GROUPS - social identiy and intergroup behaviour

INTERGROUP BEHAVIOUR - any perception, cognition or behaviour that is influenced by people's recognition that they and others are members of distinct social groups.
1. e.g. international conflicts, interethnic relations, competitive team sports.
INGROUPS AND OUTGROUPS "us" vs. "them", relationships between ingroups and outgroups are often characterised by antagonism and conflict. ethnocentrism, ingroup favouritism, stereotyping.
INTERGROUP BEHAVIOUR - ETHNOCENTRISM - the view that one's own group is at the center of everything and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it - SUMNER - 1906
1. what is intergroup behaviour? intergroup behaviour is regulated by individuals awareness of and identification with different social groups.
  1. ALLPORT - 1935 - the presence of the group can be real but it can also be implied.
REALISTIC CONFLICT THEORY - SHERIF - 1966
1. GROUPS WHO HAVE A MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE GOAL AND MUST COMPETE WITH ANOTHER GROUP TO ACHIEVE THEIR GOAL. individuals who share goals tend to form groups. if the goal is exclusive, only one group can achieve it. e.g. a football game is a realistic conflict.
  1. SUMMER CAMP STUDIES - SHERIF - 1966 - boys arrived at the camp and engaged in activities and formed friendships. the camp was then divided into 2 seperate groups and split the pre-formed friendships. (INGROUP FORMATION) then the two groups were told to compete against eachother, strong competition, ethnocentrism.
    1. OUTGROUP STEREOTYPES WERE ALL COMPETITIVE not cooperative.
SOCIAL IDENTITY
1. research shows that inntergroup competition can be triggered very easily. SHERIF - 1966 -- showed just forming groups could cause ethnocentrism even before realistic conflict was introduced.
  1. MINIMAL GROUP PARADIGM - TAJFEL - 1970 - challenges the idea that competition is needed for group bias, simple distinction is sufficient. participants randomly allocated into which painting they prefer, groups have no history and it is a very trivial circumstance.
    1. FOUND - a tendency to allocate more money to their own group than outgroup - ingroup favouritism. THE groups were minimal, had no past history and no future. robust finding from hundreds of minimal group studies, just being categorised as a group member seems to be enough to produce competitive intergroup behaviour and bias.
2. SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY - TAJFEL AND TURNER - 1979
  1. SOCIAL identity is part of the self concept that derives from group membership, influences an individuals attitudes and behaviour, personal identity = i and me, social identity - we and us.
    1. "the indivduals knowledge that he / she belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of this group membership"
  2. INTERPERSONAL <----------> INTERGROUP CONTINUUM varies due to situational context.
  3. SOCIAL IDENTITY IN SOCIETY - SIT is very society and context based. looks at social hierarchies in society and how people deal with status differentials. if people's social comparison leads to negative social identity then people mobilse, create and compete.
    1. BROWN - 2000 - group members tend to perceive their group as superior. high identifiers are more likely to express bias than low identifiers. COUNTER-INTUITIVELY, if groups are too similar, this will threaten distinctiveness.
      1. EVIDENCE - JETTEN ET AL - 1996 - looked at the relations between two rival universities, manipulated the distinctiveness between ingroup and outgroup, participants defended their group distinctiveness especially under the condition of intergroup similarity. low distinctiveness tended to increase bias.
        VAN OUDENHOVEN - 2002 - looked at study of nations and found that small and threatened nations exhibit more bias towards the linguistically similar large nation than vice versa.
CATEGORISATION AND HOMOGENEITY - social categorisation gives rise to some clear stereotyping effects/
1. ACCENTUATION EFFECT - TAJFEL - 1959 - overestimation of similarities among people within a category and dissimilarities between people of different categories.
2. OUTGROUP HOMOGENEITY EFFECT - BRIGHAM AND BERKOWITZ - 1978 - tendency to see outgroup members as the same and ingroup members as more differentiated. more difficult to recognise outgroup faces.
  1. manifests itself in perceptual processes as well e.g. - SHAPIRO ET AL - 1986 - white people found it hard to tell japanese faces apart. japanese people found it hard to tell white faces apart.
  2. more familiar with ingroup than outgroup members, more detailed knowledge about ingroup so can differentiate them. there is evidence also for an outgroup homogeneity effect.
3. JANE ELLIOT - the eye of the storm - allow children to expeience being a victim, based on blue eyes / brown eyed groups.
DEHUMANISATION OF OUTGROUPS - LEYENS ET AL - 2007 -
1. primary emotions are common to animals and humans (fear, anger, joy), secondary emotions are exclusive to humans, pity, compassion, disapointment, nostalgia etc. dehumanisation of outgroups requires both forms of emotion.
2. SEMANTIC-ANTHROPOLOGICAL DISCRIMINATION - judging others in terms of animal but not human characteristics.
3. PRIMARY emotions are associated with both ingroups and outgroups, SECONDARY EMOTIONS are associated with the ingroup only, outgroup tends to be denied emotions that are typically human. SO AS TO maintain a high status, justifying aggression and oppression.
COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOUR AND THE CROWD
1. collective behaviour is the behaviour of people en masse, such as a crowd, protest or riot. people in crowds usually behave in a uniform manner and can be volative, highly emotional and in violation of social norms.
  1. in crowds, people are not easily identified so people resort to behaviours such as impulsive, aggressive, etc,
    1. ZIMBARDO - 1970 - DEINDIVIDUATION is an important mediating factor. HOWEVER, aggression and antisocial behaviour may be overridden by norms associated with the group.
RELATIVE DEPRIVATION AND SOCIAL UNREST
1. BERKOWITZ - 1964 - long hot summer - to explain collective violence in race riots that occurred during an excessive heatwave.
2. COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE - race riots in WATTS in LA in 1965, occurred after the injustice of the arrest of three black people. millions of property damaged, 34 people killed, high level of unemployment and deprivation.
3. relative deprivation - "a sense of having less than we are entitled to" - HOGG AND VAUGHAN - 2005 - deprivation not absolute but relative to other conditions. seen as a precondition for intergroup aggression.
  1. GURR - 1970 - relative deprivation is formed through comparisons between experiences and expectations.
4. TYPES OF RELATIVE DEPRIVATION - RUNCIMAN - 1966 - EGOISTIC R.D. = feeling of personally having less than we feel we are entitled to, relative to other similar people..... and FRTERNALISTIC R.D. = our group has less than it is entitled to compared to other groups.
  1. implication of fraternalistic relative deprivation with social unrest. VANNEMAN ET AL - 1972 - negative attitude towards blacks were more likely to perceive the blacks were better off when they weren't
5. GROUPS COMPETE FOR SCARCE RESOURCES - SHERIF - 1966 - where groups compete for scare resources, intergroup relations become marked with conflict and ethnocentrism.
  1. FACTORS AFFECTING RELATIVE DEPRIVATION
    1. 1. STRONG GROUP IDENTIFICATION
      1. 2. PERCEIVED EFFECTIVENESS OF ACTION
    2. 3. PERCEPTIONS OF INJUSTICE, less than entitled to
    3. 4. INGROUP-OUTGROUP COMPARISONS - likelihood for action depends on similarity of the outgroup.
INTERGROUP COOPERATION
1. REALISTIC CONFLICT THEORY - SHERIF - 1966 - the existence of superordinate goals and cooperation reduces intergroup hostility, avoidance of mutually exclusive goals.
  1. SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY - TAJFEL AND TURNER - 1979 - hostility will be reduced if intergroup stereotypes become less derogatory and legitimised non-violent forms of intergroup competition
    1. breakdown outgroup prejudice by promoting interpersonal contact to break down attitudes, and by creating super-ordinate goals to promote intergroup cooperation on a task.
      1. SUPERORDINATE GOALS - SHERIF - 1966 - superordinate goals have an outcome of mutual benefit to groups, sherif states their effectiveness to reduce intergroup conflict. DION - 1979 - resistance against a shared threat is a common superordinate goal.

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GROUPS - social identiy and intergroup behaviour

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	Created by becky.waine almost 11 years ago