INGROUP AND OUTGROUP INFERENCES - WHEN INGROUP BIAS OVERWHELMS OUTCOME BIAS

Two experiments investigated conditions under which participants drew outcome-biased inferences about ingroups and outgroups. Participants r ead about ingroup and outgroup targets whose success or failure was in fluenced by an arbitrary decision rule. In Experiment 1, ingroup and o utgroup members experienced two inconsistent outcomes (first success a nd then failure, or vice versa) despite almost identical performances. After reading about the first performance participants made outcome-b iased inferences, but when the role of the decision rule became obviou s inferences became group-serving. That is, outcomes continued to infl uence inferences when they cast the ingroup in a positive light (as wh en initial failure was followed by success) but failed to affect infer ences when they were detrimental to the ingroup (as when initial succe ss was qualified by later failure). In contrast, inferences about outg roups were outcome-biased when failure followed success, but not when success followed failure. The results of Experiment 2 showed that outc ome biases influenced inferences when decision rules produced outcomes that promoted the ingroup but not when they produced outcomes that hu rt the ingroup. No such benefit occurred for outgroups. The results co nfirm the impact of motivational concerns such as ingroup bias on the occurrence of outcome biases in inferences. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons , Ltd.