The “Black Sheep Effect”: Extremity of judgments towards ingroup members as a function of group identification

Abstract

The present study proposes an extension to the phenomenon of ingroup favouritism, based on the hypothesis that judgments about ingroup members may be more positive or more negative than judgments about similar outgroup members. It contrasts predictions issued from the complexity-extremity hypothesis (Linville, 1982;, from the ingroup favouritism hypothesis (Tajhel, 1982) and from Tesser's (1978;

Social Judgment of Abortion: A Black-Sheep Effect in a Catholic Sheepfold

“…In another respect and in partial support of Hypothesis 3, the French Catholic participants with low religious identification judged the Catholic target more favorably than they judged the neutral one (classical in-group bias) in the no-pressure condition, regardless of whether the consequences of abortion were positive or negative. Although I compared an in-group target with a neutral target (and not with an out-group target), those results are consistent with the black-sheep effect (Marquès & Paez, 1994;Marquès, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988). Moreover, they are consistent with the findings of Branscombe et al (1993) that the degree of the evaluator's social identification modulated the black-sheep effect.…”

Derogating benevolent behavior of deviant in-group members: group processes within a real-life sample of heterosexual Christians

“…Heterosexual Christians have the most negative evaluations of a couple that is not only lesbian, but also Christian. This could mean that this couple is perceived as deviating from the in-group (by being Christian but also lesbian), which is more threatening than deviating from the out-group (by being non-Christian and also lesbian), and therefore leads to harsher evaluations (e.g., Marques et al, 1988;Pinto et al, 2010). This interpretation can have important implications for the reduction of negative reactions.…”

“…In-group members who adhere to group norms are favored over deviant members who do not follow the norms (Abrams et al, 2000;Marques et al, 1998). People even favor deviant out-group members over deviant in-group members, a phenomenon called "the black sheep effect" (Marques et al, 1988).…”

Dealing with deviants: The effectiveness of rejection, denial, and apologies on protecting the public image of a group

“…This is not because people are somehow more strongly offended by outgroup members' transgressions than by ingroup members' transgressions, on the contrary, because negative ingroup deviants threaten the positive distinctiveness of the ingroup, they are often judged more harshly than comparable outgroup deviants (Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988;Marques & Paez, 1994). However, ingroup stereotypes are more complex than outgroup stereotypes, and typically contain a number of subtypes to capture the deviant's behaviour without causing modification of the stereotype in general (Park et al, 1992;Richards & Hewstone, 2001).…”