The development of subjective group dynamics: When in‐group bias gets specific

Children aged 6–7 years and 10–11 years evaluated an in‐group or out‐group summer school and judged in‐group or out‐group members whose attitudes towards the summer schools were either normative or anti‐normative. According to a subjective group dynamics model of intergroup processes, intergroup differentiation and intragroup differentiation co‐occur to bolster the validity of in‐group norms. The hypothesis that this process develops later than simple in‐group bias was confirmed. All children expressed global in‐group bias, but differential reactions to in‐group and outgroup deviants were stronger among older children. Moreover, the increasing relationship, with age, between in‐group bias and evaluative preferences for in‐group and out‐group members that provide relative support to in‐group norms, is mediated by the degree of perceptual differentiation among group members.