In-group inferiority, social identity and out-group devaluation in a modified minimal group study

Social identity theory predicts an interdependence between the relative evaluation of a person's in-group, his or her social identity, and the degree of his or her in-group-out-group differentiation. Three hypotheses were tested in an experiment that extended the original minimal group paradigm to one further out-group as a second comparison group. The results show that an experimental devaluation of the in-group in comparison to a first out-group: (a) led to a more negative evaluation of those areas of the self which are substantially connected to the dimension on which the intergroup comparison took place (hypothesis 1); (b) did not result in a higher mean devaluation score for the second out-group, which is inconsistent with hypothesis 2a; and (c) made the comparison dimension less important to the in-group, thereby supporting hypothesis 2b. In an internal analysis, self-evaluation in those aspects which relate to the intergroup comparison proved to be negatively correlated with the devaluation of the second out-group. Hypothesis 3 proposed that self-esteem would increase following devaluation of the second out-group. The data pattern with respect to this prediction showed contradictory results.