Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Three studies examined the effect of nouns and adjectives for designations of nationality on intergroup bias. In Study 1, participants (N = 237) evaluated group artifacts whose authors’ nationality was labeled with nouns or adjectives. Use of nouns enhanced in-group favoritism, manifested as a preference of the in-group artifact. Study 2 (N = 431) tested the effect of nouns and adjectives on attitudes toward the in-group and out-group focusing on the moderating role of in-group identification. Use of nouns led to a stronger relative preference of the in-group, pronounced especially in low identified group members. Study 3 (N = 979) examined the effect of nouns and adjectives in a more applied survey setting. Intergroup bias concerning material restitution for confiscated property was stronger when the ethnicity of the former owners was labeled with nouns. The article emphasizes that subtle variation in language use has a consistent impact on intergroup evaluation.

Keywords

nouns adjectives intergroup bias intergroup attitudes

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allport

G. W.

(1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Bilewicz

Bukowski

Cichocka

Wojcik

Winiewski

(2009). Polish prejudice survey: Research report. Warsaw, Poland: Center for Research on Prejudice, University of Warsaw.

Bilewicz

Wójcik

(2010). Does identification predict community involvement? Exploring consequences of social identification among the Jewish minority in Poland. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 22, 72-79.

Blacksell

Born

K. M.

(2002). Private property restitution: The geographical consequences of official government policies in Central and Eastern Europe. The Geographical Journal, 168, 178-190.

Brewer

M. B.

(1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love or outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55, 429-444.

Brewer

M. B.

(2001). Ingroup identification and intergroup conflict: When does ingroup love become outgroup hate? In Ashmore

Jussim

(Eds.), Social identity, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction (pp. 17-41). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Cameron

(2004). A three-component model of social identification. Self and Identity, 3, 239-262.

Carnaghi

Maass

Gresta

Bianchi

Cadinu

Arcuri

(2008). Nomina Sunt Omina: On the inductive potential of nouns and adjectives in person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 839-859.

Coenen

L. H.

Hedebouw

Semin

G. R.

(2006). LCM manual: Measuring language abstraction: The Linguistic Category Model. Retrieved from http://cratylus.org/uploaded-Files/1151434261594-8567.pdf

10.

Crisp

R. J.

Beck

S. R.

(2005). Reducing intergroup bias: The moderating role of ingroup identification. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 8, 173-185.

11.

Douglas

K. M.

Sutton

R. M.

(2003). Effects of communication goals and expectancies on language abstraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 682-696.

12.

Douglas

K. M.

Sutton

R. M.

(2006). When what you say about others says something about you: Language abstraction and inferences about describers’ attitudes and goals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 500-508.

13.

Douglas

K. M.

Sutton

R. M.

(2010). By their words ye shall know them: Language abstraction and the likeability of describers. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 366-374.

14.

Franco

Maass

(1996). Implicit vs. explicit strategies of outgroup discrimination: The role of intentional control in biased language use and reward allocation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 15, 335-359.

15.

Franco

F. M.

Maass

(1999). Intentional control over prejudice: When the choice of the measure matters. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 469-477.

16.

Gaertner

S. L.

Dovidio

J. F.

(1986). The aversive form of racism. In Dovidio

J. F.

Gaertner

S. L.

(Eds.), Prejudice, discrimination, and racism (pp. 61-89). Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

17.

Gelman

S. A.

Heyman

G. D.

(1999). Carrot-eaters and creature-believers: The effects of lexicalization on children’s inferences about social categories. Psychological Science, 10, 489-493.

18.

Geschke

Sassenberg

Ruhrmann

Sommer

(2010). Effects of linguistic abstractness in the mass media: How newspaper articles shape readers’ attitudes toward migrants. Journal of Media Psychology, 22, 99-104.

19.

Golec de Zavala

Cichocka

Bilewicz

(2012). The paradox of in-group love: Differentiating collective narcissism advances understanding of the relationship between in-group and out-group attitudes. Journal of Personality. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494 .2012.00779.x

20.

Grieve

P. G.

Hogg

M. A.

(1999). Subjective uncertainty and intergroup discrimination in the minimal group situation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 926-940.

21.

Hall

D. G.

Moore

C. E.

(1997). Red bluebirds and black greenflies: Preschoolers’ understanding of the semantics of adjectives and count nouns. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 67, 236-267.

22.

Haslam

(1998). Natural kinds, human kinds, and essentialism. Social Research, 65, 291-314.

23.

Hewstone

Rubin

Willis

(2002). Intergroup bias. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 575-604.

24.

Jetten

Spears

Postmes

(2004). Intergroup distinctiveness and differentiation: A meta-analytic integration. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 862-879.

25.

Keller

(2005). In genes we trust: The biological component of psychological essentialism and its relationship to mechanisms of motivated social cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 686-702.

26.

Kozminski

(1997). Restitution of private property: Re-privatization in Central and Eastern Europe. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 30, 95-106.

27.

Leyens

J-P.

Cortes

Demoulin

Dovidio

Fiske

Gaunt

Vaes

(2003). Emotional prejudice, essentialism, and nationalism: The 2002 Tajfel lecture. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 703-717.

28.

Maass

Corvino

Arcuri

(1994). Linguistic intergroup bias and the mass media. Revue de Psychologie Sociale, 1, 31-43.

29.

Maass

Salvi

Arcuri

Semin

G. R.

(1989). Language use in intergroup contexts: The linguistic intergroup bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 981-993.

30.

Mala

Goodman

J. D.

(2011, July 23). Attacks on capital and island camp kill scores in Norway. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/world/europe/n23oslo.html?_r=2&hp

31.

Mullen

Brown

Smith

(1992). Ingroup bias as a function of salience, relevance, and status: An integration. European Journal of Social Psychology, 22, 103-122.

32.

Norenzayan

Schwarz

(1999). Telling what they want to know: Participants tailor causal attributions to researchers’ interests. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 1011-1020.

33.

Pettigrew

T. F.

Tropp

L. R.

(2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 751-783.

34.

Riek

B. M.

Mania

E. W.

Gaertner

S. L.

(2006). Intergroup threat and outgroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 336-353.

35.

Rothbart

Taylor

(1992). Category labels and social reality: Do we view social categories as natural kinds? In Semin

G. R.

Fiedler

(Eds.), Language, interaction and social cognition (pp. 11-36). London, England: Sage.

36.

Schuman

Presser

(1981). Questions and answers in attitude surveys. New York, NY: Academic Press.

37.

Schwarz

(1996). Cognition and communication: Judgmental biases, research methods, and the logic of conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

38.

Schwarz

(1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54, 93-105.

39.

Semin

G. R.

Fiedler

(1988). The cognitive functions of linguistic categories in describing persons: Social cognition and language. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 558-568.

40.

Sniderman

P. M.

Hagendoorn

(2007). When ways of life collide: Multiculturalism and its discontents in the Netherlands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

41.

Sutton

R. M.

(2010). The creative power of language in social cognition and intergroup relations. In Giles

Reid

Harwood

(Eds.), Dynamics of intergroup communication (pp. 105-115). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

42.

Ter Doest

Semin

G. R.

Sherman

S. J.

(2002). Linguistic context and social perception: Does stimulus abstraction moderate processing style? Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21, 195-229.

43.

Veenstra

Haslam

S. A.

(2000). Willingness to participate in industrial protest: Exploring social identification in context. British Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 153-172.

44.

Walton

G. M.

Banaji

M. B.

(2004). Being what you say: The effect of essentialist linguistic labels on preferences. Social Cognition, 22, 193-213.

45.

Wenneker

C. P. J.

Wigboldus

D. H. J.

Spears

(2005). Biased language use in stereotype maintenance: The role of encoding and goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89, 504-516.

46.

Wierzbicka

(1986). What’s in a noun? (Or: How do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?). Studies in Language, 10, 353-389.

47.

Wilcox

Sigelman

Cook

(1989). Some like it hot: Individual differences in responses to group feeling thermometers. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53, 246-257.

48.

Winter

(2011, July 23). 17 dead in Oslo bombing, shootings; Norwegian held. USA Today. Retrieved from http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/07/blast-in-oslo-blows-out-government-office-building-windows/1

49.

Yzerbyt

Estrada

Corneille

Seron

Demoulin

(2004). Subjective essentialism in action: Self-anchoring and social control as consequences of fundamental social divides. In Judd

C. M.

Yzerbyt

Corneille

(Eds.), The psychology of group perception: Contributions to the study of homogeneity, entitivity, and essentialism (pp. 101-126). Philadelphia, PA: Psychology Press.

Nouns Cut Slices

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References