Inter and intragroup emotion and social identification : a real world study

Emotion research has recently begun to focus on the relationship between social identities and group based emotion. The current paper reports on a large scale study of intra and intergroup emotions and their relationship to social identities in Northern Ireland. 1,179 respondents reported their explicit intragroup emotion, selfcategorised religion and strength of religious identity as well as four emotional responses to four visual primes related to them in their own homes. The valence of the prime and strength of identification were manipulate and measured respectively. Intragroup primes were found to be more strongly and significantly related to both identification and type of emotion expressed than intergroup primes. The results of the study are interpreted in terms of our understanding of appraisal and intergroup emotions theory and the practical implications for intergroup relations considered.