A Social Identity Approach to Person Memory: Group Membership,Collective Identification,and Social Role Shape Attention and Memory

Evidence indicates that superior memory for own-group versus other-group faces (termed own-group bias) occurs because of social categorization: people are more likely to encode own-group members as individuals. the authors show that aspects of the perceiver's social identity shape social attention and memory over and above mere categorization. in three experiments,participants were assigned to a mixed-race minimal group and showed own-group bias toward this minimal group,regardless of race. own-group bias was mediated by attention toward own-group faces during encoding (experiment 1). furthermore,participants who were highly identified with their minimal group had the largest own-group bias (experiment 2). however,social affordances attenuated own-group bias-memory for other-group faces was heightened among participants who were assigned to a role (i.e.,spy) that required attention toward other-group members (experiment 3). this research suggests that social identity may provide novel insights into person memory. © 2012 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.