Accommodation, social attraction, and intergroup attitudes on social media: the effects of outgroup self-presentation and ingroup accommodation

Abstract

This experiment examines whether exposure to outgroup members' self-presentation on Facebook and ingroup members' accommodative versus nonaccommodative responses influence perceptions of outgroup members' social attractiveness and attitudes toward the target outgroup. U.S. college students (N = 865) saw one of four fictitious Facebook pages with wall posts representing a Chinese international student's self-presentation (positive vs. negative) and the student's U.S. Facebook friends' response (accommodative vs. nonaccommodative). The Chinese international student's U.S. Facebook friends were ingroup members with respect to the U.S. college student participants. Participants who viewed outgroup members with positive (compared to negative) self-presentation and ingroup accommodation (compared to nonaccommodation) perceived the outgroup target as more socially attractive. Perceptions of the outgroup target generalized to both affective and behavioral attitudes toward the Chinese outgroup. However, direct effects in our mediated model yielded some complex effects wherein negative self-presentation and communication partner nonaccommodation yielded more positive attitudinal effects. We discuss these findings in terms of the complex dynamics of intergroup accommodation in the online space.