Social Identities

Motivational, Emotional, Cultural Influences

Rupert Brown, Dora Capozza, Rupert Brown, Dora Capozza

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415654234
• eBook ISBN: 9781135421694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The concept of social identity occupies a central position in contemporary social psychology. Social Identities: Motivational, Emotional, Cultural Influences reports recent developments in the analysis of motivational and affective aspects of social identity processes. The book also examines the cross-cultural generality of Social Identity Theory explanations of intergroup competitiveness, which have strongly influenced international research in this area. People's social identities and self-evaluation are thought to be largely derived from group memberships; it is presumed that people are motivated to attain positivity in these identities by favouring the ingroup in intergroup comparisons. An increasing stream of research is being devoted to extending the applicability of social identity concepts to intergroup relations and related fields.

The editors present here a collection of contributions from leading figures in social psychology which explore the state of the art in social identity theory. The most prominent motivational theories of identification are reported. Central themes concern:

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• motivations which lead individuals to join a group and identify with it

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• the role emotions have in favouring (or hindering) intergroup relations

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• the effect of emotions on intergroup behaviour

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• how people react to social identity threats

Shedding new light on important social problems like prejudice, bigotry, and intense conflicts around the world, this unique volume will be indispensable to students and researchers of social psychology, sociology and cultural studies.

I Motivation, identification, and intergroup relations

2 Self-conceptual uncertainty and the lure of belonging

Michael A. Hogg

DOI: 10.4324/9780203002971-2

The social identity approach in social psychology has rested on the assumption that social identity processes are motivated by intergroup competition for status that reflects relatively positively on the social identity of ingroup members. Collective self-enhancement underpins intergroup behavior and social identification.

In this chapter I describe the role played in social identity processes by another motivation, uncertainty reduction. The point I wish to make is that people strive to reduce uncertainty about where they are located in their social field – what sort of person they are, how they should behave, how others will perceive them, and how they should relate to and interact with others. This is a fundamental motive that articulates with a desire also to feel good about oneself. I propose that the process of social identification (identifying with and belonging to a group) is a powerful force for uncertainty reduction.

After giving some background on the social identity perspective, in particular the role of self-enhancement motivation, I describe the uncertainty reduction hypothesis in the context of a discussion of social categorization, prototypicality and entitativity. I touch on extremism, and explore the motivational relationship between self-enhancement and uncertainty reduction in the social identity approach. I close with a short section on culture, self-construal, and the uncertainty-identification relationship. This is primarily a conceptual chapter so, although I do report new research mainly from my own lab, the coverage is not detailed.

Social identity and group life

Tajfel first defined social identity as “… the individual's knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of this group membership” (Tajfel, 1972, p. 292). For Tajfel, the concept of social identity tied the conceptual knot between his work on social categorization (Tajfel, 1970, 1972), cognitive aspects of prejudice (Tajfel, 1969), intergroup relations (Tajfel, 1975), and social comparison between groups (Turner, 1975). This integration produced the social identity theory of intergroup relations (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and the later social identity theory of the group, self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987).

This social identity approach theorizes how cognitive, social interactive, and societal processes and structures interact to produce group and intergroup phenomena (for integrative overviews see Abrams & Hogg, 2001; Hogg, 2001c, 2003; Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Hogg, Abrams, Otten, & Hinkle, 2004). The approach theorizes a wide range of group phenomena, including stereotyping, leadership, deviance, collective behavior, language, norms, social influence, attitudes, and behavior, and small group and organizational processes.

From status to self-esteem, and back again

The key feature of intergroup relations is that groups struggle to preserve or promote their status and prestige relative to other groups with which they have to, or choose to, compare themselves. This process, which is shaped by beliefs about the nature of intergroup relations and the effectiveness of various courses of action, is a reflection of competition for positive intergroup distinctiveness and thus for evaluatively positive social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Social identity based intergroup comparisons strive to maximize intergroup differences in ways that favor the ingroup (Hogg, 2000a; Turner, 1975).

Groups and their members pursue positive social identity because, all things being equal, people like to feel positive about themselves – they like to hold themselves in relatively high esteem (e.g., Sedikides & Strube, 1997), and in group contexts social identity is the aspect of self that is salient. At the individual level self-enhancement motivates social identity processes (Tajfel, 1972; Turner, 1975). Turner, in particular, linked this to an underlying motivation for self-esteem_ “those aspects of an individual's self-concept, and hence self-esteem, which are anchored in his social category memberships can be referred to as his perceived social identity” (Turner, 1978, p. 105). He considered the “need for positive self-esteem” (Turner, 1982, p. 33) to be a fundamental human motivation which, under heightened social identity salience, is satisfied by relatively positive evaluation of one's own group. He stated: “I do assume that there is a need for positive self-esteem, not as an axiom, but on the basis of extensive research (into, for example, social comparison, cognitive dissonance, interpersonal attraction, self-presentation, defensive attribution, and so on)” (Turner, 1981, p. 133).

The motivational role of self-esteem was formalized by Abrams and Hogg (1988) who argued that if self-esteem motivated social identity processes, then low self-esteem should promote group identification and group identification should raise self-esteem. Research has found some evidence for identification raising self-esteem, but much less evidence for low self-esteem motivating social identification (see Rubin & Hewstone, 1998). One of the key problems with the self-esteem hypothesis is that of level of explanation – in invoking self-esteem, what level of self are we talking about? From a social identity point of view personal self-esteem would not be expected to play any role in social identity processes, however collective self-esteem would – a point exploited by Crocker and Luhtanen (1990; Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992).

Probably the safest conclusion to be drawn from research on self-esteem and social identity is that although self-enhancement is a powerful social motive, in group contexts it is only collective self-esteem, in other words the positivity of social identity, that is motivationally relevant. In many respects we may not need to invoke self-esteem at all to explain group behavior. We can simply argue that people strive to identify with groups that are positively distinctive – and this of course returns us to the original social identity theory of intergroup relations decribed by Tajfel (1972, 1975) and by Tajfel and Turner (1979).

Self-enhancement and social connectedness

Self-enhancement clearly plays a motivational role in social identity processes, however it is at the level of collective self that this motivation operates. This explains why groups struggle in all sorts of creative ways to be better than one another, and probably why, within groups, members compete to be seen as central members of valued groups. However, this does not really answer the question of what motivates people to belong to groups in the first place. Why does social identity exist, and why is it so important to human beings?

One answer to this question is provided by the sociometer hypothesis (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995). People do not pursue self-esteem, rather they strive to be socially connected to other people. People are fundamentally social because they depend on others for their survival and for the survival of the species, and so the establishment and maintenance of social connections makes one feel good – self-esteem is “merely” an indicator of how well socially connected one feels. This analysis does not distinguish among different types of social connections (e.g., interpersonal vs. group), and so in that sense does not actually answer the question of why social identity is so important.

Social categorization and uncertainty reduction

A different answer to the question of why social identity exists in the first place is that people have a basic need to reduce uncertainty about the social world and their place within it, and that this need is satisfied by social categorization. Uncertainty reduction may work in conjunction with collective self-enhancement to motivate social identity processes and configure social identity phenomena – uncertainty reduction may be a fundamental social identity motivation (Hogg, 2000b, 2001b, 2004; Hogg & Mullin, 1999).

The idea that social identity is motivated by uncertainty reduction pivots on the key role that social categorization plays in group life – without social categories there would, of course, be no social identities. We can now ask the question, what motivates social categorization – what does social categorization buy us?

Categories and prototypes

From a social identity perspective, social categories are cognitively represented as prototypes (Turner et al., 1987; also see Hogg, 2001c) – fuzzy sets of attributes that capture a family resemblance among members of one group and differentiate that group from relevant other groups (e.g., Cantor & Mischel, 1979). An individual member is unlikely to embody all prototypical attributes, although some members will embody the prototype better than others and thus be more prototypical. Prototypes capture similarities within groups and differences between groups, and thus they narrow attentional focus onto a limited set of human attributes (perceptions, attitudes, feelings, behaviors) that serve this function. Prototypes, and thus categories, replace boundless diversity and perceptual possibility with a bounded reality.

Prototypes obey the meta-contrast principle – they maximize the ratio of differences between ingroup and outgroup members to differences among ingroup members. They make groups more distinctive, and endow them with entitativity – the property of a group, resting on clear boundaries, internal homogeneity, clear internal structure, and common fate, which makes a group appear “groupy” (e.g., Hamilton & Sherman, 1996; Lickel et al., 2000). Because of meta-contrast, the group prototype is usually not the central tendency of a group but is displaced from the mean in a direction away from the relevant outgroup – prototypes are generally polarized and are therefore often more ideal than real.

People carry prototypes in their head (for example one's prototype of “students”), but they can be modified by comparative context – for example students in comparison to high-school kids vs. students in comparison to bankers. Prototypes can also be constructed in situ – for example if you rounded a corner and stumbled upon a group of Martians you would need to develop a prototype there and then.

Categorization and depersonalization

Social perception and subjective social reality are structured, to a significant extent, by categories – instead of a limitless variety of unique individuals there is a much smaller number of social categories. The act of categorizing someone assigns the relevant prototype to that person. Instead of seeing a unique person we see a prototype – a process of depersonalization. The act of categorizing oneself has exactly the same effect on self-perception – we embody the contextually relevant ingroup prototype. The prototype governs perception, affect, and behavior – it describes, and more importantly prescribes, how we think, feel, and behave.

Social categorization-based depersonalization reduces uncertainty in multiple ways – resting on the descriptive and prescriptive properties of the relevant ingroup and outgroup prototype. Social categorization tells us what someone thinks and feels, how someone will behave, and how they will treat us. Self-categorization provides us with an identity that regulates our interaction with others as ingroup or outgroup members – it tells us what to expect of ourselves and others, and thus renders the social world and our place within it relatively predictable. Uncertainty is reduced.

The nature of group life means that prototypes tend to be shared – for example, members of group-A are likely to agree on their prototype of group-A and their prototype of a rival group-B. In this sense social stereotypes and group norms are sh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes in contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Motivation, identification, and intergroup relations
• PART II Cultural and evolutionary aspects of ingroup identification
• PART III Emotions in intergroup relations
• Author index
• Subject Index