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Helping an Outgroup Member Or the Outgroup: The Identifiability Effect in an Intergroup Context

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Intergroup Helping

Abstract

In today’s world, where communication is fast and far-reaching, we regularly encounter appeals to help people in need in different places, and people belonging to different nations, cultures, religions and ethnicities. The recipient of help in such requests may be an identified individual, a group of people, or an abstract entity. How might these different requests affect our decision to help?

Research on the “identifiable victim effect” suggests that acts of altruism are more likely when a specific identified victim is presented. However, as we show, identifiability is not always in the interest of the recipient of help and may be context- dependent. In this chapter, we review experimental and theoretical work discussing the complex role that identifiability may play in the intergroup context.

We suggest that increase in helping due to identifiability of the victim depends on the social-categorization of the perceiver (potential helper) in relation to the victim, the type of social categories considered, as well as perceptions of the outgroup as a whole. Identifying a specific outgroup victim increases donations in some contexts (e.g. groups that are based on ideology, groups in conflict, or highly cohesive groups), but not for other types (e.g. groups that are based on nationality, groups that are perceived to have a low level of warmth, or randomly-generated groups based on the minimal group paradigm). We discuss possible explanations of these patterns, as well as ways to increase outgroup helping.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Education & Decision Making and Economic Psychology Center, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

    Tehila Kogut

  2. The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Ilana Ritov

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  1. Tehila Kogut
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  2. Ilana Ritov
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Correspondence to Tehila Kogut .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Organisational Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Esther van Leeuwen

  2. Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey, United Kingdom

    Hanna Zagefka

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Kogut, T., Ritov, I. (2017). Helping an Outgroup Member Or the Outgroup: The Identifiability Effect in an Intergroup Context. In: van Leeuwen, E., Zagefka, H. (eds) Intergroup Helping. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53026-0_5

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