Facing Europe
Roland Imhoff, Ron Dotsch, Mauro Bianchi, Rainer Banse, Daniël H. J. Wigboldus
Psychological Science · 2011 · Volume 22 · Issue 12
Abstract
Individuals perceive their own group to be more typical of a shared superordinate identity than other groups are. This in-group projection process has been demonstrated with both self-report and indirect measures. The two studies reported here extend this research to the visual level, specifically, within the domain of faces. Using an innovative reverse-correlation approach, we found that German and Portuguese participants’ visual representations of European faces resembled the appearance typical for their own national identity. This effect was found even among participants who explicitly denied that one nation was more typical of Europe than the other (Study 1). Moreover, Study 2 provides experimental evidence that in-group projection is restricted to inclusive superordinate groups, as the effect was not observed for visual representations of a category (“Australian”) that did not include participants’ in-group. Implications for the in-group projection model, as well as for the applicability of reverse-correlation paradigms, are discussed.
Keywords
in-group projection, reverse correlation, visual appearance, face categorization, social identity
Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.