The emotional side of prejudice: The attribution of secondary emotions to ingroups and outgroups

If people favor their ingroup, are especially concerned with their own grou p, and attribute different essences to different groups, it follows that th eir essence must be superior to the essence of other groups. Intelligence, language, and certain emotions are all considered to be distinctive element s of human nature or Essence. The role of intelligence and language in disc rimination, prejudice, and racism has already been largely investigated, an d this article focuses oil attributed emotions. Specifically, we investigat e the idea that secondary emotions are typically human characteristics, and as such, they should be especially associated with and attributed to the i ngroup. Secondary emotions may even be Jellied to outgroups. These differen tial associations and attributions of specifically human emotions to ingrou ps versus outgroups should affect intergroup relations. Results from severa l initial experiments are summarized that support our reasoning. This emoti onal approach to prejudice and racism is contrasted with more classic, cogn itive perspectives.