Can avatars revise group favouritism?

Evidence suggests that self-relevant information is processed faster than information not relevant to the self. Similar processing advantages are observed with objects and people close to the self (e.g., friends, family) and even social groups that one belongs to. Importantly, existing studies assessed such ingroup effects using artificial stimuli without accounting for potential effects that social presence of group members may have on information processing. Here we address this issue by comparing responses on a perceptual matching task between ingroup and outgroup members when the stimuli presented are artificial (i.e., color splat) as well as realistic human avatars.