Jacques-Philippe Leyens

Catholic University of Louvain | UCLouvain · Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Many phenomena studied by social psychology are based on ideologies. Ideologies are ideas or systems of ideas inspired by values and objectified in social norms about the way societies should be. This chapter guides our attention to the importance of the ideological dimension of intergroup relations. This dimensions had been emphasized already by T...

A first experiment aimed at extending stereotype threat to anxious behaviour was carried out. Male and female students had to speak in front of a camera. As expected, female participants in the threat condition behaved more anxiously than did participants in the other three conditions that did not differ from one another. It is suggested that this...

Abstract This set of studies investigates how infra-humanization affects the reception of positive or negative news coverage. According to the infra-humanization model, participants inferred or attributed more positive or negative uniquely human emotions to the ingroup than to outgroup targets. Participants in the ingroup condition also showed mor...

In this introductory chapter, first we stress the importance of concentrating on interactions as a whole rather than on interaction partners separately when studying relations between groups of equal or of different status. Second, we emphasize the critical, but traditionally understudied, role of intergroup misunderstandings in the emergence of in...

Income inequality undermines societies: The more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people's tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the stereotype content model (SCM) argues that ambivalence-perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both...

The malleability of the infrahumanization bias was tested varying the physical context in which the ingroup and the outgroup target were assessed. Using a sequential priming paradigm, Study 1 replicated the infrahumanization bias in a neutral context. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that there are contextual variations in infrahumanization. Specifica...

Mostly invigorated by infrahumanisation theory, our knowledge on processes of dehumanisation in intergroup relations has grown considerably in the last decade. Building on these earlier endeavours, the present chapter reviews some recent empirical extensions that highlight the importance of differentiating between ingroup humanisation and outgroup...

Vala, J., Pereira, Cícero, Lima, Marcus, Leyens, J-P (2012). Intergroup time bias and racialized social relations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Vol. 38, 4, 491-504. http://www.ics.ul.pt/instituto/?ln=p&pid=49&mm=5&ctmid=2&doc=31809901190

Within the framework of intergroup relations, the authors analyzed the time people spent evaluating ingroup and outgroup members. They hypothesized that White participants take longer to evaluate White targets than Black targets. In four experiments, White participants were slower to form impressions of White than of Black people; that is, they sho...

Studies on infra-humanization have confirmed a greater attribu-tion of secondary emotions to the ingroup than to outgroups, independ-ently of the valence of these emotions. However, the variables leading to the choice of which outgroups are likely to be infra-humanized have re-ceived limited attention in the literature. This study is concerned with...

This study aims to relate causal explanations for men's and women's achievements to implicit theories held about sex stereotypes. Two different methods were used: one following Weiner's two-dimensional attribution model, and another expressed in terms of attributional semantic space. The classical analysis, in terms of locus of causality and stabil...

Two studies examined hypothesis-consistent questions under goals of information seeking and empathy. In Study 1, observers rated the informativeness and empathy of questions classified as diagnostic or leading, and as matching or not matching a hypothesis (extroversion-introversion). In an impression formation setting, observers rated both matching...

The term evilness started to become popular in social psychology after the publication in 1999 of the special issue edited by Arthur G. Miller, "Perspectives on evil and violence". It is usually used to define behaviors that are extremely and strongly harmful. However, the concept is still imprecise and needs to be empirically delineated. This arti...

Immigration, cultural diversity and integration are among the most central challenges for modern societies. Integration is often impeded by negative emotions and prejudices held by the majority members towards immigrants in a common society. Based on the ingroup projection model (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999), we examined the impact of perceived relati...

We examined the attribution of primary and secondary emotions in the context of equal status groups with a non-conflictual relationship, that is, Germans and French. In Study 1 (N = 169), we found that in such an intergroup context, there was no differential attribution of secondary emotions but an over-attribution of primary emotions to the out-gr...

Two experiments examine whether exposure to generic violence can display infrahumanization towards out-groups. In Study 1, participants had to solve a lexical decision task after viewing animal or human violent scenes. In Study 2, participants were exposed to either human violent or human suffering pictures before doing a lexical decision task. In...

The stereotype content model (SCM) proposes potentially universal principles of societal stereotypes and their relation to social structure. Here, the SCM reveals theoretically grounded, cross-cultural, cross-groups similarities and one difference across 10 non-US nations. Seven European (individualist) and three East Asian (collectivist) nations (...

A widely researched panacea for reducing intergroup prejudice is the contact hypothesis. However, few longitudinal studies can shed light on the direction of causal processes: from contact to prejudice reduction (contact effects) or from prejudice to contact reduction (prejudice effects). The authors conducted a longitudinal field survey in Germany...

This set of studies tests the link between infra-humanization, symbolic threat, and discrimination within normative contexts. In two experiments, manipulating the degree of humanity of a disliked outgroup has an effect upon the discrimination towards it. The infra-humanized outgroup is more discriminated than the humanized one. Also, the perception...

People tend to infra-humanize by attributing more human essence to their in-group than to out-groups. In the present article, we focus on the attribution of primary and secondary emotions to operationalize the human essence. We propose that, in order to infra-humanize, people need to be categorized in meaningful groups. In addition, we argue that w...

This set of studies tests the link between infra-humanization, symbolic threat, and discrimination within normative contexts. In two experiments, manipulating the degree of humanity of a disliked outgroup has an effect upon the discrimination towards it. The infra-humanized outgroup is more discriminated than the humanized one. Also, the perception...

This set of studies tests the link between infra-humanization, symbolic threat, and discrimination within normative contexts. In two experiments, manipulating the degree of humanity of a disliked outgroup has an effect upon the discrimination towards it. The infra-humanized outgroup is more discriminated than the humanized one. Also, the perception...

Infra-humanizing outgroups involves considering outgroups less human and more animal-like than the ingroup, which is perceived, in essence, as fully human. In this article, the first section presents the theoretical background of infra-humanization and distinguishes it from related concepts, such as dehumanization. The three basic hypotheses of the...

This research tested the infra-humanization hypothesis that uniquely human emotions (e.g., love, sorrow) are automatically more linked in memory with the in-group than with the out-group. No such difference is expected for non-uniquely human emotions (e.g., joy, sadness) which pertain to everybody, including animals. Two studies using semantic prim...

Infra-humanizing outgroups involves considering outgroups less human and more animal-like than the ingroup, which is perceived, in essence, as fully human. In this article, the first section presents the theoretical background of infra-humanization and distinguishes it from related concepts, such as dehumanization. The three basic hypotheses of the...

Documenting the behavioural consequences of infra-humanization, Vaes, Paladino, Castelli, Leyens, and Giovanazzi (2003) found that, in comparison to in-group members, out-group members are discriminated against when they express uniquely human emotions. It was assumed that expressing a uniquely human emotion makes an in-group member, at least tacit...

This article investigates the essentialist perception of social categories and differentiates it from two closely related concepts, namely entitativity and natural kind-ness. We argue that lay perceptions of social categories vary along three dimensions: natural kind-ness, entitativity, and essentialism. Depending on whether membership in social ca...

Very different social roles are generally assigned to women and men (Eagly, 1987). These roles are translated into stereotypical beliefs about typically female attributes and typically male attributes (Williams and Best, 1986, 1990). Women, for instance, are supposed to be sweet and nurturing. These characteristics are even considered desirable for...

This chapter reports on the results of a cross-cultural study of the effects of social comparison on self-construal among eight nations/cultures. It follows a previous report on five of these cultures (Guimond, Branscombe, Brunot, Buunk, Chatard, Désert, Garcia, Haque, Martinot, and Yzerbyt, 2005) and is linked to the previous chapter outlining som...

Social motivation has been shown to influence various cognitive processes. In the present paper, it is verified that people are motivated to view out-groups as possessing a lesser degree of humanity than the in-group (Leyens et al., 2000) and that this motivation influences logical processing in the Wason selection task. So far, studies on infra-hu...

Since the first pioneering studies of impression formation, it has been generally accepted that competence and sociability are core dimensions in the perception of others, for two reasons. First, because they structure the stereotype content of all group. Second, because they reflect status differences and so help in classifying others as collabora...

The authors examined the hypothesis that people forecast a longer duration of uniquely human secondary emotions for their in-group than for an out-group. The authors conducted a field experiment in the setting of the European soccer championship. They asked Belgian participants to forecast the intensity with which their in-group Belgian fans or the...

People attribute more secondary emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups. This effect is interpreted in terms of infrahumanization theory. Familiarity also could explain this differential attribution because secondary emotions are thought to be less visible and intense than primary ones. This alternative explanation to infrahumanization was test...

People attribute more secondary emotions to their ingroup than to outgroups. This ef fect is interpreted in terms of infrahumanization theory. Familiarity also could explain this differential attribution because secondary emotions are thought to be less visible and intense than primary ones. This alternative explanation to infrahumanization was tes...

The authors examined the hypothesis that people forecast a longer duration of uniquely human secondary emotions for their in-group than for an out-group. The authors conducted a field experiment in the setting of the European soccer championship. They asked Belgian participants to forecast the intensity with which their in-group Bel-gian fans or th...

I n line with the psychological essentialism perspective, Leyens et al. (2000) have hypothesized that people attribute different essences to groups and that they attribute more uniquely human characteristics to their own group than to out-groups. Leyens et al. have focused on two types of emotions, which in Roman languages have specific labels, suc...

La competencia y la sociabilidad son dos dimensiones centrales en la percepción de los otros. Esto es así por dos razones. Primera, porque estructuran el contenido estereotípico de los grupos. Segunda, porque reflejan diferencias de estatus y ayudan a clasificar a los otros como colaboradores o competidores. El objetivo de esta investigación es ver...

The moderating role of group identification on infra-humanization of the out-group is investigated. Participants (N = 74), all Italian students, were asked to describe two national groups, Italians and Germans, by selecting from a list of characteristics those that were typical of each group. In the list, among other words, there were some primary...

Intersecting theories of essentialism and ethnocentrism, Leyens and his colleagues (2000) recently documented people's tendency to infra-humanize (some) outgroups. Specifically, they observed that people were more reluctant to attribute or associate uniquely human emotions to the outgroup than to the ingroup. The present paper aims at investigating...

In previous research, targets' sensitivity to prejudice cues has been assessed on the basis of two types of information. Prototypical information renders the situation representative of discrimination encountered by the ingroup. Diagnostic information is a direct indication that prejudice possibly is operating in a given situation. We hypothesize t...

Research on stereotype threat has repeatedly demonstrated that the intellectual performance of social groups is particularly sensitive to the situational context in which tests are usually administered. In the present experiment, an adaptation of the Raven Advanced Progressive Matrices Test was introduced as a measure of cognitive ability. Results...

The present study examined how the motivation to perceive the ingroup as more human than the outgroup affects the use of situational information to discount attribution of emotions. Participants read an essay describing the writer’s tendency to experience certain emotions. The writer’s group membership, type of expressed emotions and situational de...

Groups are social constructions with differences. People spontaneously attempt to explain differences between groups. Stereotypes often play this explanatory role. Specifically, group members tend to attribute different essences to social categories. Given widespread ethnocentrism, it is not surprising that individuals reserve “the human essence” f...

Emotion scientists often distinguish those emotions that are encountered universally, even among animals ("primary emotions"), from those experienced by human beings ("secondary emotions"). No attempt, however, has ever been made to capture the lay conception about this distinction and to find the criteria on which the distinction is based. The fir...

Four experiments confirmed the hypothesis that people discriminate the out-group on the basis of the expression of uniquely human emotions. In Study 1, using a lost e-mail paradigm, the expression of a uniquely human emotion resulted in "nicer" replies when the sender was an in-group compared with an out-group member. The same pattern of results wa...

In explaining differences between groups, people ascribe the human essence to their ingroup and consider outgroups as less human. This phenomenon, called infra-humanization, occurs outside people's awareness. Because secondary emotions (e.g. love, hope, contempt, resentment) are considered uniquely human emotions, people not only attribute more sec...

Morality and efficiency constitute two dimensions of personality characterized by a positive-negative-asymmetry. While low morality is more diagnostic than high morality, high efficiency is more diagnostic than low efficiency. Morality is also considered more important than efficiency. Building upon this asymmetry and the phenomenon of ethnocentris...

Esta investigación se llevó a cabo con la finalidad de comprobar si pertenecer a un grupo discriminado o al grupo discriminador afecta al tipo de explicación que se da a situaciones de interacción ambiguas. Participaron en el experimento 53 mujeres (grupo discriminado) y 65 hombres (grupo discriminador) que respondieron a un cuestionario que reprod...

Leyens et al. (2000) have developed a theory on the role of secondary emotions as a uniquely human characteristic. An implication of this theory is that the use of secondary emotions, compared to primary emotions, will increase prosocial intentions and behaviours. Given the uniquely human character of secondary emotions, people who express themselv...

Moralidad y eficacia, dos de las principales dimensiones de la personalidad, se caracterizan por una asimetría positivo-negativo. Esto es, mientras la inmoralidad es más diagnóstica que la moralidad, la eficacia es más diagnóstica que la ineficacia. Además, la moralidad se considera una dimensión más importante que la eficacia. Partiendo de la asim...

This study tested the hypothesis that people perceive their ingroup as experiencing more uniquely human secondary emotions than the outgroup. Jacoby's process-dissociation procedure was used to measure participants' controlled recognition memory for materials that associated the ingroup or outgroup with secondary or primary emotions. Conscious memo...

According to Leyens et al.’s (2000) theory, intergroup discrimination involves a differential appraisal of the ingroup’s and the outgroup’s uniquely human characteristics. Four experiments investigated how emotions that are considered uniquely (i.e. secondary emotions) and non uniquely (i.e. primary emotions) human (Demoulin et al., 2001a) are diff...

The purpose of this research is to test if there is a difference between the explanations people give in ambiguous situations depending on which group they belong to, a discriminated or discriminatory group. Thirty-three Canarian participants and 31 Mainlanders filled in a questionnaire which included several behaviors likely to be interpreted in a...