Who may enter? The impact of in-group identification on in-group/out-group categorization

An experiment was conducted to examine the impact of identification with the in-group on the categorization of pictures depicting in-group and out-group faces. Findings showed that high identifiers classified fewer pictures as in-group members than did low identifiers. High and low identifiers also differed in their categorization latencies. Whereas high identifiers seemed more concerned with erroneously including an out-group member in the in-group, low identifiers seemed concerned with accuracy. The results are discussed with regard to the motivations underlying social categorization as well as to other phenomena that have been discovered through research on social identity theory. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).