Group Identification and Prejudice: Theoretical and Empirical Advances and Implications

This article reviews theoretical perspectives explaining the positive relationship between group identification and perceptions of prejudice. In particular, we focus on the prejudice distribution account, which contends that highly identified minorities report more frequent experiences with prejudice than weakly identified minorities, in part, because majority group members do in fact react more negatively toward highly identified minorities than they do toward the weakly identified. We describe evidence revealing that people accurately detect minority identification, even given minimal information. Further, majority group members use these inferences about identification to guide their attitudes and behaviors toward minorities. We discuss the implications of this research for theoretical perspectives on within-category approaches to the study of prejudice. We also discuss practical implications and offer suggestions for addressing this type of prejudice.