Perceiving the World Through Hierarchy Shaped Glasses: On the Need to Embed Social Identity Effects on Perception Within the Broader Context of Intergroup Hierarchy
Our tendency to attach to, identify with, and favor social groups is one of the defining features of the human experience. As Y. Jenny Xiao, G eraldine Coppin, and Jay J. Van Bavel (this issue) note, humans flexibly identify with a broad range of social groups (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, Wetherell, 1987) that fulfill our need for belonging, provide us with a sense of distinctiveness, and model a set of cultural norms that fundamentally guide our behavior. As much research has highlighted, our groups can even shape critical intergroup behaviors such as decisions about whom we consider worthy of our help (Everett, Faber, Crockett, 2015; Saucier, Miller, Doucet, 2005) and whom we deem legitimate targets of our wrath (Brewer, 2007; De Dreu, 2010) In their perceptual model of intergroup relations, Xiao et al. (this issue) propose that the effects of our membership in social groups extend further still to influence our very perception of the world around us. The authors make two central claims: First, integrating research on the fundamental effects of social identification on human behavior (e.g. Sherif Sherif, 1953; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, Flament, 1971; Turner et al. 1987) with research on top down influences on perception (Clark, 2013; Egner Hirsch, 2005; Gilbert Li, 2013; Summerfield Egner, 2009) they propose that social identity "can alter perception across modalities (vision, audition, olfaction, tactile, and gustatory perception" (i.e. Path C in their model) Second, the authors propose that these changes in perception mediate the effects of social identification on intergroup relations (i.e. Path D in their model) Indeed, they argue, "intergroup relations are grounded in perception" (p. 319) This is an idea with significant implications: From this perspective, the very act of identifying with a group can, by shaping perceptual processes like attention to and memory for ingroup versus outgroup faces, influence behaviors such as the desire to interact with targets (e.g. Kawakami et al. 2014) that set the stage for intergroup tension. Xiao et al.'s (this issue) model is ambitious, putting forward a provocative thesis and, in the process, theoretically integrating disparate research that highlights the ways in which our group memberships can influence our perceptual processes. We agree with the authors' central premise that group memberships can shape our perception, and we see their integration of research spanning a range of perceptual modalities as an important advance. We also think that several of the studies they present in support of their model particularly those that rely on minimal groups provide compelling evidence that categorization into, and social identification with, an ingroup can causally impact processes of perception (broadly defined) For example, in one study the authors cite (Ratner, Dotsch, Wigboldus, van Knippenberg, Amodio, 2014) participants were randomly assigned to groups on the basis of a classic dot estimation task. The researchers subsequently used the reverse correlation technique (Dotsch Todorov, 2012) to examine how participants tended to represent the faces of ingroup, compared with outgroup, members. Results revealed that, despite the fact that group membership was determined on a highly arbitrary basis, ingroup faces generated by participants were on average more likely to have facial characteristics communicating trustworthiness than the outgroup faces. In another study using minimal groups, simply believing that a face belonged to an ingroup (vs. outgroup) member increased individuals' ability to recognize it, providing strong evidence that ingroup membership, even based on arbitrary distinctions, can exert important outcomes (Bernstein, Young, Hugenberg, 2007; Van Bavel, Swencionis, O'Connor, Cunningham, 2012) Further, several of the studies involving realworld groups that are included in the review are similarly compelling in isolating the causal effects of social group membership on perception. In one study the authors cite, for instance, Swiss people primed with their Swiss identity experienced the smell of chocolate (a food item strongly tied to the national Swiss identity) as more intense than Swiss people who were primed with their individual identity or not primed (Coppin et al. 2016) Despite its contributions, however, in our view, the perceptual model of intergroup relations does not sufficiently take into account the extent to which processes rooted in existing intergroup relations may be responsible for many of the intergroup effects they describe. Specifically, we highlight the role of the historical and social context within which most of our group identities are embedded. Although research with