social

Self-categorization is the process of seeing oneself as a member of a social group. The way we feel about the group membership that we share is termed social identity (is a part of the self concept

social identity theory - social groups give us a source of pride/self esteem. om prder to do this we enhance the status of our (in) group and discriminate against outgroups (favouritism is more common than out group degredation)

Learning about our groups - we learn from society but also from watching how group members behave

what influences accessibility of group membership? 

• Direct reminders - labels activate knowledge, circumstances that remind us of similarities or the mere presence of other in-group member
• Presence of outgroup member (Marque 1988)-  ppl described there own group more pos and favoured (allocated more resources) if the experimentor was an "outsider"
• minority status - When out-group members outnumber the in-group, the minority are more likely to base their self-esteem on the performance of another in-group member (identify more with). can be chronically activated (e.g. minority groups in society) or temporarily activated (e.g. white person in chinese quater)
• Conflict or rivalry - between groups is the most potent factor that activates group membership.

• mackie - A group’s typical characteristics become norms or standards for one’s behavior when seeing oneself as a group member. showed that extremitization of group characteristics (e.g. group polarisation) depended on an acceptance of and focus on group membership
• Typical (Spears) - demonstrated that high identifiers (i.e. psych students) perciever themselvs as more prototypical especially when the group status is threatened (e.g. when comparing themselves to physics students on IQ or art students on creativity)

Social Identity and self-esteem:

• People tend to BRIG of positve group achievements as a way of restoring +ive self regard particularly when SE IS threatened 

Social Identity and Emotions:

• peope experience emo at another's suffering if reminded of common soc. identity
• Gordijn 2001 -  unfair and intentional behavior (i.e. changes to make uni more difficult) of an outgroup harming others led to more anger in the observer when the victims were perceived as ingroup rather than outgroup (did this by focusing on similarities or differences between the self and the target)

optimal distinctiveness:

• group membership gives us both individuality (perceived differences between in/out-group) and connectedness (perceived similarities between self and in-group). this balance is best in small groups

How we perceive in-group members:

• the more accessibile the group membership is, the more similarities we perceive
• this allows us to apply our own characteristics to them and aid the interaction 

Liking of in-group members more than we dislike the outgroup:

• The group is part of our self/identity so we like them more than outgroup members, even when assigned to groups on random basis
• Perdue - nonsense words paired with in-group prounouns (e.g. us) were rated more postively - co-occurence of group-designating word with neutral stim is enough to create affective bias towards it. pps quicker to respond to positive person discriptors  when primed with we.
•  in-group pronouns activated more positive semantic associates in relation to a neutral prime, out-group pronouns did not. Thus, in two distinct paradigms (semantic conditioning and semantic priming) that included baseline control groups, support was generated for the position that intergroup discrimination is predominantly the result of ingroup enhancement (positive semantic generalization from ingroup pronouns) rather than out-group derogation (negative semantic generalization from out-group pronouns

Linguistic Bias -

• when descrbing behaviour that is expected (e.g. + behaviour of ingroup/-ve behaviour of out-group people use abstract language, making the beahiour generalisable
• when the beahviour is unexpected, concret lang is used to explain the behaviour as ungeneralisable and isolated to the specific occasion 

out-group homogeneity effect - perception that outgroup members are more similar to each other than ingroup members are to themselves

Why?:

• familiarity - we are more familiar with ingroup so perceive them to be more diverse
• constrained interactions - interaction with outgroup often does not involve interaction with individual members whereas we have "special knowledge" about ourselves as ingroup members 
• unique differentiation - people focus on characteristics that make them unique from others; with outgroups it is easy to see these differences but with in-group members we have to look deeper to find differences which results in greater attention paid to them. 
  • parke - in group (sorority girls) judged themselves as more diverse than others did, and men and women remembered more characteristics of a target when they were the same sex

Minority ingroup homogeneity - tend to percievethemselves as more homogenous, perhaps due to familiarity with the outgroup 

• social identity theory posits that each individual strives to achieve a positive social identity. That
• This is done through social comparison processes between the in-group and salient out-groups aiming at the establishment of positive distinctiveness of the in-group compared with other groups. 
• It is suggested that being in a minority group poses a threat to a person's self-esteem  therefore minority members are motivated to counteract that threat by accentuating their positive social identity. 

cross-race identification bias -  The effect that people can recognize faces of their own ethnic in-group members more easily than faces of other ethnicity groups. Can have serious implications for court when the suspect is of a different race to the target

Minimal group paradigm - even though it is argued that negative stereotypes, mutual ignorance and fear, distribution of resources, and a history of conflict can explain ethic conflicts, Tajfel  demonstrated that mere categorisation can lead to group favouritism. when people are randomly assigned to groups without defining group characteristics (without basis for stereotype), in group favouritism is still evident. (However many studies use young boys who are susceptible to bias and v competetive, however follow up studies have supported the findinds

social identity theory - This theory argues that people are motivated to derive positive self-esteem from their group memberships. Preferring the in-group to the out-group is a way of feeling good about ourselves. It has been consistently demonstrated that people’s selfesteem is increased when discriminating against the out-group 

Jan-Erik Lönnqvist - supporting the full self-esteem hypothesis of the social identity approach, low self-esteem in women was associated with assigning higher wages to women than to men, and such behavior was related to the maintenance of self-esteem.

Mild threat: triggers discrimination, threats can be realistic that pose danger to well being (e.g. safety, economic/political power), or symbolic threat to group morals, standards (intergroup threat theory)

• Higher status groups tend to discriminate on dimensions relevant to the group’s distinction, while lower status groups discriminate on less directly relevant dimensions

Extreme threat: 

• the ingroup exalt in ingroup symbols and values, and they derogate, hate, and attack the out-group. So in-group favoritism is accompanied by out-group derogation when the in-group feels threatened by an out-group
• Judging the out-group by in-group standards leads to out-group failure, which is used to justify derogation.
• Morally Excluded - Discrimination can lead to the out-group being morally excluded; rules of justice and civility do not apply to out-group members. They are then perceived as inferior to the in-group allowing group members to reject personal responsibility for their hateful acts. They rationalize their behavior by the thought that the out-group brought it on themselves, and appeal to the in-group’s welfare as a source of higher moral authority

• Contingencies of self-worth represent the domains in which success or failure leads to increases or decreases in self-esteem, respectively.

• State self-esteem fluctuates as a function of perceived successes and failures, setbacks and accomplishments in domains on which self-esteem is contingent
• Because people seek to protect, maintain, and enhance their self-esteem, contingencies of self-worth serve an important self-regulatory role; people seek out situations and engage in activities that provide opportunities for them to achieve success and avoid failure in domains on which their self-worth is staked.

egosystem perspective —focus on satisfying their own desires and needs. They view the relationship between the self and others as competitive or zero-sum.Constructing, inflating, maintaining, and defending desired self-images becomes a means to satisfy their needs by convincing others of their value and worth. 

• People with this perspective may have unstable SE and therfor threats to the self can cause intergroup problems

ecosystem perspective — recognize that their own well-being cannot be separated from the well-being of others and the environment. They focus on contributing to something larger than the self, such as the well-being of another person, project, or organization. people view the relationship between the self and others as non-zero-sum, because the well-being of the system depends on the well-being of each of its parts, and harm to one part ripples through the system, ultimately affecting the self. 

• more stable SEand less impacted by intergroup interactions

Stereotype threat theory - a person who belongs to a group for which there is a negative stereotype may underperform in the domain to which the stereotype threat pertains, particularly if this domain is also an essential component of their identity. Acccounts for racial/ethnic performance discrepancies on IQ testing among populations who would otherwise be expected to perform similarly 

stype relevant situation can lead to stype activation and self-categorisation = increasing minority status makes it worse

self-fulfilling prophecy - can serve as a self-fulfilling P

Steele - African americans underperformed on a test in relation to anglo americans only when they were made to believe the test was to be used to asses their ability

How to Reduce?

• External cues - to attribute poor performance to 
• self-aspects- when individuals can focus on other parts of the identity
• role model - if an ingroup member shows high performance 

Defending self esteem:

• Attributing neg reactions to prejudice and not personal failure can protect the self esteem
• cost: Neg feedback can be realistic so is not good to discount, discounting may also breed a sense of hopelessness. Attributing to stereotype may also make you seem like a complainer = social rejection

Attributional ambiguity in the workplace:

Feedback that can be ambiguously attributed can create workplace problems like not trusting others, and suspicion of being a token. These negative effects can be overcome when the role of merit is emphasized

Making the most of intragroup comparisons:

Comparing oneself with one’s in-group members is typical of minority groups. Intragroup comparisons boost one’s self-esteem when better off than others, or remind one of in-group members that are doing well.

Individual mobility:

This strategy involves individual escape from membership in a negative group, either through disidentification or through dissociation. Individual mobility is preferred to social creativity when group boundaries are permeable.

• Disidentification: Putting the group at a psychological distance - minimizing connections to the group by avoiding reminders of membership in a stigmatized group, by publicly criticizing and devaluating an in-group member’s poor performance (the black sheep effect), or by considering oneself to be an exception rather than a typical group member. Cost:  risk negative responses from others
• Dissociation: Putting the group at a physical distance - casting off one’s old identity and becoming a member of a new group. The benefits include freedom from discrimination, but the potential costs are isolation when not being accepted by the new group

• In order to attempt to change society’s evaluations of this group
• This can be done by introducing and emphasizing alternative dimensions on which the group is superior - social creativity strategies are used more when group boundaries are relatively fixed.
• Cost:  may unintentionally provide rationales and justification for continued exclusion

Subordinate categorisation - is a category placed at the top of a folk taxonomy and thus displays a low degree of class inclusion and a high degree of generality - if you have the supra and subidenity level cat activated at once it can improve interactions between

strategy to improve the overall societal situation by confronting and challenging the hierarchy of group domination - preferred by people who identify strongly with their group, and see individual mobility as impossible.

Social competition: action to improve the relative position, status, power, and resources of the in-group

• Cost: other group to perceive this group as threatening, resulting in increased levels of prejudice and discrimination. Engaging in social competition is most effective when group members stick together

Cross-categorization: 

•  out-group members on one dimension are in-group members on the other dimension. This cannot reduce prejudice, but redirects it; double out-group members are evaluated even more negatively
• recategorization:  forming a new inclusive in-group from which self-esteem and identity can be derived

= that race should not affect the way people are treated, and should therefore be disregarded and even actively ignored

• concern that emphasizing group differences may foster in-group hostility and prejudice
• may just succeed in distracting attention from group differences; it does not necessarily lead to intergroup acceptance. In addition, acknowledging intergroup differences does not inevitably lead to enhanced intergroup bias. 

Disadvantage: 

• people do not get to know other cultures, and do not learn to live and work alongside culturally different individuals
• denies an important social identity, and desensitizes the majority group to the value that group membership has for minority groups. 

Solution = Balance: Members from different groups can share common goals, while simultaneously maintaining their own social identity.