The Subjective Group Dynamics of Inter- and Intragroup Criminality in the News

Abstract

Participants read a crime news story featuring two perpetrators. Building on subjective group dynamics, we predicted that a perpetrator would be evaluated differently depending on the partner’s ethnicity and participants’ prior media use. Results show that heavy news consumers were more likely to (a) give a harsher sentence to a white perpetrator acting with a white (vs. Latino) partner, and (b) develop more negative attitudes toward Latinos when members of that group were portrayed in intergroup criminal partnerships. The implications of intergroup portrayals for perceptions of the ingroup, as well as the outgroup, and the moderating effects of news viewing on such effects, are discussed.