The classical approach to intergroup relations states that belonging to a group can produce bias against outgroups. Recent models in social psychology – namely the Common Ingroup Identity Model (CIIM) and the Ingroup Projection Model (IPM), suggest that drawing people’s attention to a common category that includes subgroups can attenuate or increase intergroup bias, respectively. The current research examines how bias is affected by presenting a common category while changing its degree of relevance for intergroup comparisons. In one experiment (N = 96) we manipulated the relevance of the common category and examined the effects of different degrees of relevance on intergroup evaluations, ingroup projection and the representation of the intergroup situation. The relevance of the common category was operationalized in terms of its structure: the category was considered relevant when the subgroups were nested and irrelevant when they were crosscutting. Results showed that the common category relevance moderated the indirect effect of dual identity on intergroup bias via relative ingroup prototypicality. However, opposite to our predictions this relationship took place in the low relevance condition.

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dual identity,ingroup projection,common identity