When We Do It, It’s Bad; When They Do It, It’s Worse: In-Group Forgiveness Bias

• In Event: Poster Session: Intergroup Dynamics and Tolerance & Representation and Electoral Systems
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Intergroup Dynamics and Tolerance

Abstract

Social identity and causal explanations shape people's attitudes and policy preferences regarding social problems. The literatures on these have often operated in separation or, when they have interacted, have focused on social problems using portrayals of specific individuals. In this paper, I advance the literature in several ways. First, I focus on perceptions of large-scale social problems, moving beyond the effect of thematic framing. Second, I leverage partisan identity as a possible source of in-group bias, helping to generalize effects of in-group bias beyond race. Third, I employ a novel experimental design independently manipulating the in-group status of victims and the problem's cause. Fourth, I measure personal concern to adjudicate between identity- and self-interest-driven mechanisms. Subjects read about a fictitious air pollutant whose victims were either mostly Democratic or Republican people who were either actively responsible for the creation of the pollutant or victims of a nearby factory. Results showed that people perceived the problem as more serious when it was caused by an external agent (the factory). However, this was only the case for perceptions of out-partisans. When co-partisans were at fault for harming themselves, they were not similarly punished, indicating an in-group forgiveness bias. Such cases of bias were always accompanied by heightened feelings of personal concern, suggesting self-interest as a mechanism.

Author

• Philip Moniz, Northeastern University