How do they see us? The vicissitudes of meta-perception in intergroup relations

Yzerbyt, Vincent [UCL] Muller, Dominique [Université de Grenoble] Judd, Charles [University of Colorado]

Belgium is famous for its exquisite chocolate, its exceptional beers, its unique tradition of cartoonists, and other marvels, of which one may be a most complex political system in the world. For ages, the two main ethnic and cultural groups in the country, the Dutch-speaking on the one hand (roughly 60% of the Belgian population) and the French-speaking on the other, have been engaged in heated negotiations over how one should organize the country. [...] On December 13, 2006, the French-speaking public TV channel interrupted its normal program with breaking news: After decades of slow deterioration in the relations between the two groups, the Dutch-speaking parliament had unilaterally decided to declare its independence! For the rest of the evening, journalists and politicians produced (prerecorded) comments on the causes, meaning, and consequences of this secession. It was only half an hour after the start of this show, à la Orson Welles, and after witnessing the level of indignation if not panic that the program triggered among viewers, that the screen revealed a banner warning that this was a ! ction. In the following days and weeks, the country was in a state of shock. The Dutch-speaking Belgians were appalled by the way they were depicted in this program. As for the French-speaking Belgians, they were surprised to see how they had perhaps radicalized their views about their Northern compatriots and generalized the opinions of what continued to be a minority. This recent real-life episode offers a nice albeit dramatic illustration of the way possible misunderstandings may intrude in the relations between two groups. Such misunderstandings are the topic at the heart of this chapter.