Groups are perceived as unitary mindful entities with intentions

Evidence

Viewed from a different perspective, one should also notice that we often look at groups of people with an expectation that they typically apply to individual actors. We may certainly view an individual through a collective lens and pay attention to his or her categorical membership, but on the other hand, they also look at a group of people in a “personified” way, regarding the group as a unitary or even mindful entity (e.g., “Nation X resented Nation Y’s malicious provocation”; “The youth of today are indifferent to politics”). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 140

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the reader’s ingroup/outgroup mechanism thread: personification of outgroups into a single mindful actor is a step toward blame and dehumanization dynamics relevant to the Morris/Kramer and Allport material. — connects to: Groups perceived as entitative reduce members’ self-concept uncertainty most effectively — Anna X. Huang, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Juliane Degner, Being One or the Other, Both or…, 85
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 140