Correlated Versus Uncorrelated Social Categorizations: The Effect on Intergroup Bias
Previous research has shown that independent cross-cutting social categories reduce discrimination between groups. How-ever, the effect of correlated cross-cutting categories on intergroup relations has not been studied. Female college students who were categorized into two groups on the basis of an art preference task and a dot estimation task were told that there was either no correlation, a moderate correlation, or a high correlation between the two categorizations. On two generalized measures of bias, subjects exhibited more intergroup bias as the degree of correlation between categorizations increased. Furthermore, in the high-correlation condition, subjects exhibited just as much bias against the partial out-group as against the total out-group. A situationally specific measure of bias failed to yield the same pattern of results. Overall, the results suggest that the degree of correlation between cross-cutting categorizations has an important impact on intergroup bias.