On the effect of a common enemy on decategorization in person perception

• Applicant: Dr. Felicitas Flade
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468331630

People unite against a common enemy. This is not only a frequent rhetoric in political speeches and campaigns ("Islamist terror is our common enemy," Angela Merkel, Nov. 3, 2020, in response to the attack in Vienna). Social psychological research has also repeatedly addressed the phenomenon that a "common enemy" can create social cohesion. A common threat not only affects how groups evaluate and treat each other, but also reduces perceptions of clearly delineated categories at the basic cognitive level of social categorization (Flade et al., 2019). The overarching goal of this project is to explore which thought processes underlie this decategorization effect by a common enemy.Based on existing social psychological theories, three possible mediating processes of the decategorization effect under common threat were delineated. Each resulting process theory describes a hypothetical cognitive pathway that could explain the decategorization effect. Redefinition theory proposes that a common threat within each category makes attributes salient that are more similar across categories than the previously salient category attributes. Reevaluation theory proposes that a common threat introduces negative relationships to both categories, which should lead to a more positive relationship between these categories via Heider's balance-theoretic processes. Rescaling theory proposes that a common threat is so different from both categories that, relative to this dissimilarity, the perceived similarity between the two original categories increases.The three candidate processes will be empirically tested by the project and compared with each other in terms of their contribution to the decategorization effect. The first line of studies will use reverse correlation image classification, explicit ratings, and content coding of open responses to answer the question of whether a shared threat leads to greater content similarity between groups. In the second line of studies, valence and similarity ratings in triadic relational settings will be used to clarify whether a shared threat improves the perceived relationship between categories and increases their similarity via balance-theoretic processes. The third line of studies will use ratings on scales and the spatial arrangement method to test whether a common threat increases the relative similarity between target categories by increasing the reference frame. In the last line of studies, the effect of the three proposed processes on (de)categorization will be investigated, and the respective contributions of the effects will be empirically investigated.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants