Intergroup Competition, Attitudinal Projection, and Opinion Certainty: Capitalizing on Conflict

Competitive or cooperative relations were imposed between the two experimentally created art discussion groups in each session. Group members indicated their own attitudes and estimated the positions held either by other in-group members or by out-group members in order to assess the effects of target of projection on attitude certainty. As expected, participants assumed greater attitudinal disagreement with competitive compared to cooperative out-groups on the 10 art appreciation issues relevant to their group task. They also assumed more similarity to in-group than to out-group members. Assumed similarity/dissimilarity mediated the effect of projection target on mean increments in attitude certainty, which were greatest in the competitive out-group target condition regardless of issue importance.