Self as Group Member (Final) Flashcards
Social Identity Theory
Personal identities: self-aspects that make a person unique.
Social identities: self-aspects based on group membership (the more a person values a group, the more strongly they identify with it).
Cognitive Processes in Social Identity Formation
- Social categorization: People automatically categorize themselves and others into social groups (E.g. race, ethnicity, gender).
- Social identification: Once people categorize themselves as part of a group, they adopt the identity of that group (Self-stereotyping: a person adopts the values and norms of the group. Creates an emotional bond with other in-group members).
- Social comparison: People make comparisons between groups and do so in a way that tends to be favourable to their in-group. (In-group favouritism and outgrip bias).
Minimal Group Paradigm
Participants are randomly and anonymously assigned to one of two groups on the basis of trivial criteria (E.g. coin toss, preference for paintings). In a subsequent resource allocation task, participants tend to allocate more resources to in-group members than out-group members. Suggests that: People readily identify with a social group. Group categorization, even if baed on meaningless criteria, tends to trigger in-group favouritism.
Identity Salience Depends on Context
The extent to which personal vs. social identities are salient depends on the social context: Personal identity is more salient when interacting with in-group members. Social identity / in-group identity is more salient when interacting with out-group members, especially in an inter-group context: Leads people to think and behave in ways that are consistent with the norms of their in-group.
Outgroup Homogeneity Effect
People tend to perceive out-group members as more similar to each other and in-group members as more diverse. Explained by the context shifts in the salience of people’s identities: People tend to behave more similarly to their in-group in intergroup contexts. The other group perceives this similarity in behaviour and concludes that the rival group members re all similar to each other. Intergroup context –> Salient in-group identity –> Behaviour more consistent with in-group norms –> Outgroup perceives in-group members as highly similar.
How Do We Identify with Groups? 1. Evolutionary perspective
In or evolutionary past, humans were in competition for resources it was useful to form groups to increase safety and secure resources (Implies that in-group favouritism is a result of competition between groups for resources).
How Do We Identify with Groups? 2. Self-enhancement
Individuals gain personal self-esteem from associating with a successful/positive group. Leads to: Elevating the in-group over the out-group by focusing on positive qualities and achievements of the in-group. Devalue positive qualities and achievements of an out-group.
How Do We Identify With Groups? 3. Uncertainty Reduction
Individual seek to gain certainty about themselves and the world. Identifying with a group accomplishes this goal by prescribing group norms and offering a framework for how one should be and how to understand others.
Basking in Reflected Glory (Cialdini et al., 1976).
Method: Field study on several American university campuses. Recorded with clothing students were wearing the Monday after a big football match played against a rival university. Asked students’ opinion about their team’s performance.
Basking in Reflected Glory (Cialdini et al., 1976): Results
Students were more likely to wear clothing associated with their university if their university team won the football match. More likely to use first pronouns (“we”) if the team won and more likely to use third person pronouns (“they”) if the team lost. To maintain strong self-esteem, people tend to closely associate themselves with a group when it is successful and establish distance from a group when it fails.
Study 1 Results: Evaluation of Candidate (Fein & Spencer, 1997)
Threat to self led to prejudicial attitude against outgroup member (Jewish candidate).
Study 1 Results: Changes in Self-Esteem (Fein & Spencer, 1997)
Threat to self led to prejudicial attitudes which increased self-esteem. Suggests that prejudice partly stems from a desire to restore self-integrity.
Implications for Status Improvement
Self-enhancement will generally motivate people to maintain/gain status for their group. Higher-status group members are motivated to maintain status quo. Lower-status group members are motivated to improve their status: How they accomplish this depends on the permeability of group boundaries (i.e. to what extent is it possible to change groups).
Impermeability of group boundaries results in strong identification with the group: Social creativity
- Social creativity: Lower-status group members will modify their perception of their in-group’s standing. Adopt dimensions of comparison that emphasize the positivity of the in-group (e.g. placing value on kindness and humour rather than money and power). Downward comparison with a different out-group in order to make the current standing of the in-group appear more positive.
Impermeability of group boundaries results in strong identification with the group: Social competition
Lower-status group members band together and advocate for reducing the status difference between groups.
Impermeability of group boundaries results in strong identification with the group: Individual mobility
Lower-status group members seek to individually transfer into the higher-status group: i.e. individual will focus more on their personal identity and accomplishments and distance themselves from their group membership.
The Self-Concept of Tokens
Token: When a high-status group takes in an individual member from a lower-status group. Being a token leads to heightened awareness of how one is different from the group they’ve been accepted into: consistent with distinctiveness theory. Creates added performance pressure and can have cognitive consequences.
Cognitive Consequences of Being a Token (Lord & Saenz, 1985)
Study: How does being a token influence cognitive processing? Method: Participants led to believe that they were sharing their opinions on everyday topics with three other students via video (actually videotaped confederates). Experimental manipulation:
Token: other students are all of a different gender than the participant.
Non-token: other students are all the same gender as the participant.
Tested memory for this interaction: Received a list of options and had to identify whose opinion belonged to whom.
Cognitive Consequences of Being a Token (Lord & Saenz, 1985): Results
Tokens had poorer memory for the interaction than non-tokens. Remembered fewer of the opinions that they had expressed and fewer of the opinions that others had expressed.
Cognitive Consequences of Being a Token (Lord & Saenz, 1985): Implications
Being a token may shift attention to self-presentation concerns and away from the task at hand leading to disrupted cognitive processing: Impairments to cognitive processing shown in the absence of differential treatment. Implications for organizations: Increasing the number of minority members in an organization should reduce their self-consciousness, decrease pressure, and improve cognitive processing.
Prototypicality
Prototype: in-group’s central characteristics, values, and norms for behaviour.
Prototypical members: people that are most representative of the in-group prototype.
Peripheral members: less typical of the in-group.
Prototypicality and Self-Certainty
Being a peripheral member of an important group leads to experiencing self-uncertainty: Motivates greater conformity to in-group norms in order to become more prototypical and gain greater self-certainty. Peripheral –> Self-uncertainty –> Greater in-group identification –> Behaviours consistent with in-group prototypes.
Prototypicality and Self-Certainty (Hohman et al., 2017)
Study: Does feeling peripheral in a group increase self-uncertainty?
Method: Recruited American participants. Completed a test assessing artistic vs scientific personality. Experimental manipulation:
Peripheral: Participant’s score is closer to the French average than American average.
Prototypical: Participant’s score is closer to the American average than French average.
Measured self-uncertainty.
Prototypicality and Self-Certainty (Hohman et al., 2017): Results
Peripheral participants experienced more self-uncertainty than prototypical participants. This should motivate them to identify more with their in-group and behave in a more prototypical way.
