Inclusion and identity

Question 1

Who wrote a very famous review article in 1995 that argued that human beings need durable, positive, and emotionally engaging contacts with at least a few other people? What else did they say about this?

Answer 1

Baumeister and Leary

Though many people can enjoy short periods of solitude, long periods of isolation are typically highly aversive.

Question 2

How is loneliness different from being alone? Can casual social contact ease loneliness?

Answer 2

Loneliness is an emotional state and is not the same thing as being alone.
Social loneliness is the emotional reaction to feeling cut off from one’s social network.

Casual social contact is not enough to lift this feeling.

Question 3

When does emotional loneliness occur?

Answer 3

Emotional loneliness occurs when a particular long-term, intimate relationship (e.g. with a lover, close friend, or family member) has been disrupted.

Question 4

What is ostracism?

Answer 4

It is common for groups to deliberately ignore and exclude some of their members, especially if those members have committed some sort of transgression.

Question 5

What are the two ways that ostracism can be done?

Answer 5

This can be done both formally (e.g. excommunication) and informally (e.g. cliques that suddenly ghost one of their members).

Question 6

What is the model that details stages of how a person reacts to being ostracized? Whose model is it? What are the three stages?

Answer 6

a model by Williams (the temporal need-threat model) in which this initial negative affect is followed by a period of appraisal and reflection, which can be used to craft strategies to get back into the group’s good graces.

If these strategies fail and ostracism persists, a long-term resignation stage sets in that includes alienation and depression.

Question 7

What are two reactions to ostracism?

Answer 7

Fight-or-flight response – Outbursts of anger, blaming of others in the group, taking risks, and procrastinating may occur, which are usually unhelpful if the goal is to be accepted by the group.

Tend and befriend response – This is a more useful response in many cases, in which the individual seeks instead to help the group, live up to the group norms, and otherwise prove to the group that they are potentially valuable members.
People who choose this strategy become more sensitive to social cues, more willing to work hard for the group, and more likely to imitate those around them, maybe without awareness.

Question 8

What negative effect can ostracism lead to? What evidence is there for this?

Answer 8

Sometimes ostracism can lead to outright aggression.
This has been demonstrated in laboratory studies, where aggression was measured by the amount of noise excluded people were willing to inflict on the group, but is also linked to school shootings, where the shooter is almost always socially isolated.

Question 9

What does evolutionary psychology consider in relation to groups?

Answer 9

Evolutionary psychology looks at the costs and benefits of group living for our ancestors.
There were costs (e.g. competition with other group members for resources, faster spread of communicable diseases), but the benefits (e.g. protection from predators, group hunting, defense from other groups) were greater.
Given this imbalance of benefits over costs, it is not surprising that our ancestors appear to have evolved a powerful need to be members of groups.

Question 10

What has been postulated by Mark Leary about psychological mechanisms related to groups? What model is this? What evidence supports this?

Answer 10

Given that maintaining one’s inclusion within a group was extremely important to survival and reproduction for our ancestors, it has been postulated by Mark Leary that we have psychological mechanisms that help us monitor our desirability for the group.

This claim is the sociometer model of self-esteem.

Experimental studies show that people who are deliberately excluded by a group experience a drop in self-esteem.

Question 11

The release of oxytocin is associated with feelings of ____________.

Answer 11

belonging

Question 12

Being excluded gives rise to psychological pain, and that psychological pain in turn seems to be associated with activation of which two brain areas also associated with physical pain?

Answer 12

the anterior insula (AI) and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC).

Question 13

People who are sensitive to physical pain tend to also be sensitive to what type of pain? What can help relieve some of this sensitivity?

Answer 13

People who are sensitive to physical pain tend to also be sensitive to the pain of social rejection.

Pain relievers (acetaminophen, a.k.a. Tylenol) seem to make people less sensitive to social pain.

Question 14

What is a dubious claim made by the textbook about collectivists and individualists?

Answer 14

It claims collectivists belong to organizations and social clubs and individualists do not. The articles I have read claim the opposite.

Question 15

What are the most important factors in determining behaviour in a collectivistic culture?

Answer 15

social norms and roles play the primary role in determining behaviour

Internal goals, attitudes and beliefs are seldom important to decision-making

Question 16

How is the interdependent self defined within a collectivistic culture?

Answer 16

The interdependent self is defined by relationships and social roles, not inner traits.

Question 17

Exchange relationships involve exchanges of what? Which cultures tend to have more of these relationships?

Answer 17

favours, goods, services, esteem, etc.

People from individualist cultures tend to have more of these.

Question 18

Is the norm of reciprocity considered individualist or collectivist?

Answer 18

considered a cross-cultural universal

Question 19

What are the two relationship styles?

Answer 19

exchange relationships

communal relationships

Question 20

Communal relationships involve what? What is often considered offensive within these relationships?

Answer 20

Communal relationships involve caring about the group and its members, and concern for reciprocity is often considered offensive.

These are more common in collectivist cultures.
(every culture has these. A marriage or close friendship in which the partners track each other’s contributions is pretty much guaranteed to end soon, even in an individualist culture)

Question 21

What is the ultimatum game? What are the most common results in our culture?

Answer 21

a laboratory game in which one player is given some money (say $10) and asked to give some of it to the other player (who is normally a stranger).
The second player can then either accept or reject the offer. If they reject it, both players get nothing.
People who study economics will say the best strategy for the first player is to give $1. Since the second player has a choice between $1 and nothing, their best move is to accept.
This is not the way it usually goes. In our culture, the most common offer is $5, and grossly unfair offers are frequently rejected.
In small-scale societies, how much people give is correlated with individualism-collectivism.

Question 22

Why is the ultimatum game interesting?

Answer 22

The ultimatum game is interesting because it often casts light on people’s intuitions about fairness.

Question 23

What are the two different norms governing fairness? Which cultures more commonly display each one?

Answer 23

The equality norm states that everyone in the group should receive an equal share of whatever resource is being divided up.
This norm is more commonly used by collectivists.

The equity norm states that people should be rewarded based on what they have contributed: Those who have contributed more should also receive more.
This norm is more commonly used by individualists.

Question 24

The equity norm encourages what in a group? What does the equality norm encourage?

Answer 24

Equity norm is better to encourage hard work ethic

Equality norm is better to encourage group harmony

Question 25

What two types of selves do people have? What type are collectivists are more likely to describe? What type are individualists more likely to describe?

Answer 25

When asked to describe themselves, people will answer with both aspects of their social self and aspects of their individual self.
The social self can include norms, group memberships, broad category memberships, and relationships.

As you might expect, collectivists are more likely to describe their social selves, individualists more likely to describe their individual selves.

Question 26

How did Tajfel and Turner study and develop social identity theory?

Answer 26

They began their work by first creating the minimal intergroup situation:

entailed dividing people into groups (which they never saw) based on totally trivial criteria.
To Tajfel’s surprise, this weak manipulation produced a robust tendency for people to distribute more resources to members of the ingroup than to members of the outgroup.

Question 27

According to Tajifel and Turner, what two processes are thought to give rise to perceptions of group membership?

Answer 27

Social categorization: People are quickly perceived as belonging to certain groups (often based on demographic variables) and stereotypes quickly lead to certain perceptions of those group members.

Identification: For some of the groups to which people belong, people incorporate that group membership into their own identity.
The degree to which the self and the group merge varies on a continuum.

Question 28

Within social identity theory, people’s felt identification with groups tends to vary with what?

Answer 28

circumstances

A thought experiment: Imagine a prominent American celebrity saying something insulting about Canadians. Does your feeling of Canadianness increase?

Question 29

Being a member of a minority group tends to do what?

Answer 29

increase identification with that group

Question 30

What did Tajfel and Turner think played a big role in social identity?

Answer 30

the motivation to protect and enhance self-esteem

One can derive collective self-esteem from one’s groups. This may be especially useful when personal self-esteem is low.

Question 31

One can derive collective self-esteem from one’s groups. In what ways does this drive identification with sports teams?

Answer 31

Basking in reflected glory (BIRGing) may occur when one’s team wins.

Cutting off reflected failure (CORFing) may occur when one’s team loses. - used by casual fans who switch their allegiance when the team loses

Truly dedicated fans are less likely to CORF. They may blame failure on other factors or take pride in other aspects of the team.

Question 32

Social identity theory claims to be an explanation for what?

Answer 32

ingroup-outgroup bias

Question 33

What are the three ways of protecting one’s social identity if it is threatened, especially if one is a member of a minority?

Answer 33

Individual mobility
People attempt to “pass” and move up in the dominant hierarchy.
For example, Barack Obama ran for president and won in a USA that is still predominantly white.

Social creativity
Dimensions, values, comparison groups are modified in comparisons to make them more favourable.
For example, as a Canadian, I notice that Americans look better than us on a lot of variables. But we still routinely kick their butts at hockey, so I’m a proud Canadian!

Social competition
Group attempts to engage in direct competition with the dominant group.
Example: the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the LGBTQIA++ rights movement.

Question 34

What is the stereotype threat? What are some examples?

Answer 34

People who are members of stigmatized minorities may sometimes live up to stereotypes on purpose to protect self-esteem.

Women who are told a test measures mathematical ability and who are assessed by a male tester appear to do worse on the test than if the tester is female or they are told the test has nothing to do with mathematical ability.
African-American men may do worse on a test if they are told it is a measure of intelligence and they are tested by a European-American tester.
Even European-American men will do worse on a physical test if they are told it measures athletic ability.