Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Majority Group Members' Negative Reactions To Future Demographic Shifts Depend On The Perceived Legitimacy Of Their Status: Findings From The United States And Portugal, H. Robert Outten, Timothy Lee, Rui Costa-Lopes, Michael T. Schmitt, Jorge Vala

Faculty Scholarship

© 2018 Outten, Lee, Costa-Lopes, Schmitt and Vala. Using concepts from social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), we examined whether racial/ethnic majority group members' reactions to future demographic shifts is a function of the degree to which they perceive their ingroup's higher-status in society to be legitimate. In two studies, participants who varied in the degree to which they perceived their group's status to be legitimate were either exposed to real projections for 2060 (i.e., large decline in proportion of population that is the "majority" group), or fake projections for 2060-that resembled current figures (i.e., small decline). In Study …