The Linguistic Intergroup Bias in Response to Crime News.

Social psychologists argue that language can subtly reflect the structure of our thinking, especially in situations involving groups. This paper examines the linguistic intergroup bias (LIB) in the context of people's interpretations of a race-related television news story. The LIB suggests that people use more abstract language to describe members of outgroups performing negative behaviors compared to those same behaviors performed by ingroup members. This study manipulates the race of a suspect in a TV news crime story and examines how the race influences the abstractness of the language endorsed by White viewers to describe the suspect. The findings offer limited support for the LIB being induced by crime news, thus suggesting that stereotypical news coverage can indeed subtly influence the interpretations people make about members of other social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]