This research examines inferences about the emotional states of ingroup and outgroup victims after a natural disaster, and whether these inferences predict intergroup helping. Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck the southern United States, White and non-White participants were asked to infer the emotional states of an individualized Black or White victim, and were asked to report their intentions to help such victims. Overall, participants believed that an outgroup victim experienced fewer secondary, ‘uniquely human’ emotions (e.g. anguish, mourning, remorse) than an ingroup victim. The extent to which participants did infer secondary emotions about outgroup victims, however, predicted their helping intentions; in other words, those participants who did not dehumanize outgroup victims were the individuals most likely to report intentions to volunteer for hurricane relief efforts. This investigation extends prior research by: (1) demonstrating infraglobalhumanization of individualized outgroup members (as opposed to aggregated outgroups); (2) examining infrahumanization via inferred emotional states (as opposed to attributions of emotions as stereotypic traits); and (3) identifying a relationship between infra-humanization of outgroup members and reduced intergroup helping.

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Past research on political orientation suggests an association between conservatism and cognitive rigidity. In the area of self-regulation, cognitive rigidity has been related to avoidance motivation and cognitive flexibility to approach motivation. Furthermore, recent work suggests links between political orientation and self-regulation, with conservatism associated with (inhibition-based) avoidance motivation and liberalism with (activation-based) approach motivation. The authors therefore propose that self-regulatory differences may account for the links between political orientation and cognitive rigidity. Two studies investigate the effects of motivational prime and political orientation on rigidity, assessed by a cognitive categorization task. Across both studies, avoidance motivation moderated the relationship between conservatism and rigidity. Liberalism was associated with similar category inclusiveness across conditions, whereas conservatism was associated with greater rigidity in the avoidance condition. It appears that conservatives' cognitive rigidity is an avoidance-primed inhibitory strategy; conservatives are sensitive to avoidance motivation, which in turn accounts for their greater cognitive rigidity.

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