Social Judgment of an In-group Member Behaving in a (Non)dissonant Way

We explored participants’ perceptions of a person restoring or maintaining consistency with a clearly indicated in- or out-group status. In our study, participants (French students) had to judge a person freely choosing to behave contrary to or in conformity with initial attitudes. The target changed attitude to reduce dissonance and restore consistency (restoring consistency condition) or kept the attitudinal-behavioral consistency (maintaining consistency condition). The target had either the same nationality as participants (in-group) or a different one (out-group, Eastern European). Perception was then measured through two essential dimensions in social judgment: warmth and competence. We hypothesized that the in-group target restoring consistency would suffer from negative judgments (i.e., black sheep effect), but findings suggest that the inconsistent in-group target was penalized only on the competence dimension. Meanwhile, as hypothesized, participants expressed in-group favouritism toward the in-group target maintaining consistency by ascribing higher warmth and competence compared to all other targets. Results suggest that attitude change as a dissonance reduction mode doesn’t necessarily undermine the global impression, only the perceived competence, while the appreciation of the attitudinal-behavioural consistency of an in-group member encompasses both dimensions.