ch6: social identity Flashcards
fake test 80% vs 20% experiment
- Ex: participants took a fake test putting them into one of two groups, one was for 80% of college students, the other was for 20% + watched a tape of a person talking about their achievements
o When the videotaped person was a member of the larger group participants felt bad if the performance was great and good if it was terrible regardless of their own group membership
o For a majority group participant, a videotape of minority had no effect on their self-concept
o Minority group participants who saw a minority interviewee reacted in the opposite way – felt good if their fellow group member gave a great performance
self-categorization
the process of seeing oneself as a member of a social group
o Flexible, can readily shift depending on the context
social identity
those aspects of self-concept that derive from an individual’s knowledge and feelings about the group membership they share with
sorority pledges experiment
- Ex: tracker sorority pledges’ perceptions of their groups over an academic year – as they got to know them better, these women saw their groups in increasingly stereotypic terms – they learned the stereotypes
do people still enact their roles
yes, they do enact their roles, acquire role-related skills, develop tendencies to behave in certain ways -> make those behaviours and those self-inferences more likely
reminders of group membership
- Sometimes directly reminded of group membership – slurs, “senior citizen” discount
o Most often, more subtle – just the presence of other in-group members can be a potent reminder – powerful enough to overcome alternative categorizations that might be important in other circumstances
presence of out-group member experiment
Belgian uni students were asked to write descriptions of typical students of Belgian and North African origin
o For some the experimenter was Belgian, for some he was North African
o Those who had a North African experimenter had greater identification with their Belgian in-group
when are people more likely to think of themselves in terms of their membership
in smaller groups than in larger ones + especially when they are solo representatives of their group in a situation
asked grade-school children to talk about themselves
o Boys and girls from households where their gender was in the minority, more likely to mention gender + children whose ethnic groups were a minority at school were more likely to mention their ethnicity
what the most potent reminder of group membership
ongoing conflict or rivalry between groups
discussion on social issue - gender experiment
discussion on a social issue either between a male and female participant who disagreed on the issue or between two men or two women who disagreed along gender lines
o Second condition – participants identified more strongly with their groups, rating themselves as more typical of their sex
humanities vs science majors experiment
- Ex: on campus, exposure to newspaper headline “Humanities, Science Majors at Odds over Core Program”
o Enough to increase the accessibility of student’s identity as scientists or humanists
o People identify more strongly with groups that they learn are targets of discrimination from society at large
collectivist views of group vs individualist
- Collectivist cultures foster and reinforce views of the self in group terms – people tend to see themselves as members of groups or categories
o Individualist cultures – see themselves in comparatively idiosyncratic terms – view group memberships as temporary and changeable, high divorce rates and seem comfortable switching churches or employers
But groups are still important
what does seeing oneself as a group member mean
the group’s typical characteristics become norms or standards for one’s behaviour
o People tend to think and act in group-typical ways
pro-environmental experiment
- Ex: some students listened to a discussion in which one group presented pro-environmental attitudes – some students were about to join the group voicing the positive attitudes and others knew they wouldn’t be joining
o Those who were going to join the group rated themselves higher in environmental awareness – their own opinions moved toward the group’s position
psychology vs physics experiment
Dutch university students were presented with a comparison that was potentially threatening to their group – psychology students asked to compare themselves to physics students on intelligence
o Those who identified only weakly avoided the threat by dissociating themselves from the in-group
o Those who strongly identified with their group tended to show group solidarity by rating themselves as highly typical of their group
hat happens when lab groups include men
women speak more tentatively – makes the women’s identity as female accessible, causing them to act in ways that they regard as typical of women (avoiding asserting speech)
BIRG
bask in reflected glory) – a way of boosting self-esteem by identifying oneself with the accomplishments or good qualities of fellow in-group members
merch study
at 7 universities, students wore more school merch if the football team won than if it lost
general knowledge test experiment
gave students a brief general-knowledge test and temporarily raised or lowered their self-esteem by manipulating the results
o Students asked to describe the outcome of the recent game
o Those who thought they had failed the test were more likely to associate themselves with winning teams (“we”) and to dissociate themselves from losing teams (“they”)
told about students treated unfairly experiment
- Ex: psychology students were told about another psychology student at a different university who had been treated unfairly by authorities
o One condition: subtly reminded of their common identity with the victim -> reported feeling less happy and more angry
what’s an integral part of group membership
- People experience anger, fear, pride, guilt or other emotions to events that affect their groups – identification with the group makes the group part of the self, giving the group emotional significance
group-level emotions as a predictor experiment
- Ex: students reported how much they felt emotions as an individual and as a member of various groups + reported their feelings about other groups and the actions they would like to enact towards them
o More reliably than their individual-level emotions, group-level emotions predicted their feelings and desires for action toward other groups
how does group membership satisfy the needs to be unique and to belong
o Perceiving differences between our group and other groups provides feelings of being unique, but seeing the similarity among members within our group can make us feel connected and similar
o The best balance for most people – membership in relatively small groups – one that’s too small might not be adequate for group pride, but when they’re too large people might feel too anonymous to attain much respect
musical styles questionnaire
UK 18-21 age group had to pick three favourite musical styles + asked how much they expressed their favoured musical styles
o Fans of styles that were most and least popular – fewer behaviours
what do we think about when group membership is accessible
the features we believe we share with the group (causing us to see other in-group members as similar to ourselves)
students assigned to groups based on art preference experiment
o Asked to guess the extent to which other in-group members shared their own personal characteristics and preferences
o Assumed that all members of the group would be very similar in art preferences + their interests, activities, and personality traits to match their own
o Anything that increases the accessibility of group membership further enhances the assumed similarity
if it described them and their gender experiment
- Ex: for each of 90 traits people rated if the trait described them personally and if it described their gender group on 5-point-scales
o Later task, they made yes/no responses for each trait – judging if it described both the self and the in-group
o When participants were certain that a trait characterized the in-group but were uncertain about whether it described themselves personally – used their group knowledge as a basis for their response for the self
o When they were certain that a trait characterized the self, but were uncertain about the group, used self-knowledge to generate their responses for the in-group
evaluate essays group vs not group experiment
asked to evaluate essays or creative solutions to problems – people treat their own group’s work more generously than out-group products
we vs they experiment
- Ex: when people have seen nonsense syllables pared with “we” they had more positive feelings when compared to “they”
o Respond more quickly to positive words when they follow the prime “we” even when the prime words are flashed to quickly to be consciously read
o “we” automatically activates positive associations that facilitate the recognition of other positive words
had to perform a task we vs they experiment
students asked to read a description of the task that they were to perform with other individuals
o One group – “the task is something we all have to do our best on”, other group – “the task is something they have to do their best on”
o Those exposed to the in-group pronouns had more positive expectations of other participants
what does attraction in a group depend on
the knowledge of shared group membership
o People often prefer those who’re typical members of an in-group – representatives of the liked group and not individuals
cartoons depicting positive actions - language experiment
- Ex: cartoon drawings depicting positive actions by in-group and out-group members + asked to describe the actions
o Concrete and specific descriptions of out-group behaviour (he talked to the child) and more abstract and general for in-group (he helped, he cared for the child)
o Concreteness of the out-group descriptions – casts the behaviour as ungeneralizable, one-of-a-kind + more abstract terms emphasize their links to the actor’s positive general characteristics such as helpfulness or caring
when do groups prosper
when their members are willing to subordinate personal interests to the group and to help other members in times of need
o When group membership is uppermost in people’s minds, they often act in altruistic ways (more concern for treating others fairly than for getting the largest share of rewards)
what’s the basis for fair and altruistic behavior
I becoming we - the distinction between self-interest and group-interest vanishes
out-group homogeneity effect
the tendency to see the out-group as relatively more homogeneous and less diverse than the in-group
