Intergroup biases and social preferences in children and adults

From early on in development, belonging to social groups is a crucial aspect of human life with wide-ranging effects, including on people’s social preferences and prosocial behaviour. What is less well understood, however, is how group processes are affected by the contexts in which they occur. The overarching aim of my doctoral research was to examine important aspects of group membership – intergroup bias, its effects on prosocial behaviour, and leader selection – in context. In the first studies (Chapter 2), I found that ingroup favouritism often trumped concerns for procedural fairness in 6- to 8-year-olds’ sharing preferences, especially for younger children and especially when the social context suggested that their sharing choice would not affect their reputation. In the following studies (Chapter 3 and Chapter 4), I investigated changes in intergroup bias and social preferences over the first year and a half of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. During this time, I collected four separate samples (total N = 800). Results of empirical work from Chapter 3 suggest that intergroup bias in group identification and in prosocial behaviour was strongest early on in the pandemic, when perceived threat from the pandemic was also highest, and then declined. In Chapter 4, I found that, contrasting experimental research and research measuring singular threats, the complex context of threat from the Covid-19 pandemic did not lead to systematic increases in preferences for dominant group leaders. Overall, my research shows that social context can affect intergroup biases and social preferences in important ways, but that findings from experimental research and from research from specific social contexts may not always consistently generalize to real-world or different social contexts.