Minority Members' Implicit Attitudes: Automatic Ingroup Bias As A Function Of Group Status

Abstract

We compared implicit and explicit ingroup bias across four minority groups who ranged in status from high (Jews and Asians) to medium (overweight people) to low (poor people). Minorities relatively high in status showed more implicit ingroup bias than minorities relatively low in status. In fact, overweight and poor people showed automatic preference for the dominant outgroup (i.e., own group devaluation). The relationship between ingroup bias and perceived status was reliably positive whether based on category membership (r = .54) or minority members' own perceptions of their status (r = .36), but only at the implicit level. By contrast, explicit attitudes were negligibly correlated with status differences. In addition, dominant group members showed stronger possession of implicit ingroup bias than did minorities, but particularly as their relative status increased. In concert, the findings support system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) by showing that minorities with the least status are the most susceptible to automatic ingroup devaluation. They also suggest that motives to legitimize the status quo are predominantly nonconscious, for minorities and dominants alike.