Polarised Not to Help? – Willingness to Provide Intergroup Help and Its Different Types Based on Political Group Membership

dc.abstract.en	Individuals are often motivated to positively distinguish their ingroup through ingroup favouritism or outgroup hostility. Intergroup helping constitutes an integral part of everyday lives. It can create conditions for more subtle expressions of intergroup bias, yet it remains underexplored in psychological literature. Given the increase in political affective polarisation in the recent years, the current study explores its dynamics at the behavioural level of attitudes, focusing on intergroup helping. The study investigates the intentions of overall help and type-specific assistance: dependency- or autonomy-oriented, to individuals of various political group membership, based on political orientation. It also explores a possible role of perceived outgroup threat and secure and narcissistic ingroup identification in explaining differences in intergroup helping. The study was conducted online, in an experimental design (N = 665). Political orientation of the participants was measured. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three conditions, in which a vignette describing a person requesting help was presented. The group membership of the target was manipulated to represent either the political left, right or an unknown political group membership. All participants rated their general willingness to help and either dependency- or autonomy-oriented helping intentions, depending on the condition assigned following the manipulation stimuli. Intentions of help were analysed through willingness to help people with the same (ingroup), different (outgroup) or unknown political group membership (control). Respondents displayed lower willingness to help the outgroup member, versus the ingroup member and the unidentified target, only regarding their general willingness to help, but not their intentions of the type-specific assistance. The moderating effect of perceived outgroup threat was observed for the general willingness to help individuals differing in political group memberships, but not for intentions of providing them with type-specific help. Neither secure nor narcissistic ingroup identification moderated either effect. Such obtained results suggest that people might be prone to display intergroup bias towards their political opponents also through its more subtle expressions, such as lower willingness to help them. Because of the increasing hostility between the political opposition, people might be driven by outgroup negativity rather than ingroup favouritism in distinguishing own political ingroup by differential helping. However, political group membership might not influence the bias operating through strategic, yet subtle, differentiation of help in terms of its quality. While perceived outgroup threat may partially allow for a better understanding of bias in intergroup helping, the role of ingroup identification and its specific types remains unclear.
dc.affiliation	Uniwersytet Warszawski
dc.affiliation.department	Wydział Psychologii
dc.contributor.author	Marzec, Aleksandra
dc.contributor.promoter	Górska, Paulina
dc.contributor.reviewer	Toruńczyk-Ruiz, Sabina
dc.contributor.reviewer	Górska, Paulina
dc.date.defence	2025-12-11
dc.date.issued	2025
dc.date.submitted	2025-12-02
dc.identifier.apd	246874
dc.language	en
dc.language.other	pl
dc.publisher	Uniwersytet Warszawski
dc.rights	ClosedAccess
dc.subject.en	subtle bias
dc.subject.en	intergroup helping
dc.subject.en	political group membership
dc.subject.en	dependency-oriented help
dc.subject.en	autonomy-oriented help
dc.subject.en	perceived outgroup threat
dc.subject.en	secure ingroup identification
dc.subject.en	narcissistic ingroup identification
dc.title	Polarised Not to Help? – Willingness to Provide Intergroup Help and Its Different Types Based on Political Group Membership
dc.title.alternative	Zbyt spolaryzowani, aby pomóc? – Gotowość do udzielenia pomocy międzygrupowej oraz jej różnych form w zależności od przynależności do grupy politycznej
dc.type	MasterThesis