Gender effect and prejudice: when a salient female norm moderates male negative attitudes toward homosexuals.

Men generally express more negative attitudes than women toward homosexuals. This study aims to determine if social norms saliency can rely on this "gender effect" and influence attitudes toward homosexuals. Gender characteristics (attitudes and lexical markers) concerning homosexuality were identified in Study 1 and used to construct male- (i.e., promoting a prejudice-related norm) and female-marked (i.e., promoting an anti-prejudice-related norm) messages. Social norms saliency was primed using these messages (Studies 2 and 3) and the participant's immediate context (Study 3). Results show that promoting a prejudiced norm eases expression of males' negative attitudes toward homosexuals, whereas the promotion of an anti-prejudice norm inhibits their attitudes. Theoretical elaborations and potential applications for promotion of tolerance are discussed.

How the linguistic intergroup bias affects group perception: effects of language abstraction on generalization to the group.

The present research investigated whether the impact of the Linguistic Intergroup Bias (LIB; Maass, 1999) is related to the effects of linguistic abstraction on social attribution (Yzerbyt & Rogier, 2001). We did this by assessing the impact of abstract descriptions versus concrete descriptions on the generalization of a group member's behaviors to the whole group. A target's behaviors were more attributed to the group when the description was abstract than when it was concrete, and this effect of language abstraction was stronger when the description was positive than when it was negative. Our results provide an insight into how the LIB is involved in the perpetuation of intergroup bias.