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STUDY 1

Method

Participants One hundred sixty-eight participants (102 females and 66 males) from a large Midwestern university participated [...].

Design Each session consisted of a six-person team in which there was a two-person minority subgroup and a four-person majority subgroup. In this study, subgroups were defined by memberships in two political parties: Republican and Democrat. [...] Each session was also randomly assigned to one of three social-orientation conditions, resulting in a 2 (minority, majority) X 3 (interpersonal, task, no-focus control) factorial design.

Procedure

A female experimenter informed six participants that the study was concerned with how groups work together and asked them to wear signs to indicate their group membership. [...] The experiment had three phases: (a) a subgroup task, (b) a team task, and (c) completion of dependent measures. [...] Participants were told that they would first work on a group task with members who shared their political party, and then they would cooperate as a team of six to complete a team task.

Subgroup phase. Each subgroup was taken to a separate room to generate a list of traits that would be helpful for astronauts when dealing with the cognitive stress or emotional stress induced by space travel. [...] Two types of response sheets were supplied to each subgroup. One titled ‘‘Ideal Personality Traits for an Astronaut’’ contained six blank lines and was given to each member. A second, similarly lined sheet was titled ‘‘Group List’’ and was left at the center of the group table. [...] After completing the group task, usually lasting about 10–15 minutes, both groups were reunited in the first room for the team phase. In an attempt to assess how the majority and the minority groups felt before the cooperative interaction, we administered a mood adjective checklist designed to assess their level of comfort, using a 4-point scale. The adjectives of interest included the following: anxious, uneasy, apprehensive, calm, relaxed, and secure. [...]

Team phase. During the team phase, the members were asked to discuss, as a team, the two subgroups’ lists of traits. [...] Participants in the interpersonal condition were told to focus on how they saw themselves in relation to the others on their team. In addition, they were encouraged to talk about themselves. [...] In the task-focus condition, participants were told: [Verbal Stimulus A]. Participants in the control condition were given no further instructions. [...] Participants were further told that their answers on the team task would be judged, and after all experimental sessions had been run, the team with the best answers would win $50.

Completion of response measures. Upon completion of the team phase, participants were told to move apart and away from the team table and were given clipboards on which to answer the dependent measures. [...] For the trait-evaluation measure, participants were asked to rate each team member on a series of traits that included the following: friendly, honest, intelligent, trustworthy, competent, assertive, active, likable, consistent, and persistent [...]. Seven-point Likert-type scales followed each trait question and were anchored at 1 with the word ‘‘somewhat,’’ at 4 with the word ‘‘moderately,’’ and at 7 with the word ‘‘extremely.’’ For the reward-allocation measure, the written instructions asked participants to allot rewards to themselves and every member of their team. For this purpose, they were told to imagine that they had six sets of 100 chips and then to assign between 0 and 100 chips to each team member on the basis of their contribution to the team product [...]. A measure of group salience was used to assess the degree to which each member was thinking about his or her group. [...] Responses to this group salience measure were made on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Additionally, we measured how difficult the participants perceived the task (1 = very difficult, 6 = not at all difficult). [...]

STUDY 2

Method

Participants One hundred eighty-six participants (108 females and 78 males) from a large Midwestern university participated [...].

Procedure During a general mass-testing session undergraduate psychology students filled out a questionnaire in which they indicated their college major as well as the extent to which their major was important to them and their aspirations. Those who indicated that their major was important by circling 3 or higher on a scale from 1 (not at all important) to 5 (very important) were called and asked to participate in the study. [...] The experimental focus manipulation was randomly assigned prior to each experimental session. As in Study 1, there were three phases in the experimental session: subgroup task, team task, and response measures. However, as previously indicated, the objective of the task in this study was to design an ideal city. Before the participants entered the room, the experimenter placed either a green or yellow scarf at each chair. [...] The scarf colors (green or yellow) were randomly assigned to the minority and majority groups prior to each session. [...] The participants were then asked to wear the scarves around their necks, thereby indicating their group membership. During the subgroup phase, the minority and majority groups were asked to generate a list of those characteristics that would be important for an ideal city in Missouri. During the team phase, the groups cooperated to design a model of an ideal city using the characteristics generated during the subgroup phase. [...]

Completion of response measures. The response packets were the same as in Study 2, with the addition of several other measures. Four questions regarding feelings of ingroup identification [...] were included; these items were derived from several measures of ingroup identification. The identification items were scored on a 7-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree). In addition, a measure of group cohesion asked the participants about feelings for their ingroup [...] on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all; 7 = very much). The four-item measure of cohesion with the ingroup was adapted from a cohesion measure [...]. Finally, a four-item measure was included that asked participants to assess their perception of the team. [...] Participants were then asked to indicate on a 7-point scale (1 = not at all; 7 = very much) the extent to which each of the characterizations described the participating individuals [...].