2001/01/01 by Richard H. Gramzow, Lowell Gaertner, Constantine Sedikides · 89 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Categorization #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Cultural Differences and Values #Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion #Group (periodic table) #Information processing #Nomothetic and idiographic #Psychology #Self #Social and Intergroup Psychology #Social cognition #Social comparison theory #Social psychology #Valence (chemistry)
paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.80.2.188
published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80(2), 188-205 (American Psychological Association)
openalex publication_date 2001/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The authors argue that persons derive in-group expectancies from self-knowledge. This implies that perceivers process information about novel in-groups on the basis of the self-congruency of this information and not simply its valence. In Experiment 1, participants recalled more negative self-discrepant behaviors about an in-group than about an out-group. Experiment 2 replicated this effect under low cognitive load but not under high load. Experiment 3 replicated the effect using an idiographic procedure. These findings suggest that perceivers engage in elaborative inconsistency processing when they encounter negative self-discrepant information about an in-group but not when they encounter negative self-congruent information. Participants were also more likely to attribute self-congruent information to the in-group than to the out-group, regardless of information valence. Implications for models of social memory and self-categorization theory are discussed.