European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) Published online 13 November 2006 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.412
The automaticity of infra-humanization G. BOCCATO*, B. P. CORTES, S. DEMOULIN AND J. Ph. LEYENS Universite´ catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Abstract This research tested the infra-humanization hypothesis that uniquely human emotions (e.g., love, sorrow) are automatically more linked in memory with the in-group than with the out-group. No such difference is expected for non-uniquely human emotions (e.g., joy, sadness) which pertain to everybody, including animals. Two studies using semantic primes followed by visual person categorization task (PCT) and lexical (lexical decision task, LDT) targets were conducted. Results supported infrahumanization theory. Reaction times were faster for the in-group/secondary emotions associations than for out-group/secondary emotions ones. As predicted, no difference in latency times appeared for primary emotions as a function of the groups. These findings elucidate the ambiguity present in Paladino et al. (2002). Theoretical and practical implications are suggested. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
According to essentialist models of categorization (Rothbart & Taylor, 1992; see also Medin & Ortony, 1989), people categorize individuals into groups, and tend to believe that group members share with one another deep characteristics that make them what they are and that differentiate them, at a deep level, from other social groups. A specific essence is associated with each group and this essence determines membership within the group. Recently, Leyens et al. (2000) proposed that a particular form of inter-group discrimination arises from the differential attribution of the human essence to in-groups and out-groups. Basing their reasoning upon observations of overwhelming ethnocentrism (Jahoda, 1999; Sumner, 1906), they argued that people reserve the very positive human essence for their own group (and associate out-group members with lesser humanity). This process is called ‘infra-humanization’ and refers to the extent to which out-groups are characterized by a lesser human essence than the in-group. Studies on people’s beliefs about human essence have shown that humanity is associated with a few dimensions that differentiate human beings from other animal species. Among these, one finds: language, intelligence, moral values, and uniquely human emotions (Leyens et al., 2000). Leyens et al. *Correspondence to: G. Boccato, Universite´ catholique de Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve, Faculte´ de Psychologie, PSOR, 10, Place du Cardinal Mercier, B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. E-mail:
[email protected]
Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 15 November 2005 Accepted 6 July 2006
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(2000, 2003) chose to focus their work on uniquely human emotions, notably because emotions had rarely been studied in the domain of inter-group relations (but see Mackie & Smith, 2002). Uniquely human emotions are perceived as experienced only by human beings (Demoulin et al., 2004a). Compared to non-uniquely human emotions, uniquely human ones are highly cognitive and moral, internally caused, they appear later in age through socialization, they are less intense, with longer duration, and are more difficult to observe on someone else’s face. According to the literature on emotions (Ekman, 1992), Demoulin et al. (2004a) chose to name the non-uniquely and uniquely human emotions as primary and secondary emotions, respectively. Applying infra-humanization to emotions suggests that people should attribute more secondary (i.e., uniquely human) emotions to their in-group than to out-groups, because they want to restrict the full human essence to their own group. This hypothesis has been widely supported in a series of studies (for reviews, see Demoulin et al., 2004b; Leyens et al., 2003). Leyens et al. (2001, Experiment 2) presented participants with a list of positive and negative primary and secondary emotions as well as filler words, and instructed them to chose about 10 features that best characterized them as in-group or an out-group. Results showed that, while people tended to attribute the same number of primary emotions to both groups, they attributed significantly more secondary emotions to the in-group than to the out-group, confirming the infra-humanization hypothesis. In another series of studies (Demoulin et al., in press), participants had to solve a problem for which the possible answers were associations between groups (in-group or out-group), on the one hand, and emotions (positive and negative primary or secondary emotions), on the other hand. As predicted, the most preferred answer was the association of the in-group with secondary emotions. In contrast, the least preferred solution was the association of the out-group with secondary emotions. The rate of selection of associations involving primary emotions did not vary as a function of groups. People preferred not only to reserve secondary emotions for their own group, but they were also reluctant to choose information linking the out-group with the uniquely human emotions (see also Leyens et al., 2001, Experiment 3). An important step in the infra-humanization research program is to determine whether secondary emotions are automatically linked with the in-group more than with the out-group. Indeed, Leyens et al. (2003) argued that the attribution of secondary emotions is an implicit measure of bias of the fact that people are not consciously, explicitly, aware of the uniquely/non-uniquely human distinction. However, this reasoning does not necessarily imply that uniquely human emotions are directly associated in memory with in-group members.
CATEGORY-ITEM ASSOCIATIONS Commonly, a belief (such as an attitude, a stereotype, or a category) can be viewed as associations stored in memory. A belief ‘expresses the relation between two cognitive categories’ (Jones & Gerard, 1967, p. 156). Thus, a belief conveys the association between a category, a set of objects sharing common features as well as a specific object, and an item characteristic of the general object, like exemplars or attributes of the category. Through frequent and consistent activation by the environment, associations become automatically activated by relevant proximal stimulus itself, without the need for conscious intention, goals, attention, or awareness of the process (Bargh, 1989; Bargh & Williams, 2006). A common explanation for this process derives from the concept of spreading activation into nodes: the activation of a construct spreads to related concepts, reducing their threshold of activation (Neely, 1991), in other words, enhancing their accessibility (Higgins, 1996), following a structural Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
Automatic infra-humanization
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associative linkage. Thus, nodes can be activated automatically by stimulus input with little or no attentional demands (Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). Like any belief, infra-humanization can be conceptualized as a stronger strength of association between the in-group and uniquely human emotions than between the out-group and these emotions. No differential strength of association should be expected between in-group and out-group for non-uniquely human emotions that belong to everybody by definition. No clear evidence of such different category-item associations with reference to infra-humanization exists in the social psychology literature. Paladino et al. (2002) tested the infra-humanization theory at the implicit level, using an adaptation of the original Implicit Association Task (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Consistent with the IAT paradigm, in the ‘compatible’ task, participants had to press the same key whenever the target word appearing on the screen was an in-group name or a secondary emotion. In addition, they had to press another key when the target word was an out-group name or a primary emotion. In the ‘incompatible’ task, associations were reversed. That is, participants pressed the same key for in-group names and primary emotions and another key for out-group names and secondary emotions. The difference in reaction times between the compatible task and the incompatible task served as an index of infra-humanization bias. Participants were faster at responding to the associations between out-group/primary emotions and in-group/secondary emotions, on the one hand, than to out-group/ secondary emotions and in-group/primary emotions associations, on the other hand. Despite this finding, the IAT paradigm does not provide clear information about which specific association causes the bias. Indeed, the IAT effect is based on a comparison of performance in two separated tasks: a compatible task in which associated concepts are assigned to the same response and an incompatible task in which associated concepts are assigned to different responses (De Houwer, 2003). In the case of infra-humanization, faster responses to the compatible task could be explained by both a higher association between in-group and secondary emotions, or by a higher association between out-group and primary emotions (but see Nosek & Banaji, 2001). Moreover, in contrast with priming procedures, in which the presence of a prime is useful for the identification of related attributes, the use of IAT seems to violate one of the basic assumptions of implicit measures, called ‘controllability.’ Participants may become aware of what is being assessed during the task. Further empirical information is needed using more appropriate paradigms. Indeed, to disentangle the nature of the bias would provide not only stronger support to infra-humanization theory but also better understanding of automatic social representations that exert influence on inter-group judgments and shape behaviors (Dijksterhuis & Bargh, 2001). Sequential priming procedures are designed to assess the likelihood that some construct receives unintentional (and often without awareness) activation from memory upon presentation of the critical stimulus. Typically, priming tasks use the strength of association between the target category and related attributes or between these attributes themselves as indicative of the presence and the nature of the link: consistent associations are recognized faster and easier than inconsistent ones. Moreover, due to the subliminal nature of the priming (critical) stimulus or to the short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between prime and target, individuals are prevented to exert some intentional control on their answers. The person categorization task (PCT; Kawakami, Dovidio, Moll, Hermsen, & Russin, 2000) assesses the strength of associations between target attributes and exemplars of a category. In this task, individuals are confronted with pictures depicting exemplars of one or more categories (e.g., male vs. female) to classify according to an a priori criterion (e.g., gender). Images are preceded by a distractor word, consistent or inconsistent with the categorization. In other words, a consistent matching means a stereotypical gender word followed by the same gender image, the inverse occurring for inconsistent matching. Results show that people are usually faster to identify categories in the consistent condition Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
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(e.g., competence-male and sociability-female) than in the inconsistent one (e.g., sociability-male and competence-female). The lexical decision task (LDT, Wittenbrink, Judd, & Park, 1997; see also Fazio & Olson, 2003) constitutes another appropriate technique of semantic priming. In the classical LDT, people have to identify a target word that is either semantically related to an attribute (e.g., skinhead-racist) or semantically unrelated to the attribute (e.g., skinhead-athletic). Results show that the more the target word is semantically associated with the attribute, the faster people are able to identify the target. The time people take to react to paired concepts is a measure of the strength with which concepts are semantically associated, with faster reaction times indicating greater strength of association between the target and the attribute.
OVERVIEW OF THE STUDIES AND HYPOTHESES The aim of the present study is to disentangle the relative importance of each association between inversus out-group and primary versus secondary emotions, as stored in memory in form of automatic associations (Paladino et al., 2002). The two studies reported in the present article used the PCT and the LDT. Specifically, in Study 1, primary and secondary emotions (and neutral words) were used as non-subliminal primes, and participants had to perform a PCT on photographs representing either an in-group (white face) or an out-group (black face) member. Each photograph was preceded by a prime word and participants’ task was to classify the faces on the photographs as being white (in-group) or black (out-group). We expected faster latencies to classify white compared to black faces when preceded by a secondary emotion. Conversely, we expected no difference in latencies to classify white and black faces when preceded by a primary emotion. As infra-humanization theory suggests, it is the specifically unique human dimension of secondary emotions that produces the effect. Because primary emotions are common to both human beings and animals, they should not be perceived as critical in the differentiation between the in-group and out-groups. In Study 2, in-group and out-group category labels were used as subliminal primes and participants had to identify a sequence of letters as words or non-words (LDT). The words used as targets in the task were primary and secondary emotions. In line with infra-humanization theory, we hypothesized that participants would be faster at identifying secondary emotion words following an in-group than an out-group prime. No differential reaction times were predicted for the identification of primary emotions.
STUDY 1 Overview The aim of Study 1 is to test the infra-humanization hypothesis relative to categorical associations of type of group (in- vs. out-group) and type of emotions (primary vs. secondary), using an implicit associative task (PCT). Participants had to identify the ethnicity of a series of photographs of white and black faces. Importantly, each image was preceded by a ‘distracter’ word. Participants had to read silently the word before being presented with the target image. Distracters were primary emotions, secondary emotions, or fillers. Fillers were included only to distract participants’ attention from the real purpose of the experiment. Responses to filler trials were discarded from analyses. We predicted that Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
Automatic infra-humanization
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participants would be faster at identifying ethnicity for white faces preceded by a secondary emotion prime. No such difference was expected for primary emotions, which are not uniquely human.
METHOD Participants Fifty-five students at the Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife) participated in this study. After the task was completed, participants were debriefed about the aim of the study and thanked for their participation. Procedure The study had a 2 (Prime: primary vs. secondary emotions) 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) 2 (target: white vs. black) within participant design. Participants were informed that the experiment examined how individuals categorize people. They were also told that they were in the distracter condition. They had to identify the ethnicity (white vs. black) of the person on the photograph presented in the center of the screen, but a distracter word would appear before each image. The experimenter instructed them that they had to read silently the word and then judge the ethnicity of the person by pressing the appropriate key. The beginning of each trial was signaled by an asterisk () presented for 50 ms in the center of the screen: the asterisk started 750 ms after the beginning of the trial. The prime word was presented for 250 ms and followed by an image after a 50 ms blank screen. The prime words included four positive primary emotions (alegrı´a, happiness; disfrute, enjoyment; excitacio´n, excitement; placer, pleasure), four negative primary emotions (furia, anger; miedo, fear; sufrimiento, pain; temor, fright), four positive secondary emotions (esperanza, hope; fascinacio´n, fascination; optimismo, optimism; orgullo, pride), four negative secondary emotions (codicia, greed; culpa, culpability; pesimismo, pessimism; remordimiento, shame), and eight filler traits. Emotions were matched for valence extremity (Ms ¼ 1.86 and 5.97), t(5) ¼ 24.48, p < .001, and typicality of their category (Ms ¼ 1.85 and 5.51), t(5) ¼ 17.56, p < .001 (Demoulin et al., 2004a). Filler primes consisted of words unrelated to emotions or stereotypes (names of European countries) and were used to divert participants’ attention from the true purpose of the task. Images represented eight white male and eight black male faces yearbook style. Images appeared in the center of the screen and their size was kept constant. Participants were presented with two blocks of trials. Within each block, each image appeared five times, while emotions and filler primes appeared twice. White and black images were paired with the eight primary emotions, the eight secondary emotions, and the eight fillers, resulting in a total of 48 trials. Between the two blocks there was a 20 seconds interval. In total, participants were presented with 96 trials after an eight trials initial practice. Latencies to identify images as preceded by emotions were recorded.
Results and Discussion Incorrect responses and responses that occurred slower than three standard deviations (2.34%) from the general mean were excluded from the analysis. Three participants were discarded because their means were higher than three standard deviations from the general mean. The remaining latencies were Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
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subjected to a logarithmic transformation (Ratcliff, 1993) because of a slight skew in latencies distribution. All analyses were performed on the transformed data but for illustrative purposes the untransformed means (in ms) are reported in the text. We performed a 3-way within participants ANOVA 2 (Prime: primary vs. secondary emotions) 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) 2 (target: white vs. black). As expected, there was a significant effect of type of emotion, F(1,51) ¼ 6.89, p < .02, h2 ¼ 0.119, with faster responses for primary emotions (M ¼ 566.19, SD ¼ 102.38) than for secondary ones (M ¼ 570.59, SD ¼ 103.23). Primary emotions have, in general, higher lexical frequency than secondary emotions. The target factor, F(1,51) ¼ 11.76, p ¼ .001, h2 ¼ 0.187, was also significant. Reaction times were faster for the in-group (M ¼ 566.23, SD ¼ 97.93) than for the out-group (M ¼ 570.55, SD ¼ 108.78). Reactions were also quicker for positive (M ¼ 564.05, SD ¼ 105.94) than for negative emotions (M ¼ 572.73, SD ¼ 100.44), F(1,51) ¼ 10.94, p ¼ .002, h2 ¼ 0.176. Most importantly, there was a significant interaction between target and type of emotion, F(1,51) ¼ 5.97, p ¼ .02, h2 ¼ 0.105. Responses were faster for in-group secondary emotions (M ¼ 566.42, SD ¼ 96.56) than for out-group secondary emotions1 (M ¼ 574.77, SD ¼ 115.3) t(51) ¼ 3.66, p < .001 (see Figure 1). The interactions between valence and target and valence and type of emotion were also significant (F(1,51) ¼ 16.75, p < .01, h2 ¼ 274; F(1,51) ¼ 7.32, p < .021 h2 ¼ 0.126). The above effects were qualified by the significant three-way interaction involving valence, F (1,75) ¼ 4.41, p < .04, h2 ¼ 0.252 (see Table 1). Tests of simple effects showed that the difference between positive (M ¼ 551.11, SD ¼ 96.56) and negative secondary emotions (M ¼ 581.73, SD ¼ 115.30) for the in-group was responsible for this effect t(51) ¼ 3.66, p < .001. Results supported Leyens et al.’s (2000) theory of infra-humanization. Secondary emotions were more quickly associated with the in-group (white faces) than with the out-group (black faces) while no 576 574 572 570 in-group out-group
568 566 564 562 560 secondary emotions
Figure 1.
primary emotions
Reaction times for in-group and out-group faces preceded by primary and secondary emotions, Study 1
1 The other two-way interactions were also significant, F(1,51) ¼ 7.32, p < .001, h2 ¼ 0.126, and F(1,51) ¼ 16.75, p < .001, h2 ¼ 0.247 for type of emotion by valence and target by valence, respectively. The first interaction is due to the longer reaction times for the negative secondary emotions (M ¼ 578.47, SD ¼ 107.74, vs. average M ¼ 565.03, SD ¼ 102.31), t(51) ¼ 3.07, p < .01. The second interaction is due to the quick reaction times for positive emotions in the case of the in-group (M ¼ 558.24, SD ¼ 108.90, vs. average M ¼ 571.78, SD ¼ 100.73), t(51) ¼ 4.35, p < .001. As can be noticed from the results, the reaction time for primary emotions is sensibly lower than the time taken to identify secondary emotions. A plausible explanation is that, in everyday life, people are more frequently faced to statements involving primary emotions than secondary ones. As a consequence, primary emotions’ identification would be easier and occur faster.
Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
Automatic infra-humanization
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Table 1. Reaction times and standard deviations for positive and negative primary and secondary emotions as preceded by in-group and out-group primes, Study 1 Secondary emotions Target In-group Out-group
Primary emotions
Positive
Negative
Positive
Negative
551.11 (110.84) 574.31 (96.16)
581.73 (112.74) 575.21 (131.78)
565.36 (117.68) 565.42 (113.13)
566.71 (104.08) 567.26 (114.08)
differences emerged for the primary emotions. This result is important because it disentangles the issue of which association caused the bias of infra-humanization previously detected by the IAT (Paladino et al., 2002): secondary emotions only lead to higher accessibility of in-group than out-group members, while primary emotions reveal no preferential associations. The impact of valence could be due to the specificity of visual information used in the PCT. Indeed, recent research demonstrated that implicit measures can be sensitive to contextual cues (Blair, 2002). In the present experiment, this effect could be partly dependent on contextual factors in this given context (Bruner, 1957), such as the prototypicality of the exemplars within the category chosen as stimuli (Livingston & Brewer, 2002) or the specific type of question, which is closely related to valence, that is, white-positive versus black-negative: indeed, there is experimental evidence that the only colors white and black lead to higher accessibility of respectively positive and negative concepts (Meier, Robinson, & Clore, 2004). Study 2 was designed to generalize results with another type of sequential priming procedure involving semantic material only and thus overcome the influence of external factors due to the use of photographical information. Moreover, in Study 2 we changed from Study 1 the status of the priming material: category labels served as primes and emotions as targets. Due to the bi-directional nature of associations, with both traits standing for categories and categories eliciting traits, infra-humanization bias should emerge also under these conditions, reproducing the type of automatic associations found in Study 1.
STUDY 2 Overview Participants performed three supposedly unrelated tasks (Wittenbrink et al., 1997). The first was a name recognition task, used to activate the inter-group context.2 This task was followed by the LDT, whose aim was to test implicitly the infra-humanization hypothesis. Finally, participants performed a manipulation check in order to ensure that the two kinds of emotions used in the LDT were classified as uniquely or non-uniquely human emotions.
2
Before the LDT, participants performed a task of in-group versus out-group names categorization. We chose to use this first task to stay as close as possible to the original paradigm used by Wittenbrink et al. (1997). It must be noted that in Study 1, the initial practice phase may have played the same role of the NRT in Study 2, that is, lead the inter-group context salient. Moreover, as Bargh (1989) pointed out, all types of automaticity are conditional, depending on the occurrence of some specific set of circumstances: ‘there are many such automatic effects that may have implicit or hidden preconditions, due to the specifics of the experimental procedures’ (Bargh, p. 7). Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
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Participants Forty-three students of the Catholic University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve participated in the experiment. They received course credit in exchange of their participation.
Procedure First, following Wittenbrink et al.’s (1997) original procedure participants received a questionnaire composed of 20 male names (names recognition task) in order to make social categories more salient. Half of these names belonged to the in-group (Belgian) and the other half to the out-group (Arab). Names were all presented in a randomized order. Participants had to assign each name to one of the two groups (they had to write ‘B’ if the name was Belgian, and ‘A’ if it was Arabic). Following completion of Task 1, participants performed a second, allegedly unrelated, task (LDT), in which they were asked to make ‘word’/‘non-word’ judgments about a set of letter strings presented on the computer screen. Participants viewed, for each trial, a string of Xs followed by a letter sequence. Participants then had to decide whether the target sequence formed a word or not. Participants were asked to press a ‘Yes’ key if the sequence corresponded to a word, and to press a ‘No’ key if the sequence did not correspond to a word. They were shown a total of 48 lexical decision trials and were asked to make their judgments as quickly and accurately as possible. The LDT procedure was adapted from Wittenbrink et al. (1997, 2001). The experiment was programmed using PSYSCOPE software (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, & Provost, 1993). On each trial a fixation point appeared on the screen for 1000 ms, immediately followed by the prime. The prime appeared for 15 ms and was immediately overwritten by a mask (XXXXX). The combination of short stimulus exposure and masking was meant to ensure that participants would remain unaware of the primes. After 2000 ms, the masking stimulus was substituted by a target letter sequence, which itself was erased after another 250 ms. The computer then paused until participants gave their answer by pressing the appropriate key (yes or no). All stimuli were presented in 12-point Chicago font in the center of the screen. The experiment included two different primes. For half of the trials, the prime was BELGE (Belgian). For the other half, the prime was ARABE (Arab). Each prime was followed by one of 24 target items (12 words and 12 non-words). Of the 12 words, three were negative primary emotions (panique, panic; e´puisement, exhaustion; agressivite´, aggressiveness), three negative secondary emotions (embarras, embarrassment; tourment, torment; rancoeur, rancour), three were positive primary emotions (amusement, amusement; calme, calm; excitation, excitement), and three positive secondary emotions (admiration, admiration; passion, passion; re´jouissance, delight).3 Emotions were matched for valence extremity (Ms ¼ 1.86 and 5.97), t(5) ¼ 24.48, p < .001, and typicality of their category (Ms ¼ 1.85 and 5.51), t(5) ¼ 17.56, p < .001 (Demoulin et al., 2004a). The 12 non-words were meaningless anagrams of the 12 emotions. The non-words were included in order to mask the real purpose of the task. The 24 target items were crossed with the two primes, resulting in a total of 48 trials. After completion of the LDT, participants had to evaluate the degree of ‘humanity’ of six primary and six secondary emotions (presented in a randomized order) on a 9-point scales. This task was used to ensure that the secondary emotions employed in the LDT were indeed perceived as uniquely human. At the end of the three tasks, participants were debriefed, thanked, and dismissed. No participant declared to be aware of the presence or of the nature of the subliminal primes in the LDT. 3
Italicized words refer to French (Study 2) and Spanish (Study 1) emotions as used in the experiments.
Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
Automatic infra-humanization
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Results and Discussion Manipulation Checks All participants correctly categorized each of the 20 proposed names in the name recognition task. Moreover, the final manipulation check ensured that the participants perceived secondary emotions as more human (M ¼ 6.77; SD ¼ 1.30) than primary emotions (M ¼ 2.43; SD ¼ 1.12), t(43) ¼ 18.44, p < .001.
Lexical Decision Task Incorrect responses and responses that occurred faster than 150 ms or slower than 150 ms (9.04%) were considered outliers and excluded from analyses (Wittenbrink et al., 1997). We performed an ANOVA using a 2 (Prime: in-group vs. out-group) 2 (Emotion type: primary vs. secondary) 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) within participant design. The emotion type factor came out significant with faster responses for primary emotions (M ¼ 410.42, SD ¼ 122.3) than for secondary ones (M ¼ 449.64, SD ¼ 133.07), F(1,42) ¼ 14.2, p ¼ .001, h2 ¼ 0.253. Valence was also significant with faster responses for positive (M ¼ 418.63, SD ¼ 124.22) than for negative emotions (M ¼ 441.41, SD ¼ 128.91), F(1,42) ¼ 6.5, p < .02, h2 ¼ 0.135. More importantly for our purpose, the predicted two-way interaction between prime and emotion type was significant, F(1,42) ¼ 4.36, p < .05, h2 ¼ 0.094. To test more specifically our hypothesis, we conducted separately 2 (Prime: in-group vs. out-group) 2 (valence: positive vs. negative) ANOVAs for secondary and primary emotions. As expected, for secondary emotions, the prime factor was significant, F(1,42) ¼ 4.12, p < .05, h2 ¼ 0.09, showing faster responses to secondary emotions when preceded by the in-group prime (M ¼ 438.47, SD ¼ 129.56) than by the out-group prime (M ¼ 460.8, SD ¼ 145.7). Interestingly, this effect was not qualified by valence, F(1,42) ¼ 0.617, p ¼ .436, h2 ¼ 0.014. The same ANOVA for primary emotions showed no significant effect (see Figure 2).
480 460 440 ingroup
420
outgroup
400 380 360 secondary emotions
Figure 2. Study 2
primary emotions
Reaction times for primary and secondary emotions as preceded by in-group and out-group primes,
Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
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The LDT allowed us to measure the impact of each specific association separately as assumed by infra-humanization theory. The results of this study showed that participants were faster at responding to secondary emotions when these emotions were preceded by an in-group prime rather than by an out-group one. No difference in reaction times emerged for primary emotions. Moreover, and as expected, the effects occurred independently of the valence of the emotions that were used. These results suggest that what created the effect obtained in the IAT by Paladino et al. (2002) was the association between in-groups and secondary emotions in the compatible task rather than the association between out-groups and primary emotions. This finding fully supports the infrahumanization hypothesis. Indeed, Leyens et al. (2003) have argued that what matters for infra-humanization bias is the underlying humanity of the attribute that is used (Vaes, Paladino, & Leyens, 2006). In other words, because primary emotions are not specifically related to the humanity dimension, they should not produce differential responses for in-groups and out-groups (see also Vaes, Paladino, Castelli, Leyens, & Giovanazzi, 2003). In contrast, because of their underlying humanity, secondary emotions should be associated with in-groups more than with out-group.
GENERAL DISCUSSION The present research aimed at verifying that uniquely human emotions are associated with in-group members to a greater degree than with out-group members. The paradigms used in the present two studies allowed specifying the strength of each type of associations separately. In Study 1, a person categorization task was utilized to measure associations between the in-group and secondary emotions. In Study 2, a different priming procedure, the LDT, was used to replicate the results obtained in Study 1 and to extend those results to other kinds of associations. In addition, for the sake of generalization, different out-groups (i.e., Arabs and Blacks) were selected for the two studies. Results of both experiments confirmed infra-humanization theory’s predictions that there exists a privileged link or association between secondary, uniquely human, emotions, and in-groups. In other words, participants reacted faster to secondary emotions when associated with an in-group rather than an out-group. In contrast, reaction times to primary emotions did not differ as a function of the type of group to which these were associated. Previous studies, using the Implicit Association Task (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998), had shown that people are faster at associating in-groups with secondary emotions and out-groups with primary emotions than the reverse (Paladino et al., 2002). The IAT, however, did not allow locating the cause of the effect. Indeed, in the IAT, compatible and incompatible tasks are compared. The compatible task combines both in-group/secondary emotions and out-group/primary emotions associations. Similarly, the incompatible task combines both in-group/primary emotions and out-group/secondary emotions associations. Therefore, faster answers to the compatible task could potentially be explained by both types of associations (i.e., in-group/secondary emotions or out-group/primary emotions associations). Infra-humanization theory, however, specifies that faster answers in the compatible task compared to the incompatible one largely depend on secondary emotions that are differentially associated to the groups. The present study disentangles this confusion, confirming hypothesis from infra-humanization theory. This privileged link between secondary emotions and in-groups should lead to a number of consequences for inter-group relations. First, people should more readily attribute secondary emotions to in-group than to out-group members. Indeed, a series of studies have demonstrated that, independent of groups’ status and of inter-group conflict, in-group members attribute more secondary emotions to themselves than to other groups (e.g., Demoulin et al., in press). Second, if secondary emotions are not Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 37, 987–999 (2007) DOI: 10.1002/ejsp
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so much associated to outgroups, the observation of any such association should be treated as inconsistent information. Indeed, Gaunt, Leyens, and Demoulin (2002) have shown that associations between outgroups and secondary emotions are better controlled in memory than associations between in-groups and secondary emotions. Such result is in line with studies arguing that inconsistent information is usually better memorized than consistent one. Third, if secondary emotions are reserved to in-group members, the observation of out-group members displaying them should lead to negative reactions toward those people who try to raise themselves to the privileged in-group status. Indeed, Vaes et al. (2003) have consistently demonstrated that out-group members reporting secondary emotions are reacted to less positively than in-group members. Future studies should examine the issue of inhibition in automatic infra-humanization: indeed, as Bodenhausen and Macrae (1998) postulated, a dynamic interplay between excitatory and inhibitory processes directs the stream of thought and action. Mental activation involves stimulus membership selection. Selection involves not only the activation of some attributes but also the inhibition of others. Considering that a person can be categorized in different ways, inhibitory mechanisms indirectly select the most appropriate category and the most appropriate information to be activated (Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995). In the same vein, it would be interesting to investigate the presence of not only activation but also inhibition for associations relative to infra-humanization, specifically, whether the out-group primes may inhibit the activation of secondary emotions. In terms of associations, mental representations may include both facilitative and inhibitory links. Facilitative links may exist between the target category and related attributes. In contrast, inhibitory links may exist between the focal category and unrelated categories or attributes. Future research should consider this issue in the context of infra-humanization (using an adequate baseline) to determine whether this bias is due only to facilitative links between secondary emotions and in-group or to inhibitory links between secondary emotions and out-group too.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This research was made possible by an ARC grant #01/06-270, from the Communaute´ franc¸aise de Belgique. We are thankful to G. Borgato for her help in collecting the data of the first study. The authors are grateful to Olivier Corneille, Ap Dijksterhuis, and Ruth Gaunt for helpful suggestions and comments.
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