n a group can alter one’s perception of other individuals, with this effect extending to both ingroup and outgroup members (Hackel, Looser, & Van Bavel, 2014). This includes having a skewed, positive outlook toward one’s ingroup members while inhibiting the extension of empathy and mind perception toward outgroup members (Hackel et al., 2014). Mind perception is the process of attributing a mind to another entity, and is an important mechanism for determining what is not only capable of agency (i.e., taking autonomous actions), but is also capable of feeling emotions, pain, and suffering and thus being afforded empathy (Gray, Gray, & Wegner, 2007).

Group membership can alter one’s perceptions of others in a number of ways. One such way is that membership in a group promotes a positive bias towards members of one’s ingroup over members of an outgroup (Lazerus, Ingbretsen, Stolier, Freeman, & Cikara, 2016; Tanis & Postmes, 2005; Van Bavel, Swencionis, O’Connor, & Cunningham, 2012b; Ziegler & Burger, 2011). Indeed, ingroup membership has been found to promote greater memory for ingroup faces (Van Bavel et al., 2012b). Furthermore, Tanis and Postmes (2005) found that participants afforded greater trust to anonymous individuals when they were told they were ingroup members. Lazerus and colleagues (2016) showed that individuals have a positivity bias when judging the emotional expression of ingroup members that did not emerge for outgroup members. Ziegler and Burger (2011) noted that ingroup membership can alter the amount of cognitive resources afforded to processing individuating information about an ingroup member versus an outgroup member depending on a target’s success (or failure) and the respondent’s mood.