The present study proposes that disidentification is distinct from non-identification and investigates its relationship to outgroup perceptions. One hundred and ninety-six Japanese university students completed a university identification/disidentification scale. They then engaged in an idiosyncratic stereotyping task where they listed and rated attribute characteristics of their own and three other universities (superior, equal, and inferior to their own in terms of academic standards). Prior to the stereotyping task, the level of threat to ingroup status was manipulated. Results showed that disidentification was associated with the tendency to select derogating inferior outgroup targets. Results were discussed based on the role of disidentification in the discriminatory perception of outgroups in a status hierarchy.

Previous studies demonstrated that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) moderates responses to exclusion in late-stage social outcomes (e.g., social judgements and behaviours). People with low levels of FNE show affiliative responses, feeling compelled to recover their sense of belonging, whereas people with high levels of FNE do not. This study examined whether FNE also moderates responses to exclusion in early-stage interpersonal perception, manifested in selective attention. The experiment using a dot-probe task revealed that exclusion led participants with low levels of FNE to increase attention to signs of social acceptance (i.e., smiling faces). It also revealed that exclusion led those with high levels of FNE to pay more attention to signs of social threat (i.e., angry faces) relative to those of social acceptance. Thus, exclusion makes the motivation to protect oneself from social threats dominant over the motivation to reestablish social bonds among those who fear negative evaluation.

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The present study investigates the effects of evaluative processing of hostile and friendly words on impression formation. Two experiments were conducted. Subjects were first asked to complete sentences using hostile (Experiment I )