Do We Look Like Me or Like Us? Visual Projection as Self- or Ingroup-Projection

Abstract

People see their own group as more typical of a larger, superordinate category than they see other, included subgroups (ingroup-projection). This basic effect is not restricted to verbally encoded characteristics but also expands to the domain of what people think superordinate group members typically look like. Despite the robustness of the ingroup-projection phenomenon, it could be argued that it is a side effect of an even more basic process of seeing groups and individuals as similar primarily to the self (selfprojection). In the present research, the authors sought to address and rule out this potential alternative explanation of visual ingroup-projection as an artifact of self-projection to the subgroup and the superordinate group. Thirty-one participants completed three two-image, forced-choice reverse correlation image classification tasks to create subjective, prototypical images, called classification images, of (a) themselves; (b) their national ingroup (German); and (c) the larger, superordinate group (European). With the use of partial pixel correlations, the objective, unique physical similarity between pairs of classification images was calculated. Both the selfimage and the ingroup image independently predicted the superordinate group image, indicating that both self-projection and ingroup-projection contribute to visual mental representations of superordinate group faces.When making sense of highly abstract groups that we belong to (superordinate identity; e.g., inhabitants of a continent, students), we often rely on smaller, more concrete social groups (subordinate identity; e.g., nations, students of a specific

When words become borders: Ingroup favoritism in perceptions and mental representations of Anglo-Canadian and Franco-Canadian faces

“…Ratings from a separate group of participants showed that each national group’s European CI appeared to resemble their own nationality—that is, the Germans’ CI of a European appeared more stereotypically German and less stereotypically Portuguese than the Portuguese participants’ CI of a European did. These findings demonstrate ingroup projection, whereby people project aspects of their own group onto other groups (here, their superordinate group; see also Imhoff & Dotsch, 2013). Assuming that Anglo- and Franco-Canadians mentally represent themselves differently, this raises the question of whether they might also mentally represent Canadians, as a whole, as more similar to their linguistic ingroup versus outgroup.…”

Simply Insane? Attributing Terrorism to Mental Illness (Versus Ideology) Affects Mental Representations of Race

“…Previous research using the reverse-correlation task suggests that 20 to 30 participants per experimental cell tend to be sufficient to observe large effects (Dotsch & Todorov, 2012; Imhoff & Dotsch, 2013). Hence, we aimed to recruit at least 60 participants for this three-condition, between-group design.…”

Sensitivity to ingroup and outgroup norms in the association between commonality and morality

“…At the same time, ingroup norms were more strongly associated with participants' judgments than outgroup norms. This result may have emerged because individuals typically perceive ingroup members as more similar to themselves than outgroup members (Imhoff & Dotsch, 2013) and may therefore find ingroup norms to be more informative for how they should behave and what they should believe. Thus, Studies 3-4 also provided some support for the perceived outgroup irrelevance hypothesis.…”