Distinctive negative reactions to intermediate social groups

Summary:  View help for Summary In a series of seven studies, we examined how participants interpreted and responded to "intermediate" social groups. Specifically, the studies captured reactions to novel groups designed to manipulate social group intermediacy (Studies 1-5), Black/White biracial people (Study 6), and bisexual people (Study 7). In each study, participants provided separate evaluations of an intermediate group and two comparison groups (e.g., Black/White biracial people, Black people, White people). Intermediate groups were consistently rated as less conceptually legitimate (e.g., less distinctive, not a "real" group) than other groups.

These studies are described together in a single research report (Burke, Perry, Dovidio, & LaFrance). For details about the procedures, please consult that report and its accompanying supplementary document. For convenience, a draft (preprint) of the manuscript (84 pages) and a draft of the supplementary document (22 pages) are included with this deposit as a single PDF file (106 pages total). More recent versions of these documents may be available elsewhere.

All of the experiments were conducted online and all employed convenience samples. Most participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Study 3 (the one that manipulated the population size of the intermediate group) and Study 4 (the one that manipulated how the spots were inherited) used Yale School of Management's eLab service, which permits people to sign up to participate in surveys in exchange for fixed probabilities of earning gift cards.

The dates of the individual studies are listed below. The numbering (e.g., Study 1, Study 2) corresponds to the order of presentation in the research report, which deviates from the order in which the studies were conducted.

Pilot - manipulation of color: February 2014
Pilot - manipulation of spot size: April 2014
Study 1 - novel groups control: July 2014 (manipulated intermediate/control and choice/trait)
Study 2 - novel groups medium spots: May 2014 (manipulated presentation of intermediate group - big & small spots versus medium spots and early versus late in the procedure)
Studies 3 and 4 - novel groups group size and inherit: January 2015 (manipulated group size and how the spots were inherited)
Study 5 - novel groups ingroup: May 2015 (manipulated whether participant was an outside observer or a member of one group)
Study 6 - racial groups: August 2014 (White, Black, biracial, Native American)
Study 7 - sexual orientation groups: October 2014 (heterosexual, gay/lesbian, bisexual, asexual)

These data files contain missing values coded as -99 in addition to the usual missing values that are simply empty. A value of -99 indicates that the participant saw the item but did not respond to it.

I recognize that the documentation of this project could be more detailed. I have many projects that could benefit from additional public documentation. If you are using the data, please reach out to me via email and I can prioritize sharing more information about this one. My most up-to-date email address should always be available at saraemilyburke.com/contact.html.

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms biracial; bisexual; entitativity; group legitimacy; identity stability; intermediate groups; prejudice; race; sexual orientation

Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States of America

Collection Date(s):  View help for Collection Date(s) 2/2014 – 5/2015 (Eight data files from studies conducted between 2014 and 2015 (see data files))