The spiral of conflict : naive realism and the black sheep effect in attributions of knowledge and ignorance

Abstract

Naive realism research has demonstrated the fact that individuals deprecate alternative perspectives to preserve their own. With reference to an outgroup, this bias may be compounded by ethnocentrism. We present an operationalized measure of naive realism in terms of attributions of knowledge and ignorance. We hypothesized that respondents would make higher attributions of knowledge to those who agree with them than those who disagree with them (naive realism). We further hypothesized that respondents would attribute more knowledge to their ingroup than to an outgroup (ethnocentrism). Findings confirmed our hypotheses except for a black sheep effect marking higher attributions of knowledge to the outgroup with whom respondents disagreed relative to the ingroup. These findings demonstrate that social cognition is biased toward being more divisive and exclusive than open and inclusive. We suggest that overcoming the epistemic challenge may thus need to be the first step in conflict resolution attempts that successfully avoid the spiral of conflict.