THE SELF-RELEVANT IMPLICATIONS OF THE GROUP-VALUE MODEL - GROUP MEMBERSHIP, SELF-WORTH, AND TREATMENT QUALITY

Past research demonstrates that quality of treatment is linked to supp ort of authorities and acceptance of their decisions, particularly whe n the authority represents a valued ingroup. The group-value model sug gests that the group membership effect occurs because people derive im portant self-relevant information from evaluations of how they are tre ated by ingroup authorities. Two experiments and a correlational study tested whether the group membership of the authority moderates the ef fect of treatment quality on participants' views of themselves. The re sults show that better treatment quality is more closely related to fe elings of respect and positive self-esteem when the authority represen ts an ingroup than when the authority represents an outgroup. Moreover , there is some suggestive evidence that the effect of treatment quali ty on self-esteem is mediated by perceived respect. These findings sup per? the argument that treatment quality in an ingroup context is part icularly important because people derive their sense of self, in part, from knowing that a group they value regards them as respected member s. (C) 1998 Academic Press.