East Asian in-group bias operates via personal-network boundaries, not depersonalized categories

Evidence

While relational self is prevalent among East Asians, they do not downplay the in-group as a meaningful social unit. As predicted by social identity theory, East Asians strongly impose boundaries between in-groups and out-groups (Gudykunst, 1988). But instead of depersonalized entities, they perceive their in-groups as complex networks of interrelated individual members (Choi et al., 1993; Hamaguchi, 1977; Ho, 1993; Lebra, 1976; Nakane, 1970). In other words, a distinction is made between those who are and who are not personally related. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1619

Categorization

• XREF: Directly complicates the Allport/minimal-group claim that mere category membership triggers in-group favoritism; suggests relational, not categorical, bases of bias.
• QUESTION: Does out-group hostility scale with distance from one’s personal network, making ‘stranger’ rather than ‘category other’ the operative distinction?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1619