Social identity complexity mitigates outgroup derogation in moral judgment

Abstract

When people learn of a transgressive act, their judgments of moral wrongness and assignments of punishment often reflect intergroup bias; they respond more harshly to outgroup transgressions than ingroup transgressions. Prior work shows that individuals with stronger ingroup identity exhibit greater intergroup bias. In the present work, we investigated how social identity complexity, the relationships between one's ingroup identity and their other social identities, influence this bias. Individuals with tightly overlapping identities, indicative of low identity complexity, tend to display greater outgroup prejudice. Across four studies (N = 2215), we found that individuals with high social identity complexity judge outgroup transgressors less harshly. These effects were driven by more individualized impressions of transgressors, weaker ingroup attachment, and reduced group conflict avoidance, suggesting that social identity complexity mitigates cognitive and motivational bases of intergroup bias.