Reactions to disagreement from an in-group member : the impact of out-group member status

Researchers have often focused on how to ensure that individuals within diverse settings share deep-level perspectives across their various surface-level divides. In this paper we focus on understanding how members of the same social group (i.e., in-group members) manage their differences in opinion (i.e. task conflict). In particular we examine how the status of an ostensible third party outgroup member affects the willingness of the in-group members to discuss, and reconcile their differing opinions when that third party agrees with one of the in-group members and disagrees with the other. Our preliminary results suggest that in-group members engage in more discussion with each other when the third party group member is high versus low status. There is suggestive evidence that this reflects more interest in the other party’s perspective rather than their own perspective, and we posit that this may be due to greater perceived threat to the in-group members’ relationship when faced with an opinion from a high status third party. We discuss the implications for decision-making in diverse groups and future directions for exploration