The importance of status legitimacy for intergroup attitudes among numerical minorities

This study investigated whether the legitimacy of the status structure infl uences the interactive effects of group status and numerical representation on intergroup attitudes. Participants were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (level of status high, low) by 2 (legitimacy of status; legitimate, illegitimate) by 2 (numerical representation; majority, minority) between- subjects design. The predicted three-way interaction indicated that, wizen status was illegitimate, majority groups with high status showed more ingro up bias than majority groups with low status, but minority groups with high status did not show more ingroup bins than their counterparts with low sta tus. BY comparison, when status was legitimate, high-status groups were mor e biased than low-status groups, regardless of numerical representation.