The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love or Outgroup Hate?

Journal of Social Issues, Fall, 1999 by Marilynn B. Brewer

The Psychology of Identity Complexity

Our initial exploratory efforts, then, indicate that there are good grounds for characterizing American society as a complex structure of cross-cutting social ties and group identities. However, it is not just the objective reality of overlapping group memberships that will determine whether cross-cutting identities promote tolerance and prevent intergroup conflict. More important is how these multiple identities are represented subjectively by individuals when they think about their social group memberships. First is the question of whether individuals are aware of their multiple ingroup loyalties, whether different ingroup identities are accessible and salient simultaneously or psychologically isolated and fenced off from each other. The second question is how individuals think about dual identities when they are both salient. Do they think of both groups in their most inclusive sense, so that overlapping memberships are evident? Or do they think of their own ingroup identification as the combination of jo int group memberships (White American as opposed to both Caucasian in general and American in general; Black woman, as opposed to woman and African American as separate inclusive identities)?

This latter question is particularly important because it determines whether individuals who share a single ingroup membership (but not other memberships) are viewed as ingroup members or outgroupers. Defining one's ingroup at the intersection of multiple category distinctions creates a high degree of distinctiveness or exclusiveness at the cost of meeting needs for inclusion. It is likely that different value systems and individual differences in social orientation lead to differences in how individuals resolve their membership in multiple social categories. Cross-cutting memberships may have the potential to increase tolerance and give rise to more inclusive, concentric group loyalties, but this potential will not be realized if ingroups are defined exclusely rather than inclusively. As social psychologists interested in promoting positive social identities and positive intergroup relations, it behooves us to examine more closely the cognitive and motivational concomitants of multiple group identities in a complex social system.

Concluding Perspective

A cursory review of forty years of social psychological research on intergroup relations suggests that Allport (1954) was right in assigning psychological primacy to the processes of ingroup formation and attachment over attitudes toward outgroups. Many discriminatory perceptions and behaviors are motivated primarily by the desire to promote and maintain positive relationships within the ingroup rather than by any direct antagonism toward outgroups. Ingroup love is not a necessary precursor of outgroup hate. However, the very factors that make ingroup attachment and allegiance important to individuals also provide a fertile ground for antagonism and distrust of those outside the ingroup boundaries. The need to justify ingroup values in the form of moral superiority to others, sensitivity to threat, the anticipation of interdependence under conditions of distrust, social comparison processes, and power politics all conspire to connect ingroup identification and loyalty to disdain and overt hostility toward ou tgroups.