Practical 1

Question 1

How do we structure our world?

Answer 1

• We think of ourselves as individuals
• When we structure the social world we create groups

Question 2

What are the benefits of how we structure our world?

Answer 2

• Collective success
• Understanding of yourself
• Central to social cure and physical and mental wellbeing

Question 3

Why do we want to belong in groups?

Answer 3

• Evolutionary origins (Van Vugt & Schaller, 2008)
• Better mental and physical health outcomes (Haslam et al, 2018)
• Self-understanding and self-esteem (Jetten et al., 2018)

Question 4

What is the social identity theory?

Answer 4

Interpersonal to intergroup scale

Question 5

What is interpersonal?

Answer 5

Relate entirely as individuals, no awareness of social categories

Question 6

What is intergroup?

Answer 6

Relate entirely as group representatives, individual characteristics overwhelmed by group memberships

Question 7

Why do people favour their own group compared to out-groups?

Answer 7

• Desire for positive and secure self-concept
• Social Comparison Theory (Festinger) – we need a point of reference… so, relevant out-groups make our group “real”
• Therefore, we are motivated to think and behave in ways which will achieve and maintain positive distinctiveness between our group and relevant out-groups

Question 8

What did Tajifel et al do in their study?

Answer 8

1. There was no face-to-face interaction between participants making their decision
2. The group memberships of individuals were completely anonymised
3. There was no link between group membership and the decision being made
4. There was no value to the participant themselves

And sought to examine under these conditions whether participants would maximise benefits for all or seek to maximally differentiate between groups – even if this meant getting less

Question 9

What was Tajifel et al’s second study?

Answer 9

Ppts asked to look at a series of paintings and give their favourite - this became their group
- Each ppt was asked to split money between the different groups

Question 10

What were Tajifel et al’s findings from their second study?

Answer 10

• In all iterations of this experiment, participants act in terms of their ingroup membership based on ingroup categorization
• Participants favour their ingroup by maximising rewards over the outgroup
• Even when an option for maximising common good is available
• Maximising difference is the preferred strategy over maximising joint payout or maximising ingroup payout – even if it means losing out on points in real terms

Question 11

What is the intergroup threat theory?

Answer 11

• While in general we are motivated to positively distinguish ourselves from relevant outgroups, the motivation may be even stronger for groups that are perceived as offering a symbolic threat
• Symbolic threat = threat to ingroup’s beliefs, values, attitudes, or moral standards (due to conflict between values of ingroup and outgroup)
• Perceiving an outgroup as symbolically threatening leads to more negative attitudes (Riek et al., 2006)

Question 12

What is vegan threat?

Answer 12

MacInnis and Hodson (2017) Tested whether vegetarians’ and vegans’ voluntary abstention from meat-eating (conflicting with prevailing norms about eating) would represent a symbolic threat leading to negative attitudes

Question 13

What did MacInnis and Hodson do in their first study?

Answer 13

• 278 Omnivores recruited online completed measures of attitudes towards vegans (as well as other social groups), personality characteristics (like conservatism, social dominance orientation) and ingroup identification with dietary group