The effects of linguistic abstraction on evaluations of the speaker in an intergroup context: Using the Linguistic Intergroup Bias makes you a good group member

The purpose of the present research was to show that use of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB; Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, & Semin, 1989) is a normative behavior in intergroup contexts, in that it is a cue used to attribute social value to speakers. We hypothesized that a speaker using descriptions that are congruent with the LIB will be judged as a better group member than a speaker using reverse-LIB descriptions. Our first study indicated that people believe that a speaker should follow the LIB in order to be seen by others as a good group member. Two subsequent studies showed that a speaker who follows the LIB was judged as a better group member than a speaker who does not. Consistently across the three studies, the effects were weaker for descriptions of the speaker's outgroup than for descriptions of the speaker's ingroup. Social approval of applying the LIB throws light onto the normativity of the LIB. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.