Believing one shares a subjective experience with another (i.e., I-sharing) fosters connections among strangers and alters perceptions of the ingroup and outgroup. In this article, the authors ask whether I-sharing also fosters liking for members of a salient outgroup. Study 1 establishes that I-sharing promotes liking for the other sex, even among people with salient social identities. Study 2 shows that I-sharing promotes liking for a member of the sexual orientation outgroup, whether it occurs before or after group memberships get revealed. Study 3 focuses on salient race categories and looks at the effects of I-sharing versus value-sharing as a function of shared group membership. For those high in existential isolation, I-sharing trumps value-sharing, regardless of the I-sharer’s social identity. I-sharing may offer a way of improving attitudes toward outgroup members that still enables people to embrace their differing social identities.
AronsonE.BlaneyN.StephanC.SikesJ.SnappM. (1978). The jigsaw classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
2.
BaumeisterR. F.LearyM. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachment as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
3.
BowlbyJ. (1969). Attachment and loss (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Basic Books.
4.
BrewerM. B. (2007). The importance of being we: Human nature and intergroup relations. American Psychologist, 62, 728-738.
5.
CadinuM. R.RothbartM. (1996). Self-anchoring and differentiation processes in the minimal group setting. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 661-677.
6.
ChenF. F.KenrickD. T. (2002). Repulsion or attraction? Group membership and assumed attitude similarity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 111-125.
7.
CrispR. J.WalshJ.HewstoneM. (2006). Crossed categorization in common ingroup contexts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 1204-1218.
8.
D’AugelliA. R.GrossmanA. H.SalterN. P.VaseyJ. J.StarksM. T.SinclairK. O. (2005). Predicting the suicide attempts of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 35, 646-660.
9.
D’AugelliA. R.GrossmanA. H.StarksM. T. (2006). Childhood gender atypicality, victimization, and PTSD among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21, 1462-1482.
10.
D’AugelliA. R.PilkingtonN. W.HershbergerS. L. (2002). Incidence and mental health impact of sexual orientation victimization of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths in high school. Social Psychology Quarterly, 17, 148-167.
11.
D’AugelliA. R.RoseM. L. (1990). Homophobia in a university community: Attitudes and experiences of heterosexual freshmen. Journal of College Student Development, 31, 484-491.
12.
DovidioJ. F.GaertnerS. L. (2010). Intergroup bias. In FiskeS. T.GilbertD. T.LindzeyG. (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology (5th ed., Vol. 2, pp. 1084-1121). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
13.
DovidioJ. F.KawakamiK.GaertnerS. L. (2000). Reducing contemporary prejudice: Combating explicit and implicit bias at the individual and intergroup level. In OskampS. (Ed.), Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp. 137-163). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
14.
EidelmanS.BiernatM. (2003). Derogating black sheep: Individual or group protection?Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 602-609.
15.
FeingoldA. (1988). Matching for attractiveness in romantic partners and same-sex friends: A meta-analysis and theoretical critique. Psychological Bulletin, 104, 226-235.
16.
FestingerL. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.
17.
FiskeS. T.StevensL. E. (1993). What’s so special about sex? Gender stereotyping and discrimination. In OskampS.CostanzoM. (Eds.), Gender issues in contemporary society (pp. 173-196). Newbury Park, CA: SAGE.
18.
GaertnerS. L.DovidioJ. F.AnastasioP. A.BachmanB. A.RustM. C. (1993). The common ingroup identity model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias. In StroebeW.HewstoneM. (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 4, pp. 1-26). London, England: Wiley.
19.
GettlemanJ. (2011, January28). Ugandan who spoke up for gays is beaten to death. New York Times, p. A4.
20.
GreenbergJ.LandauM.KosloffS.SolomonS. (2009). How our dreams of death transcendence breed prejudice, stereotyping, and conflict: Terror management theory. In NelsonT. T. (Ed.), Handbook of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination (pp. 309-332). New York, NY: Psychology Press.
21.
HaslamS. A.TurnerJ. C.OakesP. J.ReynoldsK. J.DoosjeB. (2002). From personal pictures in the head to collective tools in the world: How shared stereotypes allow groups to represent and change social reality. In McGartyC.YzerbytV.SpearsR. (Eds.), Stereotypes as explanations: The formation of meaningful beliefs about social groups (pp. 157-185). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
22.
HerekG. M. (2002). Gender gaps in public opinion about lesbians and gay men. Public Opinion Quarterly, 66, 40-66.
23.
HornseyM. J.HoggM. A. (2000). Subgroup relations: A comparison of mutual intergroup differentiation and common ingroup identity models of prejudice reduction. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 242-256.
24.
InskoC. A.RobinsonJ. E. (1967). Belief similarity versus race as determinants of reactions to Negroes by southern White adolescents: A further test of Rokeach’s theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 7, 216-221.
25.
JamesW. (1918). Principles of psychology. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: General Publishing Company. (Original work published 1890)
26.
JettenJ.SpearsR.PostmesT. (2004). Intergroup distinctiveness and differentiation: A meta-analytic integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 862-879.
27.
LongA. E.PinelE. C. (2012). Seeking and avoiding I contact: When subjective overlap appeals and when it repels. Manuscript in preparation.
28.
LuhtanenR.CrockerJ. (1992). A collective self-esteem scale: Self-evaluation of one’s social identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 302-318.
29.
MallettR. K.WilsonT. D.GilbertD. T. (2008). Expect the unexpected: Failure to anticipate similarities leads to an intergroup forecasting error. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 265-277.
30.
MarquesJ. M.YzerbytV.Y. (1988). The black sheep effect: Judgmental extremity towards ingroup members in inter- and intra-group situations. European Journal of Social Psychology, 18, 287-292.
31.
MummendeyA.KlinkA.BrownR. (2001). Nationalism and patriotism: National identification and outgroup rejection. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 159-171.
32.
MummendeyA.WenzelM. (1999). Social discrimination and tolerance in intergroup relations: Reactions to intergroup difference. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 158-174.
33.
OakesP. J.HaslamS. A.ReynoldsK. J. (1999). Social categorization and social context: Is stereotype change a matter of information or of meaning? In AbramsD.HoggM. A. (Eds.), Social identity and social cognition (pp. 55-79). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
34.
PettigrewT. F. (1997). Generalized intergroup contact effects on prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 173-185.
35.
PinelE. C.BrennaR. LIII. (2012). I-sharing and face-to-face encounters with objectively similar and dissimilar others. Manuscript in preparation.
36.
PinelE. C.LongA. E.JohnsonL. A.MurdochE.HunekeM. (2012). A prisoner of one’s own mind: Measuring individual differences in existential isolation. Manuscript in preparation.
37.
PinelE. C.LongA. E.CriminL. A. (2008). We’re warmer (they’re more competent): I-sharing and African Americans’ evaluations of the ingroup and outgroup. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38, 1184-1192.
38.
PinelE. C.LongA. E.CriminL. A. (2010). I-sharing and a classic conformity paradigm. Social Cognition, 28, 277-289.
39.
PinelE. C.LongA. E.LandauM.AlexanderK.PyszczynskiT. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 243-257.
40.
PinelE. C.LongA. E.LandauM.PyszczynskiT. (2004). I-sharing and the problem of existential isolation. In GreenbergJ.KooleS.PyszczynskiT. (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 352-368). New York, NY: Guilford.
41.
RichesonJ. A.NussbaumR. J. (2004). The impact of multiculturalism versus color-blindness on racial bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 417-423.
42.
RokeachM. (1973). The nature of human values. New York, NY: Free Press.
43.
RudmanL. A.GoodwinS. A. (2004). Gender differences in automatic ingroup bias: Why do women like women more than men like men?Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 494-509.
44.
SechristG. B.StangorC. (2001). Perceived consensus influences intergroup behavior and stereotype accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80, 645-654.
45.
SherifM.HarveyL. J.WhiteB. J.HoodW. R.SherifC. W. (1961). The Robbers Cave experiment: Intergroup conflict and cooperation. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
46.
SilviaP. J.GrahamJ. S.HawleyC. N. (2005). Changing attitudes toward prison reform: Effects of similarity to prisoners on attraction and rejection. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35, 248-258.
47.
SimonB.KullaC.ZobelM. (1995). On being more than just a part of the whole: Regional identity and social distinctiveness. European Journal of Social Psychology, 25, 325-340.
48.
SolomonS.GreenbergJ.PyszczynskiT. (1991). Terror management theory of self-esteem. In SnyderC. R.ForsythD. R. (Eds.), Handbook of social and clinical psychology: The health perspective (Vol. 162, pp. 21-40). New York, NY: Pergamon Press.
49.
SteeleC. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affirmation: Sustaining the integrity of the self. In BerkowitzL. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 21, pp. 261-302). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
50.
SteeleC. M.AronsonJ. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African-Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797-811.
51.
SwannW. B.Jr. (1996). Self-traps: The elusive quest for self-esteem. New York, NY: Freeman.
52.
SwimJ. K.JohnstonK.PearsonN. B. (2009). Daily experiences with heterosexism: Relations between heterosexist hassles and psychological well-being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 28, 597-629.
53.
SwimJ. K.PearsonN. B.JohnstonK. (2007). Daily encounters with heterosexism: A week in the life of lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals. Journal of Homosexuality, 53, 18-31.
54.
TaylorS. E.MetteeD. R. (1971). When similarity breeds contempt. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 20, 75-81.
55.
ThiessenD.YoungR. K.DelgadoM. (1997). Social pressures for assortative mating. Personality and Individual Differences, 22, 157-164.
56.
TurnerJ. C. (2010). Social categorization and the self-concept: A social cognitive theory of group behavior. In PostmesT.BranscombeN. (Eds.) Rediscovering Social Identity (pp. 243-272). New York, NY, US: Psychology Press.
57.
YalomI. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York, NY: Basic Books.
