(2007) Development of the positive-negative asymmetry effect: In-group exclusion norm as a mediator of children's evaluations on negative attributes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37 (1). pp. [171][172][173][174][175][176][177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190] According to social identity theory (SIT: Tajfel & Turner, 1986) intergroup bias is achieved as a result of individual's striving for positive social distinctiveness, in the context of some in-group identification and the salience of an in-group versus out-group categorization. In this account positive distinctiveness can be created independently of the valence of the attributes to be assigned. Recent research has shown that us-them categorization results in less social discrimination when negative rather than positive attributes are allocated between groups (Blanz, Mummendey, & Otten, 1995;Buhl, 1999;Gardham & Brown, 2001;Otten, Mummendey, & Blanz, 1996). This phenomenon has been termed the 'positive-negative asymmetry effect' (PNAE: Mummendey et al., 1992). Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 171-190 (2007)
European Journal of Social Psychology
Received 15 December 2004 Accepted 16 January 2006The present research examined when and why children might show intergroup bias on positive, but not negative, valence attributions. Significantly, development of the PNAE has been relatively ignored in previous research on children's intergroup attitudes. The findings of a few studies suggest children are sometimes more willing to differentiate between groups on positive attributes and much less reliably show intergroup discrimination on negative attributes (Bennett et al