Eliot R Smith

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

We tested three hypotheses derived from intergroup emotions theory: that group-based emotions, emotions felt as a member of a group, (1) are influenced by group norms, (2) especially for highly identified group members, and (3) are relatively more positive for highly identified members. Hypothesis 4 tested the prediction that these self-categorizat...

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries...

How do people treat robot teammates compared to human opponents? Past research indicates that people favor, and behave more morally toward, ingroup than outgroup members. People also perceive that they have more moral responsibilities toward humans than nonhumans. This paper presents a 2×2×3 experimental study that placed participants ( N = 102) in...

People's emotions toward their ingroups and salient outgroups often change over time as a result of changing circumstances or intentional self-regulation. To investigate such dynamics, two studies assessed participants' perceived past, present, and ideal levels of group-based emotions toward ingroups and outgroups, for several different types of gr...

Like early work on human intergroup interaction, previous research on people’s willingness to interact with robots has focused mainly on effects of anxiety. However, existing findings suggest that other negative emotions as well as some positive emotions also have effects. This article systematically examines the roles of positive and negative emot...

Can a perceiver’s belief about a target’s transgender status (distinct from gender nonconforming appearance) affect perceptions of the target’s attractiveness? Cisgender, heterosexual men and women (N = 319) received randomly assigned labels (cisgender cross-gender, transgender man, transgender woman, or nonbinary) paired with 48 cross-sex targets...

While researchers expect it will be technologically possible for robots to be widely available in society in the near future, the public shows negative attitudes toward robots that may impede their acceptance. Intergroup contact theory shows that positive contact with an outgroup reduces prejudice and increases positive emotions towards that outgro...

Emotions are a ubiquitous aspect of interaction between groups. As described in Intergroup Emotions Theory (IET; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Smith, 1993), intergroup emotions are emotions people feel on account of their membership in a group to which they belong and with which they identify. In this chapter, we first describe the foundational ass...

Motivated by the desire to explain how Americans perceive and evaluate inequality and related programs and policies, the authors conducted a national survey of beliefs about social and economic inequality in America. Here they present the results of their research on the structure, determinants, and certain political and personal consequences of th...

Group-based emotions are experienced as a result of group categorization and group identification. We first review the transformative idea that emotion can occur as a group-level phenomenon driven by group-level processes. We then briefly review the impact of this idea on research about intragroup processes and intergroup relations in the decades s...

People from honor cultures show heightened emotional responses to insults to their social image. The current research investigates whether people from honor cultures also show heightened protection of social identities. We find that honor concerns may be embedded in some social identities but not others, and that those identities associated with ho...

Robots are expected to become present in society in increasing numbers, yet few studies in human-robot interaction (HRI) go beyond one-to-one interaction to examine how characteristics of robot groups will affect HRI. In particular, people may show more negative or aggressive behavior toward entitative (i.e., cohesive) robot groups, like they do to...

This paper investigates the possibility that individuals selectively identify with groups as a means of restoring certainty in their attitudes. Specifically, we contend that (i) groups offer social validation in the form of attitudinal norms, (ii) individuals heighten their identification with groups that offer norms that are consistent with attitu...

Emotions can be experienced not only at the individual level, but also on behalf of social groups by people who belong to and identify with those groups. As outlined in Intergroup Emotions Theory, these emotions are driven by appraisals of objects or events in terms of their relevance for the group (rather than the individual). They shift depending...

In this article, we highlight factors that make inferences about people’s attributes in social media difficult. One practical question is, “To what extent do people express content that might strongly signal their emotional state on Twitter and Facebook?” Using automated content analysis, we find that (a) only a relatively small proportion of peopl...

Emotions are increasingly being recognised as important aspects of prejudice and intergroup behaviour. Specifically, emotional mediators play a key role in the process by which intergroup contact reduces prejudice towards outgroups. However, which particular emotions are most important for prejudice reduction, as well as the consistency and general...

The Representation and Incorporation of Close Others' Responses model (RICOR; Smith and Mackie, 2015 [. 1••]) proposes that social influence occurs because (1) people naturally and spontaneously construct mental representations of others' responses or experiences (their beliefs, emotions, attitudes, or behaviors) and (2) those representations are t...

We propose a new model of social influence, which can occur spontaneously and in the absence of typically assumed motives. We assume that perceivers routinely construct representations of other people's experiences and responses (beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors), when observing others' responses or simulating the responses of unobserved...

Over-time variability characterizes not only individual-level emotions, but also group-level emotions, those that occur when people identify with social groups and appraise events in terms of their implications for those groups. We discuss theory and research regarding the role of emotions in intergroup contexts, focusing on their dynamic nature. W...

When the social identities people develop as members of groups become salient, people perceive the world in terms of the costs and benefits to that salient group membership. This means that events that have no implications for the individual him or herself can be perceived as harmful, beneficial, offensive, complimentary, unfair, or just, for examp...

Robots are expected to become present in society in increasing numbers, yet few studies in human-robot interaction (HRI) go beyond one-to-one interaction to examine how emotions, attitudes, and stereotypes expressed toward groups of robots differ from those expressed toward individuals. Research from social psychology indicates that people interact...

Robots are expected to become present in society in increasing numbers, yet few studies in human-robot interaction (HRI) go beyond one-to-one interaction to examine how emotions, attitudes, and stereotypes expressed toward groups of robots differ from those expressed toward individuals. Research from social psychology indicates that people interact...

We discuss a novel form of priming that (a) involves the activation of embodied as well as mental representations in the perceiver and (b) is caused by the observation or simulation of the belief, attitude, emotion, or behavior of one or more other people. As in any form of priming, the representation, once activated, may have effects on the percei...

Although person perception is central to virtually all human social behavior, it is ordinarily studied in isolated individual perceivers. Conceptualizing it as a socially distributed process opens up a variety of novel issues, which have been addressed in scattered literatures mostly outside of social psychology. This article examines some of these...

A brief, casual interpersonal touch results in positive behavior toward the toucher, pre- sumably because touch is a cue to friendship. Research on intergroup contact shows that feelings of friendship toward an individual outgroup member reduce prejudice toward that entire group. Integrating these areas, we examined whether interpersonal touch by a...

Current research demonstrates that people rely on metaphors in comprehending abstract concepts, but leaves the situational or dispositional determinants of metaphor use largely uninvestigated. Based on Construal Level Theory, we propose that metaphor use increases as the concept becomes psychologically removed from the immediate self, because dista...

In 2004, we (Smith & Semin, 2004) described a conceptual framework of "socially situated cognition," encompassing four major themes. Cognition is for adaptive action, involves the body and sensori-motor systems, is situated in immediate intercourse with the environment, and is distributed across other minds and tools. Here, we introduce two broader...

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term 'embodiment' captures the common denominator of these developments,...

Previous work has shown that compared to passive perceivers who view preselected information about target persons, active perceivers are less confident in their impressions, do not show increased confidence with increased amounts of information, and like targets less. The authors now explain these findings, postulating that perceivers without contr...

Three studies integrated crossed-categorization and discrete emotion approaches to prejudice and prejudice reduction. Study 1 made salient crossed-categorization using naturally occurring groups and examined the ability of emotions to account for prejudiced evaluations. Study 2 constructed novel crossed-categorizations in the laboratory to examine...

This chapter is concerned with the effects of distinctiveness on explicit memory in social psychology. It draws comparisons between the social and cognitive literatures on the topic of distinctiveness and memory, with the aim of better understanding the extent to which the findings in each area may be applicable to the other. It reviews several pro...

According to intergroup emotion theory, the impact of many intergroup events on intergroup outcomes is mediated by group-directed emotions. We demonstrate that the ability of apology to reduce retribution against and increase forgiveness of a transgressing outgroup is contributed to by discrete intergroup emotions. We examined both negative (anger...

When making decisions, people typically gather information from both social and nonsocial sources, such as advice from others and direct experience. This research adapted a cognitive learning paradigm to examine the process by which people learn what sources of information are credible. When participants relied on advice alone to make decisions, th...

What can motivate members of disadvantaged groups to take action on behalf of their group? This research assessed a model in which measured perceptions of (study 1) and manipulated information about (study 2) other women’s anger influenced female participants’ group-based anger, their subsequent appraisals of instances of possible discrimination, a...

In 2 experiments, implicit evaluation of novel and familiar concepts was assessed using a sequential priming procedure that enabled estimates of evaluative priming effects at low levels of detectability. In Experiment 1, the novel concepts referenced common names, and in Experiment 2 they referenced nonsense words. Whereas familiar concepts yielded...

The Mind in Context A paradigm shift is changing the face of psychology. Replacing the computer model of human function, with its focus on internal psychological mechanism, is a model of human function as agency in context. In the new approach mind and context constitute one system, and psychological processes emerge from the transactions of indivi...

Person perception research is dominated by studies of passive perceivers who exert no control over the information they receive. In contrast, perceivers in everyday life can often actively choose the type and quantity of information they receive. In this study, active and yoked passive perceivers formed impressions of individuals based on informati...

According to Intergroup Emotions Theory people categorized as group members experience the emotions of their ingroup as a consequence of that membership. Four experiments showed that participants converged toward what they believed to be their specific ingroup’s distinct emotional experience when reporting emotions as group members, but not when re...

Previous research [Smith, E. R., Seger, C. R., & Mackie, D. M. (2007). Can emotions be truly group-level? Evidence regarding four conceptual criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 431–446] has demonstrated that when people are explicitly asked about the emotions they experience as members of a particular group, their reported e...

Research on person perception typically emphasizes cognitive processes of information selection and interpretation within the individual perceiver and the nature of the resulting mental representations. The authors focus instead on the ways person perception processes create, and are influenced by, the patterns of impressions that are socially cons...

Two studies were designed to investigate the relations among ethnic group membership, ethnic group identification, group based-appraisals, and group-based emotions in determining behavioral tendencies of support and opposition toward diversity initiatives. The two studies confronted participants with the hire of an ethnic minority under a diversity...

Role of Emotions in Prejudice and Intergroup BehaviorEvidenceFuture DirectionsAcknowledgmentReferences

When the social identities people develop as members of groups become salient, people perceive the world in terms of the costs and benefits to that salient group membership. This means that events that have no implications for the individual him or herself can be perceived as harmful, beneficial, offensive, complimentary, unfair, or just, for examp...

Imagine that you are a white student waiting with two other students, one black and one white, for a psychology experiment to begin. The black student steps out of the room for a moment, lightly bumping against the white student on his way out. While he is out of earshot, the white student comments, "Typical, I hate it when black people do that." H...

This chapter describes a few influential social-psychological dual-process models and gives an in-depth review of the integrative models. It compares the general characteristics of dual-process models in social psychology with similar models in other areas of psychology, and discusses implications of this comparison for several conceptual issues. M...

Distributed connectionist models of mental representation (also termed PDP or parallel distributed processing, or ANN or artificial neural networks) constitute a fundamental alternative to the associative or schematic models that have been much more prevalent in social psychology. A connectionist model is made up of a large number of very simple pr...

Cognition almost invariably occurs in the context of other people: the web of face-to-face encounters, personal relationships, and social group memberships that make us who we are. Not only do these social entities very frequently constitute the content of our thoughts and feelings, but they fundamentally shape the processes underlying our cognitio...

Two studies were designed to investigate the relations among ethnic group membership, ethnic group identification, group based-appraisals, and group-based emotions in determining behavioral tendencies of support and opposition toward diversity initiatives. The two studies confronted participants with the hire of an ethnic minority under a diversity...

Extending recent investigations into the malleability of implicit ingroup favoritism, three experiments examined the role of indirect activation of equality and loyalty. Results showed that priming equality decreased implicit favoritism, measured through the Implicit Association Test and Go/No-Go Association Task, whereas priming loyalty enhanced i...

Intergroup emotions theory seeks to understand and improve intergroup relations by focusing on the emotions engendered by belonging to, and by deriving identity from, a social group (processes called self-categorization and identification). Intergroup emotions are shaped by the very different ways in which members of different groups see group-rele...

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based a...

Simonson holds that non-constructed “inherent preferences” influence many expressed attitudes as well as behavioral choices. These inherent preferences are not mentally represented, but amount to embodied constraints that (for example) make a person like a new product on an initial encounter. This article situates Simonson's argument in the social–...

Drawing on Intergroup Emotions Theory [Mackie, D. M., Maitner, A. T., & Smith, E. R. (in press). Intergroup emotions theory. In T.D. Nelson (Ed.), Handbook of Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination, New York: Erlbaum.], we propose that a perceiver’s emotional reactions toward other social groups can change in response to situationally induced...

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term 'embodiment' captures the common denominator of these developments,...

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term 'embodiment' captures the common denominator of these developments,...

The field of social psychology – defined by its focus on the social aspects of human cognition and behavior – has in recent years begun to make contact with emerging perspectives in the cognitive sciences generally, especially the themes of embodiment and distributed cognition. This chapter reviews contributions of social psychology in these areas,...

Intergroup emotions theory seeks to understand and improve intergroup relations by focusing on the emotions engendered by belonging to, and by deriving identity from, a social group (processes called self-categorization and identification). Intergroup emotions are shaped by the very different ways in which members of different groups see group-rele...

In recent years there has been an increasing awareness that a comprehensive understanding of language, cognitive and affective processes, and social and interpersonal phenomena cannot be achieved without understanding the ways these processes are grounded in bodily states. The term ‘embodiment’ captures the common denominator of these developments,...

IntroductionAssociative NetworksKey Memory Effects in Social PsychologySummary and Conclusions

Social psychologists have studied the psychological processes involved in persuasion, conformity, and other forms of social influence, but they have rarely modeled the ways influence processes play out when multiple sources and multiple targets of influence interact over time. However, workers in other fields from sociology and economics to cogniti...

Recent advances in understanding prejudice and intergroup behavior have made clear that emotions help explain people's reactions to social groups and their members. Intergroup emotions theory (D. M. Mackie, T. Devos, & E. R. Smith, 2000; E. R. Smith, 1993) holds that intergroup emotions are experienced by individuals when they identify with a socia...

In this chapter we apply intergroup emotion theory (IET; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000) to reflect on the conditions under which individuals may experience intergroup emotions in workgroups, and to explore some possible consequences of those emotions. First, we briefly outline IET and describe the psychological mechanisms underlying intergroup emoti...

Social cognition refers to the mental representations and processes that underlie social judgments and behavior—for example, the application of stereotypes to members of social groups. Theories of social cognition have generally assumed that mental representations are abstract and stable and that they are activated and applied by relatively automat...

Three studies investigated the role of intergroup satisfaction in intergroup conflict. After reading about real acts of aggression committed by an ingroup, participants reported how those actions made them feel and how much they would support similar aggression in the future. In all three studies, experiencing intergroup satisfaction increased supp...

Most social and psychological phenomena occur not as the result of isolated decisions by individuals but rather as the result of repeated interactions between multiple individuals over time. Yet the theory-building and modeling techniques most commonly used in social psychology are less than ideal for understanding such dynamic and interactive proc...

It is hard to imagine studying the psychology of intergroup relations without a theory of group-based emotions. The everyday language of social issues, after all, betrays the importance of emotion in both intergroup prejudice and intragroup cohesion: ‘hate crime’, ‘Black pride’, ‘guilty liberals’, ‘homophobia’, ‘Islamophobia’, ‘angry White males’,...

a b s t r a c t Individuals can often accurately perceive others' emotions in a purely interpersonal context. However, when people identify with an important ingroup, they experience distinctive patterns. Can emotions be truly group-level? Evidence regarding four con-ceptual criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 431–446]. Thus...

In this chapter we apply intergroup emotion theory (IET; Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000) to reflect on the conditions under which individuals may experience intergroup emotions in workgroups, and to explore some possible consequences of those emotions. First, we briefly outline IET and describe the psychological mechanisms underlying intergroup emoti...

If intergroup emotions are functional, successfully implementing an emotion-linked behavioral tendency should discharge the emotion, whereas impeding the behavioral tendency should intensify the emotion. We investigated the emotional consequences of satisfying or thwarting emotionally induced intergroup behavioral intentions. Study 1 showed that if...

Male and female subjects rated female victims of misfortune after observing videotapes of the victims detailing their injuries to doctors. Contrary to predictions of just wortd theory, subjects derogated culpable victims more than innocent victims. When observers identified with the victim, through political ties, derogation was reduced. It was con...

Two experiments show that repeated exposure to information about a target person reduces individuation and thereby increases stereotyping of the target person based on social group memberships. The effect is not due to familiarity-induced liking (the mere exposure effect), nor is it mediated by increased accessibility of the target’s social categor...