van Leeuwen Esther, Harinck Fieke
Leiden University, the Netherlands
Leiden University, the Netherlands.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2016 Oct;42(10):1402-15. doi: 10.1177/0146167216662867. Epub 2016 Aug 31.
Discrimination is often used to increase public perceptions of group distinctiveness. The current research studied the effectiveness of third party helping as an alternative, more benign strategy to this end. Across four studies, we examined whether helping a third party can position the helping group as more distinct from, or more similar to, a comparison group, depending on the nature of the comparison group's relationship with the third party. Results from three studies showed that third party helping was as effective as discrimination of the comparison group, but third party helping elicited a more positive public image of the group compared with discrimination. Study 4 provided evidence for the spontaneous use of third party helping in response to distinctiveness threat. These findings extend insights from classic balance theories and research on strategic intergroup helping to the domain of intergroup differentiation, and highlight a benign strategy to achieve positive group distinctiveness.
歧视常常被用来增强公众对群体独特性的认知。当前的研究探讨了第三方帮助作为一种替代的、更为良性的策略在这方面的有效性。在四项研究中，我们考察了帮助第三方是否能使帮助群体相对于一个对照群体显得更独特或更相似，这取决于对照群体与第三方关系的性质。三项研究的结果表明，第三方帮助与对对照群体的歧视效果相当，但与歧视相比，第三方帮助能为该群体带来更积极的公众形象。研究4为应对独特性威胁时自发使用第三方帮助提供了证据。这些发现将经典平衡理论和战略群体间帮助的研究见解扩展到群体间分化领域，并突出了一种实现积极群体独特性的良性策略。
