Blake M. Riek, Eric W. Mania, and Samuel L. Gaertner — Intergroup Threat and Outgroup Attitudes: A Meta-Analytic Review

63 published claims from this book.

• A shared superordinate identity can backfire by fueling subgroup in-group projection.
• Anxiety–prejudice links vanish when measured as intergroup bias difference scores.
• Broad multi-facet threat scales capture stronger threat-attitude correlations than single-facet ones
• Changing how people categorize others can reduce intergroup threat.
• Cross-group friendship and empathy reduce the threat behind intergroup bias.
• Different intergroup threats evoke different emotions, not a single unified response.
• Different intergroup threats trigger distinct emotions and behavioral responses.
• Different threat types may yield different behavioral responses beyond attitudes.
• Different threat types trigger distinct emotions that shape reactions
• Distinctiveness threat may precede and amplify symbolic and realistic threats
• Distinctiveness threat shifts behavior more than judgment, though its effect size is tiny.
• Distinctiveness threats shift outgroup behavior but barely affect outgroup judgments.
• Each intergroup threat type predicts its own distinct emotional and behavioral response.
• Equal-status group threat effects remain unexplored
• Experimentally manipulated realistic threat shows far weaker attitude effects than measured threat
• Four threat types explain 36 percent of variance in outgroup attitudes
• Group esteem threat can spill attitudes onto unrelated outgroups
• Group esteem threat effects may reflect publication bias
• Group esteem threat research omits stereotype and identification measures
• Group esteem threats may combine multiplicatively with realistic threats.
• Group identification and perceived deprivation plausibly cause each other in a loop
• Group status moderates threat-attitude relationships
• Group threats act through intergroup emotions to reach outgroup attitudes.
• Group threats divide into resource-based and integrity-based categories
• Group-based identity forces precede realistic and symbolic threat perception
• Group-level threats trigger bias even absent direct threat to the self.
• Groups are judged more threatening than the individuals composing them
• Groups are perceived as more threatening than individuals, so dissolving category boundaries lowers threat.
• Groups elicit more fear and appear more threatening than individuals.
• Groups very similar to the ingroup provoke more intergroup bias than dissimilar ones do.
• High-power members lean on stereotypes through not attending to individuating details of subordinates
• Ingroup identification causally precedes intergroup threat
• Ingroup identification strength moderates whether group-level or individual-level threats drive attitudes.
• Integrating multiple threat types yields stronger models than testing each type separately.
• Intergroup contact asymmetries moderate how much anxiety shapes outgroup attitudes by status
• Intergroup threat and negative outgroup attitudes relate bidirectionally, not one-way.
• Intergroup threat arises when one group’s actions challenge another group’s goal attainment or well-being.
• Low-status group members habituate to cross-group anxiety more than high-status members do
• Meta-analysis across studies quantifies how distinct intergroup threat types relate to outgroup attitudes.
• Meta-analytic reviews must exclude regression-only studies because effect sizes require zero-order correlations
• Mixed-effects meta-analytic models trade precision for fewer false positives
• Modern antiblack bias stems from perceived value violations, not biological inferiority claims
• Negative outgroup contact raises anxiety, which breeds hostility and contact avoidance.
• Negative stereotypes both accompany intergroup threats and independently predict outgroup attitudes
• No quantitative synthesis of the intergroup-threat literature existed before this meta-analysis.
• Perceived cultural-value threats often outweigh economic ones in anti-immigrant bias.
• Perspective taking can weaken fear-based realistic threat via induced empathy.
• Poor economic conditions amplify bias toward large minority groups.
• Positive stereotypes may also induce perceived threat
• Recategorization can backfire by making subgroups vie to embody the shared identity.
• Recategorization into a common identity can backfire and increase subgroup bias via distinctiveness loss.
• Recategorizing outgroup members as ingroup members diminishes perceived threat.
• Similarity of an outgroup raises bias only among highly identified ingroup members.
• Stereotypes and identification precede threats, whose attitude effects run through emotions.
• Studies with reliable anxiety measures find weaker threat-attitude links than poorer measures
• Superordinate identities reduce bias and can mitigate perceived threat between groups.
• Symbolic threat outperformed realistic threat in predicting mayoral vote choice
• The developmental origin of intergroup threat perception remains unstudied.
• Threat dynamics among status-equal groups remain unexamined.
• Threat effects on attitudes are stronger for low-status than high-status outgroups
• Threat from similar outgroups drives more bias than threat from dissimilar ones.
• Threats can increase ingroup identification, not merely follow from it
• Usurpation of one’s own resources is more aversive than lacking resources initially