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The impact of implicitly and explicitly primed ingroup–outgroup categorization on the evaluation of others pain: The case of the Jewish–Arab conflict

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Abstract

Despite the automaticity of affective sharing, many studies have documented the role of top-down effects, such as social categorization, on people’s empathic responses. An important question, largely ignored in previous research, concerns empathy to ingroup and outgroup members’ pain in the contexts of ongoing intergroup conflict. In the present study we examined how implicit and explicit ethnic social categorization of others affects empathy to pain in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. To meet this aim, we assessed the evaluation of pain by Jewish and Arab participants who viewed a series of visual stimuli depicting painful and non-painful familiar situations. The stimuli were associated with explicitly or implicitly primed typical names depicting ingroup, neutral outgroup, and adversary outgroup members. Results demonstrate that pain ratings in the explicit priming condition provide support for the ingroup empathy hypothesis, positing that empathy is higher for ingroup than for outgroup members for both Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Conversely, when the targets’ categories are primed implicitly, results revealed difference in empathy by the two ethnic groups where an ingroup bias was detected only for Palestinian Arabs. This suggests that the activation of ingroup bias on the subliminal implicit level among Palestinian Arab participants might be mediated by the amount of conflict permeating in their daily lives and by deeply rooted cultural values and behavioural patterns.

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Funding

Funding was provided by United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (IL) (Grant No. Proposal 2009251).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Triangle Center for Research & Development, Kfar-Qari, Israel

    Ramzi Suleiman

  2. Accura-c LTD., Haifa, Israel

    Ramzi Suleiman

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Haifa, 31509, Haifa, Israel

    Ramzi Suleiman, Reem Yahya & Simone Shamay-Tsoory

  4. Department of Philosophy, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ramzi Suleiman

  5. Department of Psychology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Jean Decety

  6. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Jean Decety

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  1. Ramzi Suleiman
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  2. Reem Yahya
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  4. Simone Shamay-Tsoory
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Correspondence to Ramzi Suleiman.

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Suleiman, R., Yahya, R., Decety, J. et al. The impact of implicitly and explicitly primed ingroup–outgroup categorization on the evaluation of others pain: The case of the Jewish–Arab conflict. Motiv Emot 42, 438–445 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-018-9677-3

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