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How context‐independent is the outgroup homogeneity effect? A response to Bartsch and Judd
Author(s) -
Haslam S. Alexander,
Oakes Penelope J.
Publication year - 1995
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.2420250410
Subject(s) - outgroup , ingroups and outgroups , psychology , social psychology , homogeneous , context (archaeology) , categorization , epistemology , mathematics , paleontology , philosophy , combinatorics , biology
Bartsch and Judd (1993) argue that outgroup homogeneity effects occur independently of any tendency for members of minority groups to see their ingroup as more homogeneous than the majority outgroup. This argument is based on evidence of an underlying outgroup homogeneity effect in a study which purports to unconfound the roles of judged group size and ingroup–outgroup judgement by presenting subjects first with a small or large ingroup (or outgroup) and then a small comparison outgroup (or ingroup). However, from the perspective of self‐categorization theory (SCT), such a procedure actually introduces a confound as SCT predicts that when an ingroup is judged first it should be perceived as relatively heterogeneous due to the intragroup nature of this judgemental context. Close examination of Bartsch and Judd's data bears this point out: the tendency to see the ingroup as less homogeneous than the outgroup when the ingroup was judged first was extinguished when the ingroup was judged second even when the judged groups were of equal size. Consistent with SCT, this re‐analysis suggests that manifestations of outgroup homogeneity are not independent of contextual factors which determine the relative appropriateness of category‐based perception of ingroup and outgroup.