A test of the ingroup and outgroupfavoritism phenomenon: The effect of the desirability of group names on ingroup and outgroup evaluations Megumi MIZUNO and Susumu Yamaguchi In In K. Leung, U. Kim, S. Yamaguchi, and Y. Kashima (Eds.) (1997). Progress in Asian Social Psychology, Volume1 (pp.217-229). Singapore: Wiley. Key words; ingroup favoritism, outgroup favoritism, group name, social identity theory. Abstract Many studies have shown that mere categorization of people into groups induces ingroup favoritism. The main purpose of the present study was to examine how the desirability of the assigned group name affects participants' impression of ingroup and outgroup members in the minimal group paradigm. It was predicted, based on the social identity theory (Tajfel, 1981, 1982), that participants who were assigned to a group with an undesirable name would dislike their group and they would not show ingroup favoritism. The experiment has a 2 X 3 design ( two group names; three ways in which the participants were assigned to a group). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two group name conditions, either by a lottery choice, according to their direction of bias in object perception, or according to their personality attributes. For group names, one group was called the "Long" group (which has a desirable connotation in Japan) and the other was called the "Short" group (which has an undesirable connotation in Japan). After the assignment to groups, the participants answered questions regarding their impressions of ingroup and outgroup members. As predicted, the Short group members showed outgroup favoritism while members of the Long group showed ingroup favoritism.