March 30, 1985, it directed the Rugby Union to cancel the tour. The Union ... constructive engagement that purported to reform apartheid. Both had been ...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1988, Vol. 55, No. 5, 749-757
Copyright 1988 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/88/$00.75
Intergroup Bias by Defensive and Offensive Groups in Majority and Minority Conditions Sik Hung Ng and Fiona Cram University of Otago Dunedin, New Zealand When the legitimacy of an opinion group surpasses that of the opposite group, the burden of legitimation shifts from the former to the latter, rendering the prior consensual order of social identities insecure. The insecurity has a negative valence for the burdened, defensive group and a positive valence for the ascendant, offensivegroup. We predicted that the in-group bias of the defensivegroup would be smaller and that of the offensivegroup would be greater in the majority than in the minority situation. The predicted interaction effect was significant; however, it was asymmetrical in that the simple effects of majority-minority were significant only in the offensive group (Experiment 1). These results were replicated in Experiment 2. In both experiments, bias was smaller in the defensive than in the offensivegroup. In Experiment 3 we manipulated defensiveness by laying the burden of legitimation on one group. Regardless of which opinion group was burdened, less bias was predictably shown in the majority than in the minority condition.
Relations between groups change when the legitimacy of the old order is threatened. The change can be observed during a community controversy when the traditionally more legitimate stance (orthodox stance) on a social or political issue is challenged by adherents of the traditionally less legitimate stance (heterodox stance). Not all challenges will be effective, but some will succeed in making the orthodox stance look reactionary, trivial, and lacking in legitimacy. Accompanying such success is a growing certainty that the rightfulness of the heterodox stance is self-evident and no longer needs apology. The reversal in the balance of legitimacy constitutes a shift in the burden of legitimation from the heterodox to the orthodox stance. We are concerned with the psychological consequences of the legitimation shift, especially with the different ways in which representatives of the stances will respond to the shift. Legitimation shift will have an impact on group members' self-concepts, especially that part of the self-concept based on group membership and associated emotions, namely, social identity. Tajfel and Turner's (1979) social identity theory offers an understanding of the impact in terms of how the prior consensual order of stance-based social identities is rendered insecure by the legitimation shift. Social identity insecurity triggers one or more identity-related responses (Breakwell, 1986). The one that interests us most is in-group bias, which enables the in-group to compare favorably with the out-group and conse-
quently enables the group members to safeguard or otherwise enhance their social identity (Brewer, 1979; Brewer & Kramer, 1985; Tajfel, 1982; Turner, 1975). An important principle of social identity theory is that the degree of in-group bias will increase with greater insecurity (Brown, 1978; Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor, 1977; Turner, 1985). Legitimation shift provides an interesting case for applying and extending the insecurity principle in a constructive rather than mechanical way. Social identity insecurity caused by a changing relationship is not always threatening or discouraging, but it will be experienced differently by the groups concerned. Just as the change may favor one group and disfavor another group, so the resulting insecurity may have a positive valence for one group and a negative valence for the other. In the case of the orthodox group the shift is unfavorable and consequently its insecurity is negative. Conversely, for the ascendant heterodox group the change is for the better and its insecurity is positive. In short, the insecurity is negative for the orthodox group and positive for the heterodox group, as the former will lose and the latter will gain from the change (see also Brown & Turner, 198 l; Ng, 1986; Ng & Cram, 1987; Tajfel & Turner, 1979). To capture the negative and positive aspects of insecurity, we call the respective groups the defensive (orthodox) and offensive (heterodox) groups. (See Tedeschi & Norman, 1985, p. 295, for a discussion of the two terms in relation to identity management.) Valence of insecurity suggests an interesting interaction between defensive-offensive groups and immediate majority-minority. Immediate majority-minority refers to the relative numbers of the representatives of the respective groups within the immediate setting. The impact of immediate majority-minority is not independent of majority-minority in the wider community. The latter is, however, remote and abstract, and provided that it is perceived as being changeable, immediate majority-minority will have a direct and concrete impact. The first author still remembers the unsettling experience when,
This research was supported by a New Zealand Social Sciences Research Fund Committee Grant 8235/21/24/8205 awarded to Sik Hung Ng. An earlier version of this article was presented at the August 1986 New Zealand PsychologicalSociety Annual Conference. The authors thank all of the anonymous reviewers for their comments and Norbert L. Kerr for his practical advice on revising this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sik Hung Ng, Psychology Department, University of Otago, Private Bag, Dunedin, New Zealand. 749
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SIK HUNG NG AND FIONA CRAM
during a protest march, the procession that he was in was outnumbered by the opponents. Social comparison theory shows that confidence in the validity of one's opinion is positively related to the number of others who hold that opinion (Festinger, 1954; Sanders & Mullen, 1983). In a similar vein we reason that immediate majority will enhance the perceived legitimacy of the stance that it supports, whereas immediate minority will weaken it. By enhancing the perceived legitimacy, immediate majority (a) buffers the defensive group from its declining legitimacy, thereby reducing its negative insecurity; and (b) heightens the offensive group's expectation of favorable change, thereby increasing its positive insecurity. Conversely, by weakening the perceived legitimacy, immediate minority (c) exposes the defensive group to and increases its negative insecurity and (d) dampens the offensive group's expectation of favorable change and reduces its positive insecurity. In short, for Reasons (a) and (c) the defensive group's negative insecurity will be greater in the minority than in the majority situation. According to the insecurity principle of social identity theory, the defensive group will show more bias in the minority than in the majority situation. On the other hand, for Reasons (b) and (d) the offensive group's positive insecurity will be greater in the majority than in the minority situation. Hence, they will show more bias in the majority than in the minority situation, which is the reverse of the defensive group. This reasoning, which highlights the opposite effects of immediate majority-minority, differs from several other views. McGuire, McGuire, Child, and Fujioka (1978) found that the ethnic identity of schoolchildren was more salient to the extent that they were in the ethnic minority in their classroom. Likewise, McGuire, McGuire, and Winton (1979) observed that a child's gender identity was greater when members of the opposite sex were in the majority in the child's family, again suggesting a positive correlation between immediate minority and identity. A negative correlation was not envisaged. With more direct reference to in-group bias, a unidirectional view was offered by Sachdev and Bourhis (1984), who reasoned that as the majority-minority distinction was a value-laden dimension that compared the minority unfavorably with the majority, the minority would be more motivated than the majority to safeguard their identity by in-group bias. Sachdev and Bourhis were unable to confirm their prediction consistently in their experiment. It appears unlikely that immediate majority-minority will have a unidirectional effect uncomplicated by other variables. In Experiment 1 we attempted to identify a defensive and an offensive group in the community for testing the opposite effects of immediate majority-minority. The defining feature of a defensive-offensive intergroup relation is a legitimation shift that, as already noted, transfers the burden of justifying the legitimacy of a stance from one (offensive) to the other (defensive) group. There is little research known to us on defensive and offensive groups formed on the basis of a legitimation shift. Under the circumstances, Experiment 1 served to examine the concept in a concrete social context as much as to test its interactive effect. Experiment 1 Rugby football has historically been New Zealand's national sport. The New Zealand Rugby Football Union, on the invita-
tion of the South African Rugby Board, was to send a national team (the All Blacks) to tour South Africa in July 1985. The Labor government, newly elected in 1984, opposed the tour. On March 30, 1985, it directed the Rugby Union to cancel the tour. The Union councillors were to respond to this in their meeting on April 17. There was an air of suspense as the public awaited the Union's decision. Within this period, from April 3 to April 10, we conducted this experiment, which involved pro- and antitour student supporters to represent defensive and offensive groups. An important asymmetry characterized the traditional relation between the pro- and antitour stances, namely, the differing burdens to legitimate the stances. In New Zealand playing rugby with whomever one may choose needed little or no legitimation. To stop the play, however, did require legitimation, and very often such arguments were not listened to seriously. Noticeable changes had occurred since about 1981, shifting the burden of legitimation from the anti- to the protour stance. Briefly, the legitimation of rugby contact with South Africa rested traditionally on two major bases: individual freedom and constructive engagement that purported to reform apartheid. Both had been seriously challenged in recent times. Sporting freedom of a few was perceived as thwarting the greater political and social freedom of Black South Africans and as producing fission within New Zealand society. Bridges built by sporting contact may, despite good intentions, actually undermine the struggle of Black South Africans, disrupt the pressure of international sporting boycott, and incite violence and aggression because the contact was deemed by the Blacks to be provocative. Within the rugby circle legitimation of the tour was based on the claim that the tour would do good to the game. This, too, had been challenged by rugby people who opposed the tour. The High Court injunction, which halted the tour and led to its cancellation, was in fact issued on the grounds that the tour may act against the interest of rugby and hence violate the constitution of the rugby union. This debate had been going on since or even before the 1981 Springbok (national South African team) tour to New Zealand, which caused massive civil disruption in New Zealand (Chappie, 1984). A significant recent input to the debate was the new government's no-tour policy, often couched in moralistic terms, that helped to enhance the respectability and visibility of the antitour stance. This, coupled with a level of antitour support from the public that almost equalled the protour support (Heylen Poll, 1981, 1985), contributed to the emergence of the antitour stance as a respectable and offensive force capable of putting the protour stance on the defensive. The onus of legitimation had shifted from the antitour to the protour stance. On this basis it appeared viable to constitute defensive and offensive groups using pro- and antitour supporters, respectively.
Method Subjects. We tested protour and anfitour student supporters, identified in a prior survey, together in each of four experimental sessions. There were 14-18 subjects per session. We recruited subjects on a voluntary basis from a psychology class and selected them if they were available for one of the four times in which the sessionswere held. Timetabling requirements reduced the number of potential subjects to 22 protour and 40 antitour subjects.
INTERGROUP BIAS
Design and procedure. The experiment was couched as a study of impression formation. The experimenter asked subjects to read a long essay on the best ways of promoting sports among young New Zealanders and then to rate the author on several impression items. This task occupied the subjects for the duration of the experiment, but it was in fact a bogus task. Subjects then answered questions designed to check their stance ("Would you be willing to wear a pro-tour/anti-tour button?") and the perceived legitimacy of their stance ("How true is it that people you know respect your tour stance?--very true [1], not at all true [4]"). The experimenter introduced the measure of group bias at the end of the experiment in an unobtrusive way. The experimenter placed two essays in front of each subject and instructed antitour subjects to choose the essay written by a protour author and protour subjects to choose the one written by an antitour author. This rule was made known to the subjects. In this way subjects declared their stance privately, and we took a further precaution to maintain anonymity &stance by seating the subjects in a spacious laboratory. This allowed the experimenter to manipulate the majority-minority variable later. After removing and cataloguing the unchosen essays, the experimenter made one of three predetermined remarks in a clearly audible but casual manner: (a) "There are more antitour than protour people in this lab?' (b) "There are more protour than antitour people in this lab." (c) "There are equal numbers of pro- and antitour people in this lab." We assigned three of the four sessions to those conditions. There was also a baseline condition in which no statement about numbers was made. This resulted in four conditions: majority, equal number, minority, and baseline. There were 10 antitour subjects per condition. The numbers ofprotour subjects in the conditions were 8, 5, 4, and 5, respectively. Note that we never revealed these numbers to the subjects. Bias measure. After completing the author ratings and the questionnaire, the experimenter thanked and dismissed the subjects. Just as the subjects were beginning to rise from their seats, the experimenter halted them and announced that the research director had a message for them. The message was to ask subjects to suggest the amounts of money they would like the research director to donate to Telethon (a national charity fundraising campaign run on television for 24 continuous hours) in the names of protour supporters and of antitour supporters. Each of the two donations could vary from $0 to $30. The experimenter elicited the preferred donations from individual subjects; we set up this task realistically by having the director appear at the start of the experiment to recruit helpers who would be paid from a fund and announce that there would be some money left over for a charity donation. We measured in-group bias by the amount of preferred in-group donation in excess of the preferred out-group donation. To give a moderately extreme example, a protour subject might have preferred that the director donate $30 in the name of the protour group and only $15 in the name of the antitour group. Note that the two donations were nonzero sum, a procedure that would minimize in-group bias relative to a zero-sum procedure (Mummendey & Schreiber, 1983). This procedure was sufficiently simple to be embedded unobtrusively in the experiment and for this reason was preferable to the complex point matrixes developed for social identity experiments (Taj fel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). Results As there was no interaction among subjects, and the four sessions were conducted according to the same standard procedure, we treated individual subjects as the units o f analysis. Sixty-four percent o f p r o t o u r subjects indicated a willingness to wear the tour button, and none were willing to wear the antitour button. N o antitour subject was willing to wear the tour button and 63% were willing to wear the antitour button. Protour subjects, compared with antitour subjects, believed significantly
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Table 1
Mean In-Group Donation and In-Group Bias Scores o f Proand Antitour Subjects by Experimental Condition Protour stance
Condition
Ingroup donation
Ingroup bias
Baseline Majority Equal number Minority
19.0 26.9 18.0 23.8
0.0 4.4 4.0 12.5
Antitour stance
n
Ingroup donation
Ingroup bias
n
5 8 5 4
23.5 28.6 21.7 22.5
6.0 17.3 11.1 10.0
10 10 10 10
Note. In-group bias = in-group donation-out-group donation (not shown). We log-transformed bias scores for analysis. A 2 (stance) X 4 (condition) analysis of variance provided the mean square error term (0.076) for the following directional tests: (a) partial interaction between protour-antitour and majority-minority, t(54) = 1.88,p < .05; (b) minority versus majority in the protour stance, t(54) = 1.56, p = .07; and (c) majority versus minority in the antitour stance, t(54) = 1.98, p < .05.
less strongly that other people respected their tour stance (Ms = 2.5 and 1.9, respectively), F(1, 60) = 6.0, p < .01. We analyzed the donation bias scores, log-transformed to homogenize the cell variances, according to a 2 (stance) X 4 (condition) analysis o f variance (ANOVA) design. This yielded the error term (MSe = 0.076) for evaluating the partial interaction between stance and m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y (Keppel, 1982). By using a directional test the predicted interaction effect was significant, t(54) = 1.88, p < .05, one-tailed. To dissect the interaction effect we conducted a directional simple effects contrast between majority and minority for each stance. The contrast was significant in the antitour stance, t(54) = 1.98, p < .05, and only marginally significant in the protour stance, t(54) = 1.56, p = .07. The raw (untransformed) cell means are shown in Table 1. Within each stance the baseline m e a n was the lowest. Pooled across stances, the baseline mean was significantly smaller than the equal n u m b e r mean, F(1, 54) = 4.90, p < .05, and was marginally smaller than the overall m e a n o f the majority/equal n u m b e r / m i n o r i t y conditions, F ( I , 54) = 3.86, p = .057. The 2 X 4 ANOVA itself showed a marginally significant main effect of stance, F(1, 54) = 3.43, p = .066, with a higher mean in the anti- than protour stance.
Discussion The polarized choice o f tour and no tour buttons indicated that subjects had adopted an in-group-out-group orientation, which lent support to the meaningfulness of the group names. Pro- and antitour subjects reacted to the i m m e d i a t e majority and minority settings on the bias measure in the predicted opposite directions, as evidenced by the significant interaction effect. The predicted simple effect o f m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y was significant in the anti- but not the protour stance. The bias measure based on charity donation was designed to tap identity responses in a realistic way. The charity campaign had in the past proven to be a national event in which it was c o m m o n for donors to publicize the names o f their organizations or groups.
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O n the other hand, the charity donations probably had aroused social responsibility motives acting against the identity motives. H a d a more traditional measure o f bias been used, such as the division of money rewards between members o f the two groups, greater differences among conditions might have emerged. However, this would have been at the cost o f reducing the realism o f the measure. The majority/equal n u m b e r / m i n o r i t y manipulations on the whole led to more bias than the baseline condition did, even though they were i m p l e m e n t e d in a casual and minimal way. Particularly interesting was the greater bias in the equal number than in the baseline condition, which suggested the psychological salience o f relative intergroup numbers in the immediate setting. The results also showed a greater bias of the antitour group over the protour group. There was no a priori reason why antitour subjects should be more biased than protour subjects. At the post hoc level one may infer that perhaps the antitour stance was becoming the morally dominant position among university students and that this dominance increased the adherents' expectation of even greater favorable change, thereby increasing their positive insecurity. This was consistent with the finding that antitour subjects were stronger in their claim of respectability than were protour subjects. Both results jointly warranted the use of pro- and antitour supporters as representing the defensive and offensive groups, respectively. Although the numbers of pro- and antitour supporters in the national population were about equal, those in the student population favored the antitour stance. This was reflected in the larger n u m b e r o f anti- than protour subjects and could have confounded the interaction effect. In Experiment 2 we tried to find a setting in which the relative numbers of defensive and offensive group members were more evenly balanced. The aims were to replicate the interaction effect and the greater bias of the offensive group over the defensive group. Experiment 2 The traditional use of androcentric generics such as he and man to refer to a woman as well as to a man has been increasingly questioned. Many people, especially feminists, contend that even though the generics might have been grammatically intended to be sex inclusive, the generics are male biased and trivialize women (Martyna, 1980). An increasing n u m b e r o f people refuse to continue referring to a woman as he or man. The New Zealand government has made some attempts to minimize the appearance o f androcentric generics in law books. In high schools, where the proper grammatical usage is stressed, students can use the androcentric generics without raising too m a n y eyebrows. Even in those rather protected environments the legitimacy o f generic usage is declining, although at a less dramatic rate than in the case o f the protour stance. We conducted a survey o f students in a large coeducational school to find out the preference for generics and to assess the feasibility o f constituting defensive and offensive groups from the generics users and nonusers.
Pilot Survey Fourth-formers (14- and 15-year-olds, N = 192) were asked to choose from a pair of words one that they would personally
prefer using. There were two items: (a) Four candidates, two men and two women, have been n o m i n a t e d for the position o f chairman~chairperson of the public library committee. (b) A nuclear war may seriously endanger the survival o f mankind/
humanldnd. F r o m the responses we estimated that about one third o f the fourth-formers used sexist terms consistently and another third used nonsexist terms consistently. The rest used a sexist t e r m in one item and a nonsexist term in another. We decided to use the first 2 groups to represent the defensive and offensive groups. Unlike in the tour controversy, the legitimation shift in this case was less salient. Therefore, we used a special procedure to enhance the required defensive-offensive relation by placing the onus o f legitimation on the sexist group (the defensive group) through the use of an experimenter's speech and an intergroup debate.
Method Subjects. We selected students who chose chairman and mankind, and those who chose chairpersonand humankind, as potential subjects. We referred to them as sexist and nonsexist language users, respectively. Eight subjects from the same class were tested at a time: They comprised either 3 sexist and 5 nonsexist language users or 5 sexist and 3 nonsexist language users. We achieved this majority:minority ratio in seven experimental sessions and reduced it to 5:2 in the eighth session. We held subject gender as uniform across the two groups as was practically possible by having about the same male:female ratio in the two groups. We tested a total of 30 female and 33 male subjects. Design and procedure. We crossed the majority-minority variable with a defensive-offensive variable to form a two-way factorial design. The defensive and offensive conditions referred to the sexist and nonsexist groups, respectively. Unlike the majority-minority variable, the defensive-offensive variable was not a truly manipulated independent variable because it was correlated with the subject variable of sexistnonsexist language users. We could have reversed the procedure for half of the sessions and cast the sexist group into an offensive stance and the nonsexist group into a defensive stance, but we did not do so because of the enormous difficulty we had encountered when we piloted the procedure on university students. We held the experimental sessions in a large school gymnasium. After introducing herself and her female assistant, the experimenter reminded the subjects of the survey and set up the majority-minority variable by the following introduction: We are especially interested in word preference by high school students and would like to find out more about why students differ in their preferences. You will notice some of the words are sexist, like chairman and mankind, because they appear to refer only to one sex, whereas others are nonsexist, like chairperson and humankind, because they include both sexes. Can I have a show of hands how many of you here have indicated on the questionnaire that you prefer the sexist terms of chairman and mankind and those of you who prefer the nonsexist terms of chairperson and humankind? I want you to sit separately forming a sexist language group and a nonsexist language group. To promote the sexist-nonsexist intergroup relation as a defensiveoffensive relation, the experimenter delivered the following speech designed to challenge the legitimacy of the sexist stance and to indicate the imminence of change: The number of people who use nonsexist language has steadily increased. This is because sexist language degrades women and suggests that women are inferior to men. There has been a good re-
INTERGROUP BIAS sponse to campaigns designed to persuade people to use nonsexist language. The New Zealand government, for example, has decided to remove sexist terms from law books and replace them by nonsexist terms. Some, but by no means all, individuals who use sexist terms like mankind do not intend to discriminate against or ignore women. Such terms, however, do gradually lead people to view the world through the eyes of men only, thus reducing women to a position of insignificance. The time has come for people to treat women with the equal respect they deserve, and those who use sexist language are only revealing their own ignorance. Given this new awareness and the changes in society at large, I would like to hear from high school students your views on the use of sexist and nonsexist language. Afterward, the experimenter asked the groups to debate the motion that schools should encourage the use of nonsexist language and assigned the sexist group to oppose the motion and the nonsexist group to affirm it. In this way it was hoped that the experimenter's speech and the debate would cast the sexist and nonsexist groups in a defensiveoffensive relation. Prior to the debate the groups were seated separately away from each other and allowed several minutes to plan their arguments. The experimenter accompanied one group and her assistant the other. In half of the sessions the experimenter was assigned to the sexist group, and in the other half to the nonsexist group. At the end of this planning phase the experimenter took the first measure of allocation bias (see the next section). The debate then began with the group representatives, one from each group, presenting their arguments, followed by an open debate in which all members were free to voice their opinions. The debate was lively and vigorous in all oftbe sessions and rowdy in some. Dependent measures. At the end of the debate subjects answered the following items on 7-point scales: (a) Did you find the debate satisfying or frustrating? (1 = satisfying, 7 = frustrating). (b) People who stand up in support of sexist language (for sexist group)/nonsexist language (for nonsexist group) are worthy of respect (1 = disagree strongly, 7 = agree strongly). (c) How confident are you that you are doing the right thing in using sexist-nonsexist language? (1 = not confident, 7 = very confident). We measured group bias in an unobtrusive manner, as in Experiment 1. We took two measures, one before and another after the debate. Prior to the start of the debate the experimenter told her group that she would like to donate some money to their school magazine in the names of sexist language supporters and nonsexist language supporters. She would donate up to $30 in each name. As she was not sure how much money to donate, she would like one group member (selected haphazardly) to tell her the amounts. The chosen subject wrote the amounts on a paper privately and without interference from others. The assistant followed the same procedure and obtained the decision from a member of the other group. By obtaining the predebate bias measure from one instead of all group members, the procedure maximized the independence of this measure from the postdebate measure, which was a group decision made by all group members. The latter was obtained while subjects were waiting to be dismissed at the end of the experiment. The experimenter reminded the groups of the donations she was about to make to the school magazine and said that because there was some free time left, she would like each group to decide on the amounts to be donated. Results
The group rather than the individual was the appropriate unit o f analysis (N = 16). We calculated group means o f the satisfaction, respect, and confidence ratings and then analyzed them individually according to a two-way ANOVA design composed o f the sexist-nonsexist and m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variables. Satisfaction. There was no significant effect. Cell means ranged from 3.8 to 4.4.
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Respect. We found a significant main effect of the sexistnonsexist variable, F(1, 12) = 7.70, p < .05, showing a greater respect rating by the nonsexist than the sexist group (Ms = 5.7 vs. 4.1). The main effect of the m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variable was also significant, F(1, 12) = 5.52, p < .05, with a greater rating in the majority than in the minority condition (Ms = 5.6 vs. 4.2). There was no interaction effect ( M S e = 1.371). Confidence. The only significant effect was a main effect of the sexist-nonsexist variable, F(1, 12) = 16.20, p < .005, M S e = 1.000. The nonsexist group reported a greater confidence than did the sexist group (Ms = 6.5 vs. 4.4). Bias. We subtracted each out-group donation from the corresponding in-group donation to yield a bias score. Prior to the analysis we log-transformed the scores to homogenize the cell variances. We treated the pre- and postdebate bias scores as a within-subjects variable, and combined it with the m a j o r i t y minority and sexist-nonsexist variables to form a three-way mixed ANOVA design. There were no significant effects involving the within-subjects variable. The mean square error of the between-subjects variables was 0.042. As predicted, the nonsexist group favored the in-group more in the majority than in the minority condition, and this was reversed in the sexist group (Table 2). A directional test of the predicted interaction effect was significant, t(12) = 2.65, p < .02. We conducted followup directional contrasts to examine the simple effects o f the m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variable in the sexist and nonsexist groups separately. Only the contrast in the nonsexist group was significant, t(12) = 2.75, p < .01. The ANOVA itself showed a significantly greater mean in the nonsexist than in the sexist group, F(1, 12) = 21.16,p < .001. Discussion
C o m p a r e d with their sexist counterparts, the nonsexist language users reported a greater respectability for and confidence in their use o f nonsexist terms. These differences were corroborated by the behavior of the two groups during the debate: Nonsexist group members attacked, ridiculed, and laughed at their opponents, who were greatly troubled by the sexist label and struggled to explain that they were not sexist, as we discuss shortly. These self-report and behavioral results indicated an offensive-defensive intergroup relation between the nonsexist and sexist groups. The bias was greater in the offensive than in the defensive group, which replicated the main effect o f the defensive-offensive variable in Experiment 1. The central hypothesis, that offensive and defensive groups would react differently to i m m e d i a t e majority-minority, was supported by an interaction effect more significantly than was the case in Experiment 1. Contributing to the stronger interaction was the more salient manipulation of immediate m a j o r i t y minority based on actual head counts instead of, as in Experiment 1, on the experimenter's casual remark about relative group numbers. As was the case in Experiment 1, there was an a s y m m e t r y within the interaction effect: The nonsexist (offensive) group, but not the sexist (defensive) group, was significantly responsive to immediate majority-minority. To account for the negative results o f the sexist group, it is important to also note the lack of bias by this group: 14 o f the 16 bias scores were zero. The
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Table 2
Mean 1n-Group Donation and 1n-Group Bias Scores in the Pre- and Postdebate Phases of Sexist and Nonsexist Groups by Experimental Condition Predebate Condition Sexist Majority Minority Nonsexist Majority Minority
Postdebate
n
In-group donation
In-group bias
In-group donation
In-group bias
Overall in-group bias
4 4
23.8 16.3
-5.0 0.0
23.8 20.5
0.0 0.3
-2.5 0.2
4 4
30.0 26.3
23.8 5.0
27.2 26.3
15.6 7.5
19.7 6.3
Note. In-group bias = in-group donation-out-group donation (not shown). We log-transformed in-group bias scores for analysis. A 2 (sexist-nonsexist) • 2 (majority-minority) • 2 (pre- vs. postdebate) mixed analysis of variance showed no significant effects involving the last (within-subjects) variable. We used the mean square error term (0.042) of the between-subjects variables in the following directional tests: (a) interaction between sexist-nonsexist and majority-minority,t(l 2) = 2.65, p < .02; (b) minority versus majority in the sexist group, t(12) < 1, ns; and (c) majority versus minority in the nonsexist group, t(12) = 2.75, p < .01.
group was not only unresponsive to the majority-minority manipulation, it was also unbiased. One possible reason for the lack of bias was the sexist label. Several sexist group members objected when the experimenter applied the sexist label to them; many remained visibly unhappy when the experimenter explained that the label did not imply sexual discrimination intentions but only that the terms could be seen as being sex specific. During the debate sexist group members commonly dissociated themselves from any sexist intention and stressed that the terms were grammatically correct and sexually neutral. In contrast to nonsexist group members, many of whom advocated the abolition of sexist terms during the debate, sexist group members typically favored a laissez-faire, dual-usage system. It would appear that sexist group members did not identify with the assigned label and were anxious to minimize the sexist-nonsexist division even though the nonsexist group members, who appeared to be happy with the labels, were often provocative. Consequently, group-based bias would be psychologically meaningless and the majority-minority manipulation irrelevant to the sexist group. Similarly, Moreland (1985) found that in-group biases were shown by experimental subjects who had adopted the in-group-out-group orientation, but not by control subjects who had not. In conclusion, the experiment succeeded in forming an offensive group that reacted to the majority-minority variable in the predicted way. The defensive group was confounded by the sexist label and as a result, the experiment did not demonstrate the effect of majority-minority on the defensive group. Experiment 3 We derived the defensive-offensive variable entirely from the field setting in Experiment 1 and augmented this natural procedure by laying the legitimation burden on one of the two groups in Experiment 2. In both experiments the defensive-offensive variable was linked to the opposite stances on a social issue. The use of real-life opinion groups to constitute defensive and offensive groups had the advantage of realism, but because the defensive and offensive groups within an experiment were al-
ways correlated with the correspondent stances, the defensiveoffensive variable was susceptible to the confounding influence of variables associated with the adherence to a particular stance. Such a confound, although remote in light of the replicated results, should ideally be controlled. In the case of the defensive condition, in which the results did not reach significance, the need for experimental control was even greater. This experiment focused on the defensive condition and tested its reaction to immediate majority-minority by manipulating the defensive condition experimentally rather than by forming the defensive group on the basis of a particular opinion stance. Essentially, this more rigorous procedure consisted of selecting two suitable opinion groups and casting both groups (in separate experimental sessions) into a defensive condition. We predicted that both groups would be more biased in the minority than in the majority condition.
Pilot Survey In the 1986 academic year the Otago University Student Association published and distributed an orientation handbook containing articles on women's issues, sexism, racism, nuclear disarmament, and so on. Never before had any issue of the handbook contained any such articles. The 1986 handbook became an instant controversy. Some students called for a public meeting to pass a resolution banning publication of similar articles in next year's handbook. The controversy, like many other student issues, was short-lived. During its lifetime, however, as shown by a pilot survey, it polarized about half of the 480 introductory psychology class students into pro- and antihandbook supporters.
Method Design. Two groups (pro- and antihandbook supporters identified in the survey) were copresent in the same session to enable the majorityminority manipulation, but we cast only one group into the defensive position. There were eight sessions. We preselected the prohandbook group to receive the defensiveness treatment in four sessions, two of
INTERGROUP BIAS which were assigned to the majority condition and the other two to the minority condition. We preselected the antihandbook group in the other four sessions, again equally assigning them to the majority and minority conditions. The treatment consisted of asking the selected group to justify its stance before the nonselected audience group. Immediate majority-minority. As in Experiment 2, we manipulated the majority-minority variable by scheduling different numbers of proand antihandbook subjects to take part in the session. We positioned pro- and antihandbook placards at opposite ends of the laboratory, and on arrival the experimenter asked subjects to choose one for joining. The choice agreed perfectly with the stance indicated on the pilot survey. The experimenter then seated the two groups opposite one another. The minority group consisted of either 2 or 3 people and the majority of either 5 or 6. Manipulation of defensiveness. Prior to the experiment we talked to the students and read their newspapers to gauge the range and structure of the arguments. The arguments were largely equivocal and usually took the following general form: "You have the right to do this, but I also t h i n k . . . "' We constructed a pool of the more bitter arguments and combined some of them in two sets so that the experimenter could assign the legitimation burden to either the pro- or the antihandbook group by issuing the appropriate set in the instructions. The experimenter told the subjects that she was interested in the handbook controversy and had made some observations about it. She summarized these and asked the target group to respond to them. She also explained that as she was interested in finding out only firmly held beliefs about the controversy, she would like the target group members to state their views in front of the opposite group. In the session in which the prohandbook group had been preselected to receive the defensiveness treatment, the experimenter would include in her instructions the following critical statements: Students who object to the handbook claim that the articles are offensive and are in breach of the handbook's intended purpose. It is quite possible that the 1986 handbook will be replaced by a more traditional one next year, even though its supporters would favor its continuation. Many students suspect that the supporters are abusing the occasion to propagate their radical and trendy outlook, although they, the supporters, may neither admit nor even be aware of this motive themselves. I want to hear directly from people in the prohandbook group how they may justify their continuing support of the 1986 handbook. In the session in which the antihandbook group had been selected to receive the defensiveness treatment, the experimenter stated the following: Supporters of the 1986 handbook claim that it was time the handbook should be brought up to date and kept in touch with important social issues. It is quite possible that this new handbook will continue next year even though objectors would favor a return of the handbook to its traditional form. Many students suspect that the objectors are abusing the occasion to propagate their narrowminded and conservative outlook, although they, the objectors, may neither admit nor even be aware of this motive themselves. I want to hear directly from people in the antihandbook group how they may justify their continuing opposition to the 1986 handbook. Subjects (i.e., defensive group members) individually prepared their response while seated facing the audience group. Afterward they presented their response to the audience group. The presentation was a one-way communication and there was no debate afterward. By casting both groups (in different sessions) into a defensive position, we tried to truly manipulate the defensive condition rather than, as in the preceding experiments, derive it from a specific opinion group. Dependent measures. At the end of the group presentation we measured bias by asking subjects (defensive group members) to state their
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preferred donations (to the Intellectually Handicapped Children's Fund) in the names of pro- and antihandbook supporters. We placed Intellectually Handicapped Children's Fund posters and charity boxes in the laboratory to enhance the realism of the donation task. The donations could each vary from $0 to $100. We obtained a second bias measure by asking subjects to allocate up to 100 money units to a pro- and an antihandbook supporter who would be taking part in the next session. To provide a realistic setting for the allocation task, all participants (defensive and audience group members) received a sealed envelope at the start of the experiment containing the payments assigned to him or her by people in the preceding session. The envelopes remained sealed throughout the experiment. Finally, subjects rated their group presentation on five 7-point scales: convincing-unconvincing, insincere-sincere, compassionate-selfish, poorly informed-well informed, and narrow-minded-broadminded.
Results We computed group means for analyses ( N = 8). To determ i n e whether the pro- and antihandbook groups differed in their responses, we first formed the groups into a stance variable. We treated the bias scores (in-group donation-out-group donation, in-group payment-out-group payment) as a withinsubjects variable and combined it with the stance variable to form a two-way mixed ANOVA design. As the within-cell variances were already homogeneous, we used the raw scores for analysis without transformation. We found no significant effect involving the stance variable a t p < . 10. We then pooled the proand antihandbook groups for testing the effect o f the crucial m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variable on the bias scores. We again treated the bias scores as a within-subjects variable and c o m b i n e d it with the m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variable. There were no significant effects involving the within-subjects variable. The predicted main effect o f the m a j o r i t y - m i n o r i t y variable was significant, t(6) = 2.46, p < .03, MSe = 149.7. As predicted, the m e a n o f the two bias scores was greater in the minority than in the majority condition (Ms = 18.6 vs. 3.6; see Table 3). We scored the presentation ratings in the positive direction and s u m m e d them over the five items. Preliminary analysis again showed no significant difference between the pro- and antihandbook groups at p < .10, and hence we pooled the groups. An ANOVA showed a significantly more positive ingroup rating in the minority ( M = 26.9) than in the majority ( M = 22.3) condition, F(1, 6) = 5.57, p < .05. Eight judges rated the taped presentations, one per judge, on the same five items in order to assess the extent of objective differences in the quality of the presentations between conditions. We found no significant difference, F(1, 6) < 1.0.
Discussion Depending on the historical development of a social issue, it is not always possible to cast both stances in an equally defensive position. H a d this experiment been conducted on a later date, the pro- and antihandbook groups would probably have reacted differently from each other. Fortunately for the experiment there was a high degree o f unison between groups in the bias and evaluation results. More clearly than the results o f the defensive group in Experiment 1, the results o f Experiment 3 showed that groups burdened with the onus of legitimation re-
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SIK HUNG NG AND FIONA CRAM
Table 3
Mean In-Group Donation, In-Group Donation Bias, In-Group Payment, and In-Group Payment Bias of Defensive Groups by Experimental Condition Donation Condition
n
In-group donation
Majority Minority
4 4
83.3 82.9
Payment In-group bias
In-group allocation
In-group bias
Overall in-group bias
4.0 8.9
51.5 73.5
3.0 28.0
3.6 18.6
Note. In-group bias = in-group donation/payment-out-group donation/payment (not shown). Overall in-group bias may not agree perfectly with the average in-group biases because of rounding error. A 2 (majority-minority) • 2 (donation/payment) mixed analysis of variance showed no significant effects involving the donation/payment variable. A directional test of the majority-minority main effect was significant, t(6) = 2.46, p < .03, MSe = 149.7.
acted to immediate majority-minority in the predicted way. Two different bias measures and an in-group evaluation measure converged on this finding. General Discussion Controversial social issues and opposing opinions are products of a changing society. Individuals not only have opinions but also acquire a sense of we and they based on opinion stance (Katz, 1960). The resultant we-they categorization provides a real-life intergroup setting for examining changes associated with a shift of the burden of legitimation from the heterodox to the orthodox stance. Legitimation shift implicates a changing intergroup relationship and induces social identity insecurities. We argued that the (negative) insecurity of the defensive group would be greater, and the (positive) insecurity of the offensive group smaller, in the minority than in the majority situation. This line of reasoning led us to hypothesize, based on the insecurity principle of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), that the defensive group would show more in-group bias in the minority than in the majority situation, whereas the reverse would be true for the offensive group. We tested this hypothesis progressively in three experiments, using a different pair of opinion groups in each. Experiment l relied on an historical analysis of the legitimation shift to represent the pro- and antitour groups as defensive and offensive groups. Set in the context of a dramatic community controversy, the experiment demonstrated the hypothesis using oniy a weak manipulation of the immediate majority-minority variable. The interaction between the defensive-offensive and immediate majority-minority variables was significant in the predicted direction but was subject to the confounding influence of a majority-minority relation already existing in the wider student population. In addition, the simple effect of immediate majority-minority was significant only in the offensive group. Experiment 2 represented the defensive-offensive variable by a combination of procedures to place the legitimation burden on one group. The predicted interaction effect was again significant, and this was relatively unconfounded by the majorityminority relation in the wider school community. As in Experiment 1, the interaction was asymmetrical, and only the offensive group was significantly affected by immediate majorityminority. The defensive group did not show bias at all, which
we attributed to the irrelevance of the assigned group categorization, just as was the case in Moreland's (1985) control subjects. Experiment 3 manipulated defensiveness by laying the legitimation burden on one group in some sessions and on the other group in the remaining sessions. We measured bias by group donations as in the preceding experiments and by reward payments. Both measures jointly supported the hypothesized effect of immediate majority-minority on the defensive group, regardless of the group's stance. Consistent with the hypothesis, subjects also showed a greater evaluative in-group bias in the minority than in the majority condition. Our hypothesis concerning the effects of immediate majority-minority conditions is bidirectional rather than, as in other views (Gerard & Hoyt, 1974; McGuire et al., 1978, 1979; Sachdev & Bourhis, 1984), unidirectional. As immediate majorityminority is commonly encountered in a variety of social situations such as protest marches, the pub, and the classroom, it has a high degree of practical relevance. More important, the hypothesized interaction between the defensive-offensive and the immediate majority-minority variables represents a constructive application of social identity theory to the phenomenon of legitimation shift, a lively feature of democratic communities. It is noteworthy that the defensive-offensive variable consistently showed a significant main effect in Experiments 1 and 2. This can be interpreted in one or both of two viewpoints. From the viewpoint of the offensive group, its greater bias may be attributed to its heightened expectation for change, possibly due to its moral ascendancy, which increases its (positive) insecurity and increases bias as a result. Alternatively, still from the viewpoint of offensive group members but applicable only to Experiment 2, offensive group subjects might have inferred from the experimenter's instructions that she endorsed their stance and hence it was permissible to favor their group. The main effect just described can also be seen from the viewpoint of the defensive group, with the emphasis now on the lesser bias of the defensive group. This emphasis is interesting in relation to the reduction of intergroup bias (Wilder, 1986), particularly within the context of social change. As a result of social change a stage may be reached when the defensive group's negative insecurity of social identity becomes so precarious and
INTERGROUP BIAS indefensible that the group members disengage from their spoiled social identity and stop seeking positive differentiation from the out-group. At first sight this argument may contradict the insecurity principle of social identity theory. However, the principle is conditional on dosed group boundaries (Tajfel, 1975) and in-group attractiveness. When the former condition is absent and the latter condition is in doubt, as in Experiments 1 and 2, it is conceivable in terms of social identity theory that extreme negative insecurity of social identity (e.g., in a minority situation) may reduce rather than increase bias. Such a stage will represent an important phase in the development of intergroup relations, even though it lies outside of the commonly recognized stages (e.g., Farley, 1982; Taylor & McKirnan, 1984).
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