SP619 Social Psychology of Groups PDF

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SP619 Social Psychology of Groups Table of Contents SP619 Social Psychology of Groups .................................................................................................................. 1 Week 13 Introduction for Social Psychology of Groups ...............................................

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SP619 Social Psychology of Groups

Tabl Table e of Con Contten ents ts SP619 Social Psychology of Groups .................................................................................................................. 1 Week 13 Introduction for Social Psychology of Groups ................................................................................ 2 Week 14 What groups do for individuals ..................................................................................................... 3 Week 15 What individuals do for groups ................................................................................................... 10 Week 16 What groups do for the individual .............................................................................................. 14 Week 17 Group decision making ............................................................................................................... 23 Week 19 Social Identity ............................................................................................................................ 30 Week 20 Social cognition and intergroup relations .................................................................................... 37 Week 21 Leadership ................................................................................................................................. 46 Week 22 Gender & Sexism........................................................................................................................ 54 Week 23 Reducing Prejudice: Critical Look ................................................................................................ 61

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Week 13 Introduction for Social Psychology of Groups • Interreact with others can change how we behave, how we feel about ourselves* • Ties into ongoing research on personality • We are the process of different things • Understand the outside world • What groups do for individuals o People when working together can achieve great things o People can form into groups when something dramatic happens or a tragic incident • What individual do for groups o Sometimes individuals can cause unnecessary obedience • What groups do to individuals o Can lead to individuals to adopting unhealthy social norms, negative values o Important to look at why this happens • Group decision making o Groupthink o Withhold information o Decisions can affect all • Social identity o Sometimes tragic event can lead to people to support others o How you view yourself can strongly affect how you think, feel and behave o Redefining how you think about self can help us to get rid of intergroup conflict • Social cognition and intergroup relations o Prejudice, discrimination o How to measure, what it is and forms • Leadership o Important factor in group decision making • Gender and Sexism o Gender identifies all of us, own behaviour and how we perceive the world around us • Prejudice reduction, closer look • What is a group o Groups can be all sorts of sizes, structured or unstructured, specific or general and physically close or scattered o Proposed essential features ▪ * o Does this work for bigger or remote groups? • What is not a group o Aggregate or Collective: individuals not related psychologically o A feeling of common fate to be a group o Overlap in some small way, something in common • Groups as categories o Tajfel o Brown o Turner ▪ Us versus them • Definition:* o Ingroup o Outgroup • Different types of group o Social networks ▪ People know each other* o social category ▪ people may not have a lot to do with each other

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Week 14 What groups do for individuals • Benefits of Belonging to group o Group fulfil needs that we have, need for fulfilment, belonging etc o Interdependence ▪ Individuals coming together with a goal in mind ▪ Work interactively among each other to achieve goal ▪ People can often achieve more in groups than when alone (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) ▪ Example: Trade union (Veenstra & Haslam, 2000) • High identifier o willing to take part in conflicts between union and employers because they see solidarity action • Low identifier o Unwilling to take part in collective action unless it was an Individual threat to their own earnings o willing to do so when they see it in their own interests o Affiliation, similarity and support ▪ Grouping together with people who have the same attitudes (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) ▪ And the same problems (e.g., misery loves company) ▪ When people are sad, they want to affiliate (Gray, Ishii, & Ambady, 2011) ▪ Even seeking other sad people, and sad music (Hunter, Schellenberg, & Griffith, 2011) ▪ Seems to help, because it makes people feel “understood”, “befriended”, and “less alone” (Van den Tol & Edwards, 2015) ▪ Affiliate for same attitude ▪ People also affiliate for the same problem o Terror management ▪ People look for structure in their lives to confront the inevitability of their death (Greenberg et al., 1986) Existent mortality behaviour ▪ Group norms, identities, values provide life meaning and reduces existential threat as does sheer human company ▪ Existential and inevitable threat that we will die ▪ Group identity including the norms and values of that group provide people with a meaningful structure to their lives → which in turn bolster self-esteem and worth. ▪ Being in the member of the group would adhere to group norm ▪ Making meaning with group reduce existential threat ▪ Doesn’t have to be group identity, sheer human contact can have this effect ▪ Wisman & Koole (2003) • Condition: Write about emotions that they would feel in own death • Control: what emotions you feel when watching TV • If in morality salience would choose to sit in group chair rather than single chair • Do want to be in member of group and in member of group can reduce the threat • When we have to think about own death, have threat of mortality salience, want to be in member of group and reduce threat that is felt o Need for social identity ▪ Groups provide us with a ‘social’ identity ▪ Self-categorised into group • Groups with high status and prestige ▪ Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) • Distinct from personal identity • It is defined by group membership ▪ Self-categorisation into a group (Turner et al., 1987) • Want to identify with high status groups → feel good about ourselves ▪ Reduces subjective uncertainty (Hogg et al., 2008; Hogg et al., 2007)

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Group identity gives us the template on how we should be, attitudes to hold etc. based on attitude the group themselves have Optimal distinctiveness ▪ Would like to be one of the group but also want to be unique individuals ▪ Can balance both needs to affiliate and being an individual, groups allows it ▪ People like to distinguish themselves from others (Brewer, 1991) ▪ But, they need to affiliate with others ▪ Being in a group allows both Strategies to maintain optimal distinctiveness (Hornsey & Jetten, 2004 ) ▪ Identify with subgroup ▪ Identify with non-mainstream group ▪ Differentiate oneself with a distinct role Benefits of activism on behalf of group ▪ Kiar & Kasser (2009) • Are you an activist? o “Being an activist is central to who I am” o “I would engage in a political activity in which I knew I would be arrested” • Study 1: more “activist” students were happier, less sad, felt more related, competent, autonomous, hopeful, found more meaning in life (N = 341) • Study 2: similar findings comparing an “activist” sample to a matched control group (N = 718) People are more likely to be activist when they are sensitive to rejection and need to belong ▪ Bäck, Bäck & Knpaton (2015) • Need to belong scale item: o “I do not like being alone” • Rejection sensitivity item: o “How concerned or anxious would you be over whether or not your family would want to help you” • Interaction between likelihood in engaging in collective action ▪ When having high levels of need to belong, as rejection sensitivity increases so to do action tendencies ▪ low need to belong, downward trend, not significant The social cure ▪ Being in a group gives us an opportunity to have successful social interaction and social action can lead to different outcomes ▪ Have an effect on stress ▪ Jones and Jetten (2011) • Either write down or list social group they belong to • The more groups you belong to the better you are able to cope with stress • Criticism o No control group can’t really see the difference is in the baseline ▪ How it is thought to work • Social route o The more groups we belong to the more opportunity to get social support from others o Expect others to help ingroup members and for them to help us o we expect to help ingroup members, and for them to help us (norm of reciprocity)

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especially when groups are social networks and feel better about self because I associate self with group • Cognitive route o Self-continuity, when you or circumstances change and the group would provide a stable identity o Self-esteem, when you are proud of your group an • Role of control o Feel like we have control over life and goals and able to attain goals o Evidence: ▪ Study 1 • 62000 participants from worlds values survey • Group memberships and well being • Positive relationship between people who were more highly identified to their group reported better wellbeing and greater sense of perceived control which relates to positive health outcome • Criticism o All correlational ▪ Study 4 • 300 American Mturk workers • Manipulated identity condition • Asked perceived level of control • In high identification, people reported higher level of perceived level of control • High and low only comparable to each other not the control Social cure in Medicine • People lose group membership in major life events and trauma and would negatively predict well-being over time but if given opportunity to make new bonds there can be an upswing to wellbeing • E.g., after stroke, or when joining universities • This negatively predicts well-being over time • And can be counteracted by joining new groups • (e.g., Haslam, Holme, Haslam, Iyer, Jetten & Williams, 2008) Extensions • Napier and Jost (2008) o Found political conservatives are happier o Claimed this showed that thinking inequality isn’t severe, or bad, is psychologically beneficial o Protects from perceiving a quality in the world • Jetten, Haslam, Barlow (2012) o Conservative are richer, higher in status and happier o People who are rich can belong to more groups and are these social groups that makes them happier Critiques • Is it group membership per se, or is it just number/contact of friends, fagmily? o Wakefield et al (2016) ▪ At two different time points asked about family identification and about health (6 weeks later) ▪ The more you identify with family, more likely to have ill health ▪ No relationship between health and family identification at time 2 o

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More with group membership than the quality and amount of contact ▪ Family identification influencing health not the other way around How is the number of groups linked to well-being? Don’t have a good idea of the mechanisms of social cure Is it categories or network, meaningful connections

• Downsides o The black sheep effect ▪ Meant to uphold group status, will be in jeapherdy of being excluded by group ▪ Evolution reasons: want group to both uphold group antivity and not threaten people in group ▪ Bad speeches were rated as bad as (or perhaps even worse) when they came from an ingroup rather than an outgroup member ▪ When the person is an ingroup member of good performance will have an ingroup favouritism effect, perceived as excellent at giving speech, more favourable ▪ When the person is an ingroup member of bad performance, the ingroup member will be as bad as the outgroup member, not upholding the standard for ingroup o Reactions to deviants ▪ Threaten the positive image of the group (Marques et al., 2001) ▪ People want to evaluate their groups positively ▪ Makes us more positively distinct from other group and gives superiority over other groups because to want others evaluate group positively ▪ Ingroup deviant is perceived as outgroup member ▪ Model called the subjective group dynamic model o Imposters ▪ Pose as legitimate group member but are not ▪ Meat eating vegetarians derogated more by the ingroup than the outgroup (Jetten et al., 2005) ▪ Goes for “flexitarians” too (Hornsey & Jetten, 2003) ▪ Schoemann & Branscombe (2011): • Asked young adults how they felt about an older target dressing young • Said to be trying to “pass” as young or not trying to pass • Trying to pass as young had negative perception of deceitfulness and likability, increases whether people think you are

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According to this study, it is not a good idea to try to “pass” as young if you are not.

Marginalization ▪ Marginalising racism ▪ Neither wholly in but nor wholly out ▪ Held to account by group standards (as if “in”), Not fully granted respect and privileges like other ingroup members (as if “out”) ▪ One manifestation: zero-sum membership – you cannot be “fully Iraqi” and “fully Australian” (Smithson et al., 2015) Or “fully Turkish” and “fully German” ▪ Marginality as resulting from group and individual negotiation about inclusion (the MARGINI model) • If the group diverges then it would be the rejected marginal, marginalising racism • Group will have certain inclusion rule o High: groups want to offer marginalised individuals’ opportunity to become more central members of the group o Low: more likely to exclude marginal members, don’t want to let them anymore into the group o Ostracism & Social exclusion ▪ Gets rid of burdensome group members and their delaying effect on group goals (Wesselman et al., 2013) ▪ Motivates group members to follow group norms (Ouwerkerk et al., 2005) ▪ Deters other group members from following the example of people who “defect” – help themselves at group’s expense (Kerr et al., 2009) ▪ Leaving the weakest behind ▪ People feel sad, angry and psychologically distressed ▪ Hurts even when we do not want to be part of the group (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007) ▪ Resembles physical pain (Eisenberger, Lieberman & Williams, 2003) ▪ Hurts the ostracizer too (Nezlek et al., 2015) When groups might be bad for you o Stigmatized identities ▪ Belonging to a stigmatized identity like “unemployed”, “mentally ill” can lower well being ▪ People that held stigmatized identities were more likely to have lower mental, physical health and life satisfaction ▪ Anticipation of being stigmatised would influence well being o Multiple stigmatised identities o

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Workers who have more than one stigmatised identity like race, ethnicity get paid less Woodhams et al. (2013) Not only mental and physical health but also money

Unhealthy group norms ▪ Member of group expected to hold group norm ▪ When a group has “unhealthy” norms, e.g., drinking, unsafe sex, unhealthy eating, then identification with these norms can undermine healthy behaviour, especially through attitudes and “subjective norms” ▪ Messages can backfire ▪ Reinforcing norm of binge drinking ▪ Ads that challenger perception of norms would be better ads to prevent unhealthy groups o Healthy cost of fitting in ▪ How central you are to the group ▪ Study of PhD students on a two-week long European summer school (N = 77) ▪ Network analysis who were central group member and marginal group members ▪ Ask people to list the close relationships of others ▪ More central people reported better mental health but worse physical health, colds, flus, binge drinking ▪ Fitting in associated with binge drinking and ill health ▪ Physiological reaction to a hard math test ▪ People who are more central to group increase in blood pressure in doing math test, large physical response depending on identification to the group ▪ Study isn’t about identification more about centrality and inclusion in group ▪ Measured by asking everyone who they interact with • When it gets complicated o Identification does not necessarily promote bullying and ostracism ▪ A sample of over 500 Spanish workers in SMEs ▪ Highly identified workers were less likely to be victims of bullying ▪ Companies with high average levels of identification had lower levels of bullying ▪ Goes against other research that if you are more likely to identify with group more likely to derogate deviance and engage in bullying and exclusion behaviour ▪ Cause and effect? Which way is the relationship working? Is it high identification related to bullying or bullying related to identification of the company ▪ Loh et al • Similar study but found opposite effect o Stigmatised identity – all bad? ▪ Rejection identification model • Racial prejudice in US • People from many groups experience discrimination o

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When they perceive this as discrimination, they increase their identification with the stigmatized group Direct negative effect on wellbeing but there is an opposing force, perceived to be discriminated against will more likely to identify with ingroup positive effect on wellbeing Because experiencing discrimination is harmful to wellbeing but identify to these groups can buffer some effects on wellbeing To not be alone, to seek acceptance from that group as opposed to wider society This can aid their well being So, belonging to a stigmatized group can be harmful because experiencing (and perceiving) discrimination is harmful to well-being (for a review, see Pascoe & Richman, 2009) Identifying with group seem to have opposing force and can buffer effect of being discriminated against By having a close relationship with the stigmatised identity Identifying with these groups appears to be helpful

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Week 15 What individuals do for groups • Parochial altruism o Tendency of individual being that helps between group with a cost for themselves o Helping between groups of much rarer, less rare o Intragroup social dilemmas ▪ People need to work together to make sure ingroup survive and thrive ▪ Leads to social dilemma ▪ Cooperation can be against self-interest but in the interest of the group ▪ defection is the opposite, acting in own self-interest without the interest of the group ▪ Real life social dilemma • Soldiers at war o Acting for the good of the group, put themselves in individual danger to help the group, end the war • Recycling behaviour • Team sports o Look at individual of group to contribute to group • Paying taxes o I would rather have individual benefit but will go for what is good for the group o Social dilemma stimulations ▪ Prisoners dilemma • Thought experiment o Imagine you’re one of a pair of suspects charged with a joint crime o You’re offered a bargain… do you confess or not? o The interests of the group are served by both not confessing o But the individual is better off if they confess o But what will the other person do? • Exploration are you willing to work with another person you have never met • Individual better off if they confess, can stop from getting long prison sentence • Examine to understand to what extent someone puts their own individual interest and freedom above the overarching group ability to go free o Types of social dilemma ▪ Public goods dilemma • Free riding: taken advantage in overarching group • People cannot be prevented from using a resource, even if they haven’t contributed • Individual is better off if they don’t contribute • “Free-riding” = defection ▪ Commons dilemma • Resource is for everyone but if overused for individual or individuals then eventually nobody will be able to use it o Social identification and altruism (De Cremer & van Vugt, 1999) ▪ The more people identify with a group the more they are likely to cooperate ▪ Pro self and pro social individuals play a public group game but identification (comparison with a rival institution) was also manipulated ▪ How much money (in pence) did they donate? ▪ Pro self: self-or...