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Abstract
Two studies examined the extent to which individuals' attitudes toward familiar and unfamiliar social groups are differentially related to perceptions of the attitudes held by other people about those groups. In Study 1, participants indicated their own attitudes, as well as their perceptions of the attitudes of relevant ingroup members, toward nine familiar and nine unfamiliar groups. The relationship between participants' perceptions of their own attitudes and the attitudes of others was stronger for groups that were unfamiliar to them than for groups that were familiar to them. In Study 2, we manipulated perceived group familiarity and again found that individuals were more likely to desire and use consensus information about unfamiliar than familiar groups. We also found that individuals were more confident in their intergroup attitudes after receiving consensus information and that attitude confidence mediated the relationship between group familiarity and the effects of consensus on intergroup attitudes. Implications of the research for the stability and change of intergroup attitudes, as well as for the processes of social influence more generally, are discussed.
Notes
1. Standard errors are included in parentheses.
2. The majority of the interactions participants described were positive or neutral. The five participants who described negative interactions with members of the social groups also provided a description of positive interactions.