Black sheep effect and ingroup favoritism in social identity perspective

Abstract

Black sheep effect (Marques, Yzerbyt, & Leyens, 1988) and ingroup favoritism (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971) appear to contradict each other with respect to the evaluation of inferior ingroup members. In addition to examining the relationship between the two phenomena, this study also examined the effect of ingroup identification on them. Sixty-one female student-nurses participated in the study. To measure black sheep effect, superior and inferior ingroup and outgroup members were rated on 20 adjectives. Distribution matrices (Tajfel et al., 1971) were used to measure ingroup favoritism. The participants were median split according to their level of group identification. Black sheep effect was found only among high-identification participants, who also showed ingroup favoritism. Ingroup identification had a positive correlation with both ingroup favoritism and black sheep effect. Overall, ingroup favoritism had a positive correlation with the evaluation of superior members, while it had a negative correlation with that of inferior ingroup members.