"Georgian Students’ Perceived Vitality, Competence and Behavioral Intention to German-Speaking Out-Group"

Abstract

Attitudesstereotypes, their antecedents, emotions (i.e, positiveadmiration, or negative -contempt) and behavioral intention of Georgian students toward the representatives of German-speaking countries are studied. According to the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske et al., 2002;Fiske, 2015), stereotypes of warmth measure to what extent German-speaking people are percived as wishing to harm others and stereotypes of competence -how capable they are considered. According to theory, stereotypes are elicited by the corresponding socio-structural antecedents: perceived international image of German-speaking countries, measured by vitality and perceived threat posed by them, measured by fear of assimilation. Combination of stereotypes of warmth and competence, in turn, elicit corresponding emotions, which might lead to certain behavioral intentions, such as wish of cooperation or avoidance, etc. (Cuddy et al., 2008;Fiske, 2018). The data were collected from 87 native Georgian students using a modified questionnaire from Cuddy, Fiske and Glick's study (2007). The German-speaking out-groups were perceived as competent, having high international status/being vital, eliciting the wish to become similar to the people of German-speaking countries. The hierarchical multiple regression analysis (we entered demographic variablesage and gender -in model 1, vitality and fear of assimilation in model 2 and warmth and competence in model 3) showed that perceived competence of German-speaking group positively predicted the corresponding behavioral outcome: β = .48, t = 3.28, p < 0.01, F (9, 56) = 3.55, p < 0.01, R2 change = 0.14, p < 0.01. However, vitality also yielded significant regression coefficient in the previous model: β = .29, t = 2.36, p < 0.05, which turned insignificant in the final model. Thus, we conducted mediation analysis, which yielded full mediation: vitality antecedes perceived competence, which, in turn, elicits behavioral intention, TE = 0.66, LLIC = 0.16, ULCI = 1.17; IE = 0.32, LLIC = 0.03, ULCI = 0.56; DE = 0.35, LLIC = -0.12, ULCI = 0.81. The stereotype content model is usually applied to investigate attitudes to the groups in a given society, while we applied this theory to measure attitudes of Georgian students to distant out-group of German-Speaking people, who, mostly, represent the European Union countries (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland and Liechtenstein), and found out that their image on international arena (measured by vitality), predicted wish to become similar to them via eliciting perception of these group as competent.