Implicit Cross-Community Biases Revisited: Evidence for Ingroup Favoritism in the Absence of Outgroup Derogation in Northern Ireland

Despite their application in virtually every area of psychological science, indirect procedures have rarely been used to study how Catholic and Protestants automatically respond to one another in Northern Ireland. What little evidence that does exist suggests that automatic ingroup favoritism occurs alongside outgroup derogation. That is, Catholics and Protestants automatically evaluate ingroup members more positively than outgroup members, and also evaluate outgroup members more negatively than ingroup members. The current study addresses a methodological limitation in this early work and provides the first (non-relativistic) assessment of intergroup relational responding in a post-conflict setting using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Contrary to earlier findings, participants displayed evidence of ingroup favoritism in the absence of outgroup derogation.