Effects of Ingroup Identification on Ingroup Favouritism during Fairness Norm Enforcement

Abstract

People tend to voluntarily sacrifice their own interests to reject unfair proposals, and this behaviour is affected by group affiliation. While group bias is a well-established phenomenon, its direction is still unclear, and little attention has been given to possible moderating factors. In two studies, we manipulate participants’ ingroup identification and investigate whether and how individuals with various levels of ingroup identification react differently to unfairness from ingroups and outgroups during an incentivized (Study 1, N = 46) and hypothetical (Study 2, N = 332) ultimatum game. The results show that participants display a strong preference for their own group. High identifiers tend to accept unfair proposals from ingroups compared to outgroups, whereas this effect is nonsignificant for low identifiers, especially for moderately unfair treatment (offer 7:3). Moreover, higher identification tends to be accompanied by higher ingroup positive expectation, which then leads to greater ingroup favouritism for an offer of 7:3. These results imply that ingroup identification can enhance group favouritism during fairness norm enforcement through ingroup positive expectation.

Group membership and adolescents’ third-party punishment: a moderated chain mediation model

“…Group membership is a social dimension that distinguishes oneself from others, including friendship, race, class, nationality, and even mere membership triggered by artificial cues ( Lieberman and Linke, 2007 ; Chierchia et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2021 , 2022 ). Researchers have examined the effect of group membership on TPP, but their findings have been inconsistent.…”