Arousal, Processing, and Risk Taking: Consequences of Intergroup Anger

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the auth...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality & social psychology bulletin 2008-08, Vol.34 (8), p.1141-1152
Main Authors: Rydell, Robert J., Mackie, Diane M., Maitner, Angela T., Claypool, Heather M., Ryan, Melissa J., Smith, Eliot R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affect
Anger
Arousal
Classification
Emotions
Experiments
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Fear & phobias
Group identity
Group Processes
Humans
Information processing
Membership
Persuasion
Psychological Theory
Risk behavior
Risk taking
Selfreport
Social categorization
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Summary:Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports.
ISSN:0146-1672
1552-7433
DOI:10.1177/0146167208319694