“We are people”: Ingroup humanization as an existential defense. | Zendy

Jeroen Vaes | Zendy; Nathan A. Heflick | Zendy; Jamie L. Goldenberg | Zendy

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“We are people”: Ingroup humanization as an existential defense.

Author(s) -

Jeroen Vaes,

Nathan A. Heflick,

Jamie L. Goldenberg

Publication year - 2010

Publication title -

journal of personality and social psychology

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 4.455

H-Index - 369

eISSN - 1939-1315

pISSN - 0022-3514

DOI - 10.1037/a0017658

Subject(s) - terror management theory , ingroups and outgroups , psychology , social psychology , existentialism , social identity theory , mortality salience , salient , group cohesiveness , identity (music) , social group , epistemology , philosophy , physics , acoustics , artificial intelligence , computer science

Prior research has shown the importance of humanness in shaping one's social identity, but no research has examined why this is the case. The present article reveals that humanizing the ingroup serves a terror management function. In 3 studies, Italian (Studies 1 and 2) and American (Study 3) participants humanized their own group more when their mortality was salient. In Study 3, humanizing the ingroup also functioned to reduce the accessibility of death thoughts. Together, these studies provide clear support for terror management theory as an explanatory framework for ingroup humanization.

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