Forming impressions of in-group and out-group members under self-esteem threat: The moderating role of the need for cognitive closure and prejudice

This study aims to investigate whether and how participants’ need for cognitive closure (NCC) and their level of the prejudice moderate the self-esteem threats’ influence on their perception of in-group and out-group members. There is still an open debate concerning the relationship between in-group favoritism and out-group negativity, as well as concerning factors that may increase these two phenomena and their reciprocity. Participants (78 students) completed a questionnaire containing the scales of prejudice and NCC. Subsequently, after they watched a short movie clip showing an interaction between an in-group member behaving negatively and an out-group member behaving positively, participants were exposed to a self-esteem threat (vs. self-enhancement), and, finally, they were requested to evaluate these in-group and out-group members. Results, as hypothesized, show that self-esteem threats increase negative evaluations of the out-group members and decrease negative evaluations of the in-group members only among participants with a high need for closure and a high level of prejudice.