THE INGROUP OVEREXCLUSION EFFECT - IDENTITY CONCERNS IN DECISIONS ABOUT GROUP MEMBERSHIP

There are circumstances in which one is reluctant to express a judgmen t on the basis of the available information. This is for instance the case when the decision may jeopardize the integrity of the group one i s a member of. In particular, ingroup members are considered less judg eable than outgroup members. This phenomenon corresponds to the ingrou p overexclusion effect (Leyens and Yzerbyt, 1992). An experimental sit uation was designed in order to rule out an explanation of this phenom enon in terms of confirmation of hypothesis. French- or Dutch-speaking subjects heard recordings of 40 sentences and, depending on the speci fic wording of the question, decided whether the speakers belonged to the group of French-speaking (i.e. Walloon) versus Dutch-speaking (i.e . Flemish) Belgians or not. The 40 sentences enabled to cross three fa ctors with five sentences in each cell: Walloon versus Flemish speaker s, French versus Dutch sentences, and short versus long sentences. As predicted, subjects made most errors when ingroup members read short o utgroup sentences. Most importantly, the specific wording of the quest ion did not lead to a reversal of the pattern of errors of group ident ification. Subjects also took longer to make a decision about an ingro up member reading an outgroup sentence than about an outgroup member r eading an ingroup sentence. Such a pattern clearly supports a motivati onal explanation and undermines a confirmation of hypothesis explanati on of the ingroup overexclusion effect. Older accounts of ethnic ident ification phenomena are addressed and it is suggested that identity co ncerns greatly affect impression formation processes.