Everyone is cordially invited to Islam Borinca's (University of Geneva) presentation on his research on "(Mis)understanding out-group pro-social behaviors".

Room BIN 3.D.27

Abstract:

This research aims to extend literature on inter-group relations and intergroup contact by focusing on help recipients' (mis)understanding of intergroup prosocial behavior. More specifically, we investigated whether helper categorization (in-group vs. out-group) influences perceived helper's empathy and altruistic (vs. instrumental) motives, as well as help acceptance. We addressed this issue by exploring the moderating role of different factors such as prejudice and outgroup-related information (1st line or research), context familiarity (2nd line of research), social norms (3rd line of research) and apologies (4rthline of research). Results within the first line of research show that people with high negative outgroup perceptions (i.e., high prejudiced individuals or those exposed to negative outgroup information) attributed less empathy and altruistic (vs. instrumental) motives to the out-group helper than to the in-group helper, and accepted to a lower extent the help (i.e., an in-group bias). The second line of research shows that this in-group bias pattern appears specifically in an in-group context, but disappeared in an out-group context. The findings within the third line of research show that this general in-group bias mainly occurred when in-group norms were negative towards the out-group, as compared to a tolerant normative context. Finally, the fourth line or research shows that the in-group bias occurred when participants were exposed to an institutional apology (and in control conditions), but was reduced when they were exposed to interpersonal or normative apologies. Overall, this research may increase our understanding of the mechanisms by which people misunderstand outgroup prosocial behaviors, which might help to improve the quality of intergroup contact and intergroup relations in general.