization , terror management theory , social psychology , attribution , mortality salience , outgroup , unconscious mind , trait , in group favoritism , priming (agriculture) , developmental psychology , social group , social identity theory , linguistics , psychoanalysis , philosophy , botany , germination , computer science , biology , programming language
Abstract An experiment investigated whether the enhanced importance of the ingroup as a consequence of the salience of death thoughts is a unconscious defense mechanism. Scottish participants were subliminally primed with either the word death or field . Subsequently, they were asked to classify a series of pictures as either English or Scottish, and to state whether a series of negative traits applied to the English or not. Results showed that participants primed with the word death were more likely to exclude targets that looked more like outgroup than ingroup members, than participants in the field (control) prime condition. The pattern observed on the categorization‐latency also supported the claim that death‐prime participants are more careful in classifying targets. Finally, death‐prime participants also conveyed more negative, stereotypical judgments of the English in a trait attribution task. The implications of the results are discussed in relation to terror management theory and social identification phenomena. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.