Exemplar-based ingroup projection: The superordinate national category is associated more strongly with ingroup than outgroup political leaders

We studied mental representations of social categories in the context of political groups nested within national identities. Extending previous works derived from the Ingroup Projection Model, which had investigated category representations based on prototypical attributes, we examined category representations based on prototypical exemplars, focusing on group leaders. We hypothesized that the mental representation of the superordinate, national, category is more strongly associated with the mental representation of ingroup political leaders than outgroup political leaders. We tested our hypothesis in three preregistered experiments, looking at two different national-political contexts and using diverse methods. In Studies 1 (N = 145) and 2 (N = 103), both conducted in Israel, we found that participants explicitly associated the national category with leaders of their own political camp more than with leaders of the rival political camp. In Study 2, we further found that participants were more likely to falsely remember that ingroup relative to outgroup political leaders were paired with the national category (versus their political wing). In Study 3 (N = 381), conducted in the USA, we found using an implicit measure of association (ST-IAT) that Democrats and Republicans sorted stimuli, representing political leaders, faster when the national category (represented by American symbols) was paired with the ingroup rather than the outgroup category. Implications for theoretical accounts of ingroup projection, as well as for the understanding of political polarization and intergroup leadership, are discussed.