Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2016; 10: 7 Abstract Belonging to groups and relating to other groups are central parts of our lives, but they confront us with abstract ideas (e.g., identity and power) and nebulous feelings. To make sense of it all, people rely on conceptual metaphors: cognitive tools that ground abstractions in dissimilar, more concrete ideas that are easier to grasp...

■ Abstract In the 1970s, researchers provided the first detailed descriptions of intergroup conflict in chimpanzees. These observations stimulated numerous comparisons between chimpanzee violence and human warfare. Such comparisons have attracted three main objections: (a) The data supporting such comparisons are too few, (b) intergroup aggression is the result of artificial feeding by observer...

Humans are very interesting beings since they relate and depend on each other for survival. Understanding their behaviors calls for an intensive study and critical contemplations on how they relate especially in their diverse social groups settings. Scholars such as Hogg and Abrams (2003) have identified that “social identity processes generate intergroup mannerisms, and intergroup mannerisms m...

OBJECTIVE This article considers how the social psychology of intergroup processes helps to explain the presence and persistence of health disparities between members of socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups. METHOD Social psychological theory and research on intergroup relations, including prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, stigma, prejudice concerns, social identity threat, and...

Lay theory research on intergroup relations has rapidly grown over the past two decades. Drawing on articles in this Special Issue, we showcase the latest developments. First, we define lay theories, addressing the extent of overlap with scientific theories and differences among lay theories in terms of type of representation, level of articulation, frequency of activation and use, range of app...

Polarization between groups is a major topic of contemporary societal debate as well as of research into intergroup relations. Formal modelers of opinion dynamics try to explain how intergroup polarization can arise from simple first principles of interactions within and between groups. Models have been proposed in which intergroup attitudes affect social influence in the form of homophily or x...