PROTOTYPICALITY OF ARGUMENTS AND CONFORMITY TO INGROUP NORMS

Social categorization is claimed to elicit a tendency to conform to in group norms, which may result in attitude change after exposure to inf ormation on the opinions of other ingroup members. It was hypothesized that the degree to which arguments represented ingroup norms, i.e., w ere prototypical, would affect their potential influence on attitudes, such that prototypical arguments would be perceived as being of highe r quality and would elicit more attitude change. Moreover, prototypica l arguments were expected to elicit more argument elaboration. Two exp eriments were designed to test these predictions. In Experiment 1 subj ects were exposed to both a set of pro and a set of contra arguments, while one of the sets was allegedly prototypical of ingroup attitudes. In Experiment 2 subjects were exposed to either prototypical or a-pro totypical pro or contra arguments allegedly originating from in- or ou tgroup. In both studies conformity to ingroup norms was observed. In a ddition, prototypical ingroup arguments elicited higher quality rating s in the first study. Indications of higher elaboration of prototypica l ingroup arguments were found.