Social psychological research on prejudice as collective action supporting emergent ingroup members

Abstract

Why does social psychological research on prejudice change across time? We argue that scientific change is not simply a result of empirical evidence, technological developments, or social controversies, but rather emerges out of social change‐driven shifts in how researchers categorize themselves and others within their larger societies. As mainstream researchers increasingly recategorize former outgroup members as part of a novel ingroup, prejudice research shifts in support of emergent ingroup members against their emergent outgroup opponents. Although social change‐driven science results in valuable opportunities for researchers, it also results in significant risks for research – collective, scientific biases in the inclusion and exclusion of social groups in prejudice research that are not readily detected or managed by traditional controls. We present the Emergent Ingroup Model (EIM) to encourage reflection on shared biases, as well as to spark a broader conversation on how to strengthen our field for a rapidly changing and increasingly global world.