Rejection of Self or Others? Majority-Minority Status Moderates Responses to Strongly Identified Members of the Outgroup.

The actor-partner interdependence model was used to examine how one's own ethnic identification - and one's interaction partners' ethnic identification - predicted reactions to mixed-group discussions. The 104 participants interacted in groups of four, with half from the ethnic majority (European Americans) and half from an ethnic minority (African-, Asian-, or Latino Americans) in each group. Analyses revealed that ethnic identification had generally positive relationships with one's own outcomes, including greater attraction to one's fellow ingroup member. However, higher ethnic identification resulted in negative outcomes for one's cross-group interaction partners, with different patterns for majority and minority members. When interacting with highly-identified members of the outgroup, minority members responded with lower self-esteem whereas majority members responded with lower group attraction.