Social Psychology of Group Processes & Social Change Lecture 3 PDF

The Social Psychology of Group Processes & Social Change PSYC3002 Lecture 3: Social Identity & Categorization Theories Dr Charlie Crimston [email protected] WHAT HAVE WE COVERED? ▪ What exactly is a group? ▪ Intergroup & intragroup theories ▪ Are they good explanations for intergroup conf...

The Social Psychology of Group Processes & Social Change PSYC3002 Lecture 3: Social Identity & Categorization Theories Dr Charlie Crimston [email protected] WHAT HAVE WE COVERED? ▪ What exactly is a group? ▪ Intergroup & intragroup theories ▪ Are they good explanations for intergroup conflict? THE STORY SO FAR…. ▪ The importance of perceptions ▪ The role of context ▪ Shared reality or involvement ▪ Status and resources ▪ Identification/categorization 3 SHERIF BOY’S CAMP ▪ Conclusions o Intergroup competition for limited and valued resources causes prejudice and discrimination. o Intergroup cooperation for a superordinate goal reduces prejudice and discrimination. SHERIF BOY’S CAMP ▪ Intergroup attitudes, perceptions and images are the result of “particular relationships between groups, not their original cause” (Sherif,1966, p. 25). FIELD STUDY REPLICATIONS ▪ Studies in Lebanon (Diab, 1970) and the Soviet Union (Andreeva, 1984) replicated the basic findings. ▪ A study in the United Kingdom (Tyerman & Spencer, 1983) with Boy Scouts revealed a different pattern of data. o Boys were members of a superordinate group. o There was a shared norm of fair-play, kindness and friendliness. LABORATORY REPLICATION ▪ As part of a management training scheme, over 1,000 executives were brought into the laboratory for group-based tasks. ▪ Groups were in competition with each other for best problem solution. ▪ Groups reliably judged their own product more favourably than their competitor’s product. CRITIQUE OF REALISTIC CONFLICT ▪ Approach more descriptive than explanatory ▪ Analysis of psychological process remains unclear. ▪ Can it be applied to real world conflicts? ▪ Solutions realistic? 8 us v/s them CRITICAL VARIABLES: RELEVANT TO COMPETITION ▪ There is a stronger association between perceived conflict of interests and aggression for those who were highly rather than marginally identified with their own group. ▪ Members of low status such groups often display behaviours favouring members of the advantaged “out-group” over their disadvantaged “in-group”. CRITICAL VARIABLES: RELEVANT TO COOPERATION ▪ Failed superordinate goals ▪ Blurred group boundaries ▪ The right sort of interactions MORE TO THE STORY… ▪ Competition = conflict? ▪ Cooperation = reduced conflict? ▪ intergroup cooperation and hostility are a consequence of factors largely external rather than internal to individuals. o not a function of intra-psychic properties, personality types, or perceptions based on interpersonal interactions. A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Categorization: Laboratory Experiments o Move from the field to the laboratory to explore the necessary conditions for group processes. o Remove interdependence, remove conflict, remove everything except… categorization. A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Minimal Groups ▪ Preferences for unknown abstract paintings. ▪ Take everything away. One by one add them back in. A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Minimal Groups ▪ Measuring intergroup behaviour ▪ Relative in-group gain was the dominant intergroup choice. A B C D E F In-group member 40 48 50 48 40 35 Out-group member 40 40 35 23 48 50 A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Minimal Groups o The paradigm and findings o Social categorisation o Differentiation between categories (possibly cognitive accentuation) o Differentiation along value-laden attributes favouring individuals’ own categories (i.e., a clear understanding that one is in a social category) A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES A RE-ANALYSIS OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Conclusions o Group-based behaviour can occur in the absence of interdependence. o Categorization alone can provide the basis of group behaviour. A THEORETICAL VACUUM o Need to account for patterns of behaviour, in the absence of functional interdependence. o From where do group-based behaviours come? Social Identity and Self-Categorization Theories ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ ▪ Origins A Theory of Situations A Theory of Group Processes Defining the Self in the Social Context Normal but faulty Motivational Assumptions Means of Obtaining Positive Social Identity ORIGINS ▪ Henri Tajfel (1919-1982) ▪ Born into a Jewish family in Poland. ▪ Student at the Sorbonne France when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. ▪ A fluent French speaker, he served in the French army. ▪ Captured by German forces in 1940 and spent the rest of the conflict as a prisoner of war camp as French soldier (not Jew) ▪ To survive he had to be seen as French and not a Polish Jew (identity mattered). ▪ After WWII all of Tajfel’s immediate family and most of his friends in Poland were killed in the Holocaust. ▪ Became interested in discrimination against minorities and group membership. ▪ Realized that had his social category membership as a Polish Jewish been revealed his fate would have been very different. 22 ORIGINS ▪ Dominant explanations: ▪ Competition over scare resources ▪ Existing hostilities ▪ History of negativity ▪ Tajfel & colleagues wanted to systematically test these explanations using experimental methods. ▪ Started with the baseline condition of forming two groups A THEORY OF SITUATIONS ▪ Interpersonal to Intergroup Continuum o Behaving as a function of unique, individual characteristics. o Behaving as a function of shared, common characteristics. A THEORY OF SITUATIONS ▪ Implicit in this distinction is a characterisation of the individual, the individual’s place in the social context and, hence, the individual’s vantage point. o “Human beings...inhabit different social locations, belong to different groups, societies, and cultures and hence appraise the world from different perspectives” (Turner & Oakes, 1997). o In light of the realities of social life, and individuals’ goals and values, one situation or another is made cognitively salient at any given time. A THEORY OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Subjective understandings of group membership ▪ Through categorisation comes cognitive representation, including that of individuals and groups. o These are self-categorisations. A THEORY OF GROUP PROCESSES o Identity takes two forms that overlay the interpersonal-intergroup continuum: personal identity and social identity. Personal identity “I” & “Me” Social identity “We” & “Us” A THEORY OF GROUP PROCESSES ▪ Identification is, essentially, the process of contextually based self-definition. ▪ Through identification comes behaviour. RIGHT NOW, WHAT ARE YOUR SALIENT IDENTITIES? DEFINING THE SELF IN THE SOCIAL CONTEXT ▪ Cognitive representations of the self take the form, amongst others, of selfcategorisations. o These are cognitive groupings of oneself and some class of stimuli as the same in contrast to some other class of stimuli. o Self-categorisations exist as part of a hierarchical system of classification. DEFINING THE SELF IN THE SOCIAL CONTEXT ▪ There are at least three levels of abstraction of self-categorisation: o The subordinate level (personal selfcategorisations) o Ingroup-outgroup level (intermediate categorisation) o The superordinate level (broader categorisation, i.e., as a human being) o Personal self-categorisations have NO privileged status in defining the self. NORMAL BUT FAULTY ▪ Tajfel (1969), defined stereotyping as “the attribution of general psychological characteristics to large human groups” ▪ Process through which different characteristics and traits come to be associated with particular groups ▪ Normal but ‘faulty’ 32 NORMAL BUT FAULTY When people perceive there to be a correlation between a classification and a dimension of judgment they will (a) exaggerate the differences between the classes on that dimension and (a) minimise the differences within the classes on that dimension. Tajfel argued that stereotype accentuation could be responsible for their extremity and their homogeneity. 33 MOTIVATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS ▪ Individuals strive to maintain or enhance their self-esteem; they strive for a positive selfconcept. MOTIVATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS ▪ Social groups or social categories and the membership in them are associated with positive or negative value connotations. ▪ Hence, social identity may be positive or negative according to the evaluations of those groups that contribute to an individual’s social identity. MOTIVATIONAL ASSUMPTIONS ▪ The evaluation of one’s own group is determined with reference to specific other groups through social comparison in terms of value-laden attributes and characteristics. ▪ Positively discrepant comparisons between in-group and out-group produce high prestige, and vice versa. MEANS OF OBTAINING POSITIVE SOCIAL IDENTITY ▪ Individual Mobility o Leaving one’s own low-status group for membership in a higher status group. MEANS OF OBTAINING POSITIVE SOCIAL IDENTITY ▪ Social creativity o Comparing the in-group to an out-group on some new dimension; o Changing the value assigned to the attributes of the group; o Changing the out-group with which the in-group is compared. MEANS OF OBTAINING POSITIVE SOCIAL IDENTITY ▪ Social change o In-group favouritism o Protest o Revolution ▪ Q1. What are some of the criticisms of the realistic conflict approach? ▪ Q2. What are some of the factors that complicate the relationship between competition and conflict? REVISION QUESTIONS ▪ Q3. What were the minimal groups studies? ▪ Q4. What were the minimal groups studies trying to achieve? ▪ Q5. What is the difference between a personal and a social identity? ▪ Q6. What are some ways individuals and groups try to maintain a positive identity? ▪ Q7. When social creativity fails, what options do groups have? 40 SOME READINGS ▪ Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American, 223, 96-102. ▪ Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. In S. Worchel, & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall. ▪ Eckel, C. C., Wilson, R. K., & Youn, S. (2022). In-group favouritism in natural and minimal groups. Economics Letters, 219,110794, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110794] 41 NEXT WEEK: SOCIAL IDENTITY CHANGE