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This study examines the impact of relative group size on linguistic ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation. Members of minority, majority, and equal-size groups freely described outcome allocations made by either ingroup or outgroup members. The abstraction and valence of the terms used were analyzed. Majority members expressed ingroup favoritism by describing the majority ingroup with positive terms at a higher level of abstraction than negative terms. They also provided more favorable descriptions of ingroup members than minority members did. Minority members expressed ingroup favoritism, but also outgroup derogation, by referring to the majority outgroup with negative terms at a higher level of abstraction than positive terms. These findings highlight the distinct consequences of minority and majority memberships on these two facets of intergroup discrimination.

Previous research has shown the strength of the linguistic intergroup bias across different intergroup settings. However, there is no evidence of linguistic discrimination within minimal groups. This experiment aimed to shed light on the phenomenon of linguistic intergroup discrimination in a minimal group setting, and to investigate the impact of group entitativity on this bias. Four group entitativity conditions were created by altering the mere categorization condition toward less entitativity and toward more entitativity. Participants were asked to describe the choice allegedly made by another participant in allocating resources to ingroup and outgroup members. Results showed an overall linguistic bias, whereby ingroup behaviors were described more positively and abstractly than outgroup behaviors. Increasing group entitativity resulted in increasingly biased outgroup descriptions, which in the most entitative condition revealed a predominant use of negative abstract terms.