Ingroup's status and implicit attributions of humanity

In five studies, the effects of ingroup’s status on the automatic evaluations of humanity was explored. The Go/No-go association task was used. In Studies 1 and 2, the relation between Northern Italians (higher status group) and Southern Italians (lower status group) was examined. In Study 3, it was manipulated the status of the Italian ingroup and the American outgroup: in two conditions, either attributes of Italian superiority or attributes of American superiority were made salient. In Study 4, the status of minimal groups was manipulated. In Study 5, results of previous studies were replied, using different stimuli. In all the studies, the higher status ingroup was more associated with humanity than the lower status outgroup, that was even dehumanized. In contrast, a privileged human status was not accorded to ingroup in the lower status condition. The effects of infrahumanization and dehumanization seem to be moderated by ingroup’s status.