Decategorization and the reduction of bias in the crossed categorization paradigm

Within the crossed categorization paradigm we examined the consequences of cooperative and personalized contact under conditions that promoted attenti on to unique attributes of team members (decategorization) versus condition s that emphasized their category memberships. As predicted, when the rule f or composing teams emphasized one or both of the experimentally induced dim ensions of category distinction, ethnocentric bias generalized to members o f another team as a function of category similarity. When, instead, the rul e emphasized team members' unique attributes, shared ingroup memberships no longer moderated bias towards members of another team Instead, there was a n equivalence pattern in the evaluative ratings of the four targets (in-gro up/in-group; in-group/out-group; out-group/in-group; out-group/out-group) o f the crossed categorization paradigm. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons , Ltd.