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Because of connections between individual self-esteem and in-group status, it was expected that in-group focus of attention would motivate individual performance in circumstances where high performance would help establish the superiority of the group. Lacking circumstances indicating the importance of individual performance to group status, in-group salience was expected to lead to a general decrease in motivation to perform by providing an unthreatened boost to self-esteem. One study having an in-group salience manipulation, with implied group comparison as a constant, and one study in which both in-group salience and perceived intergroup comparison were manipulated yielded evidence supporting these propositions.
James et al. (Fri,) studied this question.