POSITIVE-NEGATIVE ASYMMETRY OF SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION - A NORMATIVE ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENTIAL EVALUATIONS OF IN-GROUP AND OUT-GROUP ON POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE ATTRIBUTES

Following Mummendey & Simon's (1991) taxonomy of social discrimination , a distinction was made between two forms of discriminatory behaviour such that either Positive or negative stimuli may be allocated to or taken away from group members differentially. We argue chat an extrapo lation of findings from the positive domain to the largely neglected n egative domain is unjustified, and hypothesize a 'positive-negative as ymmetry of social discrimination' whereby in-group favouritism for neg ative stimuli is less probable than discrimination in terms of positiv e stimuli. First, in two parallel experiments, this hypothesis was tes ted in the realm of evaluations of group products. The two experiments differed in their operationalization of the valence of the judgement dimensions: in Expt 1a both, positive and negative, attributes were gi ven ('mixed lists'), whereas in Expt 1b either positive or negative at tributes were used for evaluations ('pure lists'). Whereas with 'mixed lists' there was no significant in-group bias, with 'pure lists' the hypothesized asymmetry was confirmed. These differing results were int erpreted in terms of a norm enhancement hypothesis: the possibility of discriminating via negative stimuli enhances a fairness norm. A secon d vignette study using descriptions of the first experiment's setting, yielded considerable support for this normative theoretical interpret ation.