Ethnocentrism and the value of a human life.

Abstract

Drawing on theories of intergroup prejudice and decision making, the authors examined how much participants valued lives of conationals and enemy civilians. Using decisions made under risk, Experiment 1 showed that Americans valued Iraqi and American lives equally when outcomes for those nations did not compete but valued American lives more under outcome competition. Experiments 2 and 3 extended this finding by illustrating ethnocentric valuation even when large numbers of lives were at stake: The number of lives at stake mattered less for enemy civilians than it did for conational combatants. Experiment 4 provided additional evidence of this ethnocentric indifference to magnitude, regardless of combatant status of the conationals' lives. In all experiments, individual difference measures associated with prejudice (e.g., group identification and prejudice, empathy, social dominance orientation, social attitudes) corresponded to ethnocentric valuation measured in decisions. Results demonstrate that categorization, competitive context, and individual propensities for prejudice influence how much one values lives.

If they can’t change, why support change? Implicit theories about groups, social dominance orientation and political identity

“…In the Israeli sample, this correlation was not significant (p = .090). Furthermore, consistent with our hypothesis as well as with findings from previous studies (e.g., Federico & Sidanius, 2002;Pratto & Glasford, 2008;Sidanius et al, 2006;Sidanius & Pratto, 2001), SDO was significantly correlated with right-wing political identity in all samples. RWA was significantly correlated with degree of endorsement of entity theories about groups, SDO and general right-wing political identity in all samples (see Table 3).…”

“…Individuals who endorse such hierarchy-legitimizing myths are said to be high on social dominance orientation. Legitimizing the current societal order is further closely connected to the conservative position of protecting the status quo and upholding traditional authorities and institutions and SDO has accordingly been shown to be associated with right-wing/conservative political positioning (e.g., Federico & Sidanius, 2002;Pratto & Glasford, 2008;Sidanius, Mitchell, Haley, & Navarrete, 2006;Sidanius & Pratto, 2001). …”

Encouraging majority support for immigrant access to health services: Multiple categorization and social identity complexity as antecedents of health equality

“…To measure behavioral intentions to prevent immigrants from contracting the disease at stake, thus saving their lives, we adapted a decision making task from Pratto and Glasford (2008). These authors asked respondents to choose between alternative options varying the number of ingroup and outgroup lives to save (or lose) versus some material consequence for the other group.…”

Influence of Intragroup Dynamics and Intergroup Relations on Authenticity in Organizational and Social Contexts: A Review of Conceptual Framework and Research Evidence

“…Emotionally, people are biased to feel more positively about ingroup than outgroup members (Otten & Moskowitz, 2000). They are pushed to perceive outgroup members as less human and authentic than ingroup members (Leyens et al, 2003) and start claiming that they value their lives less (Pratto & Glasford, 2008).…”