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STUDY 1

Study 1 tested whether left-wingers and moderate individuals would reduce their prejudice towards Romanians when they are presented with a counterstereotypic rather than a stereotypic categorization of this outgroup. [...]

Participants and Design A total of 61 Italian university students (M_age = 20.32, SD = 0.91; 51.7% women) voluntarily participated in this experiment. They were randomly assigned to one of the two categorization conditions (counterstereotypic, stereotypic) in a between-participants design.

Procedure and Materials Participants were asked to think for one minute about a Romanian target person. In the experimental condition, the target was a Romanian manager (counterstereotypic category combination), whereas in control condition the target was a Romanian car-window cleaner (stereotypic category combination). No other information about the target person was provided. Then they were asked to complete dependent measures, before being thanked and debriefed.

Dependent Measures

Prejudice. Participants indicated how they felt towards Romanians using bipolar adjective pairs separated by a 7-point scale: “warm-cold” (R), “negative-positive,” and “friendly-hostile” (R). [...]

Political orientation. Participants indicated their overall political orientation choosing among 1 (left-wing), 2 (moderate), and 3 (right-wing). [...] Next, they reported demographic characteristics.

Contact. [...] five items assessed the extent to which participants had contact with Romanians. Quantity of contact was measured by asking respondents to indicate on 5-point Likert-type scales as follows: (1) how many Romanians they know [...]; (2) how often they had contact with Romanians [...]. Quality of contact was measured by asking respondents to what extent they found the contact with Romanians to be (1) pleasant; (2) cooperative; and (3) superficial on scales ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). [...]

STUDY 2

Study 2 tested whether the effect of multiple categorization on prejudice reduction towards immigrants is moderated by the perceiver’s political orientation. [...]

Participants and Design A total of 195 Italian university students (M_age = 21.65, SD = 2.67; 58.5% women) voluntarily participated in this experiment. They were randomly assigned to one of the three categorization conditions (simple, multiple ingroup, multiple outgroup) in a between-participants design.

Procedure and Materials

Preliminary studies. To identify meaningful social-category affiliations for our participant population to serve as stimuli, we conducted two preliminary studies. First, 20 Italian university students (M_age = 20.59, SD = 0.74; 55% females) listed as many important social groups that they belong to as they could. Then we presented the six most frequently cited groups (Italians, young people, university students, people having no children, living in the same town, and people of the same gender) to 150 Italian university students (M_age = 20.87, SD = 3.95; 51% women), who rated how much they identified with each group from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). [...] Participants were then asked to think about the target group of immigrants for one minute. Categorization type was experimentally manipulated as follow. In the single categorization, the target was presented as “immigrant,” and this was the only information participants received. In the multiple ingroup categorization condition, the immigrants were said to be young, a student, living in the same town, having no children, and being of the same gender as the participant. In the multiple outgroup categorization condition, the immigrants were said to be middle-aged individuals, workers, living in the countryside, having children, and of the opposite gender as the participant. Participants subsequently completed the dependent measures.

Dependent Measures

Individuation. Individuation was measured through the following items: “How much do you view the immigrants described above as ...” (1 = group members, 7 = individuals); “To what extent do you think the immigrants described above are typical immigrants” (1 = not at all, 7 = very much); “How similar are the immigrants described above to other members of the same group?” (1 = not at all similar, 7 = very similar. [...]

Perceived threat.

[...] participants rated on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all, 7 = very much) the extent to which they felt (1) worried, (2) afraid, (3) threatened by immigrants and the extent to which they thought, (4) the status, (5) economic resources, and (6) achievements gained by immigrants were likely to reduce Italians’ opportunities [...].

Prejudice. As in Study 1, participants indicated how they felt towards immigrants using bipolar adjective pairs separated by a 7-point scale: “warm-cold” (R), “negative-positive,” “friendly-hostile” (R). [...]

Political orientation. Participants indicated their overall political orientation choosing between “left-wing” (1), “center-left” (2), “moderate” (3), “center-right” (4) and “right-wing” (5). [...] Next, they reported demographics and wrote down the nationality of the immigrants they thought about.