Lecture 2: Core Micro-Level (Intrapersonal) Processes

Question 1

What is “wrong” with most popular discussions of intergroup relations?

Answer 1

Intergroup relations are not always negative and extreme
- negative relations are just one part of the story
- positive and generous cross-group helping
- much of intergroup relations involve mundane daily interactions
- we interact with people on the basis of some category they belong to
getting on the bus, you’re interacting with the bus riders & drier, but you may or may not know the individual whos the bus driver.
Work: boss & management, coworkers & manager - you know how to behave in those interactions.
- intergroup relations are not only broad societal categories like ethnicity, gender, nationality, etc.
- popular discussions often overemphasize the stability of intergroup relations.
- same-sex marriage; was once illegal- the 20 years were painstaking; creating inertia
- popular discussions often fail to adequately define concepts
- stereotypes, prejudice, racism, and sexism- used consistently- can mean different things in different contexts.
- what someone means by sexism can be different than what I think sexism is.
- We have different definitions, but we throw them out as if everyone agrees with our way of interpreting these terms.
- *popular discussions often don’t distinguish correlation and cause. *
- prejudice & cross-group contact–> Less prejudical people are more willing to have contact with others that are not from their group.
- Hating and Harming
They will make these assumptions on the news- more police, less crime example.
- The attitudes toward American Iraqis got significantly more negative once Americans were bombing them (your behaviour leads the phenomenon-small favours to make us like people more)
- we have to justify why our country keeps bombing other countries (maybe it’s their fault, not ours- we hate them- create an external justification to reduce guilt and blame)
- *popular discussions often lack complexity
- Parents influence your thinking; they hate some people, and you may hate them.
Change someone’s prejudice by the degree it’s relevant to them (varies depending on social context).
Men are more sexist in the locker room.

Question 2

What are the sources of complexity in Intergroup relations?

Answer 2

Moderation/ Context:
- parental influence: when you’re younger, parental influence s higher than when you’re older.
- it also depends on how much you like the parent- you are more likely to be influenced by a parent if you like them more.
- ^ Those are moderating variables

Mediation
- positive cross-group contact
-if you like something and someone else likes the same thing, you may want them more (similarities).
- move from interpersonal to intrapersonal (I like him vs. I like them)
- contact changes not only the perceptions of others but also yourself.

multiple group Identities
- we all belong to many categories simultaneously

dynamic agents
- people (group members) are both agents and perceivers
- change over time- both individual-level change and collective/ social change
- because we’re dynamic agents- knowing one part of their attitude can change our perceptions over time.

Question 3

What is the complexity level of analysis?

Answer 3

structural/ societal level processes (Macro level)
Face-to-face interpersonal interactions (Meso level)
Intrapersonal processes (Mirco level)
most popular discussion focus on only one level of analysis.

Question 4

What are self-aspects?

Answer 4

• set of specific self-descriptors
• specific things that you see as describing who you are.
• can be thought of as a pool of self-aspects
• the current self is constructed from a pool of potential selves (one of many possible combinations of our many self-aspects).

Question 5

What are some characteristics of the self-aspects

Answer 5

Salient vs. non-salient (the degree to which a particular self-aspect is currently relevant)
- who we are depends on the current situation
- who we are depends on our current goal motives
- the strength of situational cues that are needed to bring that self-aspect/ identity to mind.
- the frequency with which this self-aspect/ identity will guide our thoughts and actions across different situations across time.
- the degree to which this self-aspect is the source of pride (positive self-esteem) or shame (negative self-esteem).
- we can also lose a self-aspect, such as being a student, once we graduate.
- the degree to which it does all of this in the unconscious.

Question 6

What are self-concepts/ identity?

Answer 6

• the current self is constructed from a pool of potential selves.
• One of the many possible combinations of our many self-aspects.
  What doe this mean?
• the self is multifaceted and diverse.
• the self is adaptive- we can be very a different person in different situations and over time.
• you are you (these are your self-aspects), but some of our sense of coherence and consistency is imaginary.

Question 7

What are the levels of the self-concept (levels of identity)

Answer 7

• PERSONAL LEVEL: those aspects of the self that make us different from others (our individuating characteristics).
• I.e., I am smarter than others (make us unique→, something that separates us from other people- relative to the people around you, you think you’re smarter).

RATIONAL LEVEL: our connection to specific others (our interpersonal relationships and our roles)
- Have a specific relation to a specific person
- Can’t replace these aspects- for example, ask someone else to be your mother, etc.
- Can’t know your personal self until you know your collective self.
- No longer a high school student, I don’t know what I am going to do with my life.

COLLECTIVE LEVEL: those aspects of the self that connects us to collections of others (our group memberships).
- Going to the gym- gym member- part of a group of people who share that identity.

Question 8

Intergroup Relations is about Collective Identities. What does this mean?

Answer 8

The study of how our thoughts, feelings and behaviour are influenced by the groups we belong to (when the relevant self is a collective self) and how people from different groups relate to one another (when collective identities determine our interactions).

Question 9

Collective Identities and Ingroup Identification
What is an ingroup?
What is ingroup identification?

Answer 9

• recognition of membership-: the “self-categorization”
• defines the group as an “ingroup” (groups we belong to psychologically belong to)
  -the ingroup we believe we are a part of. We can’t say the ingroup, we say my ingroup.
• outgroups are opposite; groups we don’t belong to: student ingroup–> professor outgroup.
• the group is subjectively / psychologically meaningful to you. (the degree to which this collective self-aspect is central to your self-aspect).