When I's Meet: Sharing Subjective Experience With Someone From the Outgroup

Believing one shares a subjective experience with another (i.e.,i-sharing) fosters connections among strangers and alters perceptions of the ingroup and outgroup. in this article,the authors ask whether i-sharing also fosters liking for members of a salient outgroup. study 1 establishes that i-sharing promotes liking for the other sex,even among people with salient social identities. study 2 shows that i-sharing promotes liking for a member of the sexual orientation outgroup,whether it occurs before or after group memberships get revealed. study 3 focuses on salient race categories and looks at the effects of i-sharing versus value-sharing as a function of shared group membership. for those high in existential isolation,i-sharing trumps value-sharing,regardless of the i-sharer's social identity. i-sharing may offer a way of improving attitudes toward outgroup members that still enables people to embrace their differing social identities. © 2012 society for personality and social psychology,inc.