Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, United States
People who are loyal (vs. not loyal) to their ingroup perceive negative actions by an outgroup against their group as more harmful. Four studies provided support for this hypothesis. Students loyal to their university’s basketball team perceived greater harm from its rival basketball team than those who were not (Studies 1-2). The effect held controlling for related group constructs, such as group identification (Studies 1-2), and related moral constructs, such as disgust and belief in a just world (Study 1). Rather than differences in memory recall or general negative perceptions of the outgroup, this effect appeared to be due to loyalists exaggerating the perceived harm inflicted (Study 2). Loyalty can backfire, however. Not only are people more willing to lie for their object of loyalty, like a close friend, but they are also more likely to withhold information from the friend because they believe it will hurt the friend (Studies 3a-3b).