Abstract
This research sought to examine the link between intergroup discrimination and self-esteem in a manner consistent with the theoretical assumptions of social identity theory (SIT). Two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 revealed that minimal group members (a) experienced an increase in that domain of self-esteem judged to be relatively more important to the ingroup (i.e., verbal self-esteem), following the display of ingroup favoritism and (b) that minimal group members with low public CSE (and who thus believed that the ingroup was negatively evaluated by the outgroup) showed enhanced levels of ingroup bias. Experiment 2, which utilized the members of real social categories (i.e., New Zealanders and Australians) and negative outcome allocations (i.e., white noise) revealed identical findings. Thus, in this experiment social category members experienced an increase in that domain of self-esteem judged to be relatively more important to the ingroup (i.e., physical self-esteem), after giving more white noise (i.e., negative allocations) to the outgroup and (b) that social category members with low public CSE (and who thus believed that New Zealand ingroup was negatively evaluated by the Australian outgroup) showed enhanced levels of negative intergroup discrimination. Taken together these findings indicate that self-esteem can help explain the manifestation of relatively positive forms of intergroup discrimination (i.e., with respect to group serving allocations and evaluations) in the MGP and more negative forms of intergroup discrimination (i.e., negative allocations) amongst realistic groups.