C82SAD Intergroup Behaviour

1. C82SAD Intergroup Behaviour

2. What is Intergroup Behaviour? • Intergroup behaviour is “any perception, cognition, or behaviour that is influenced by people’s recognition that they and others are members of distinct social groups” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005, p. 392) • Examples of intergroup behaviour: • International and intra-national conflicts • Political confrontations • Interethnic relations • Negotiations between unions and management • Competitive team sports

3. What is Intergroup Behaviour? • Intergroup behaviouris regulated by individuals’ awareness of and identification with different social groups • Therefore presence of the group can be real, but it can also be implied – remember Allport (1935) • As in definition of social psychology – this a common assumption that social behaviour is influenced by the social categories to which we belong – known as a ‘metatheory’ • Intergroup behaviour brings together literature on: • Social influence and social facilitation • Group processes • Prejudice and discrimination

4. Relative Deprivation and Social Unrest • Berkowitz (1962) suggests that intergroup prejudice and discriminatory behaviour is a function of: • Aversive events (e.g., extreme climactic conditions) • Aggressive associations (e.g., situational cues, past associations) • Berkowitz used this in his ‘long hot summer’ explanation for collective violence using LA Watt’s (1965) and Detroit (1967) race riots which occurred during excessive ‘heatwave’ conditions • Perceptions of ‘relative deprivation’ was an important factor

5. Collective Violence Relative deprivation Frustration Aversive environmental conditions (e.g., ‘heatwave’) amplifies frustration Individual acts of aggression Individual acts of aggression exacerbated by aggressive stimuli (e.g., armed police) Aggression becomes more widespread and Assumes role of dominant response Aggression spreads rapidly through social facilitation process Source: Berkowitz (1972) Collective violence

6. Collective Violence • Race riots in Watts suburb of Los Angeles in 1965 occurred after the perceived injustice of the arrest of 3 black family members • Tensions boiled over and riots broke out • $35m property was damaged, 34 people were killed, and the military had to be called in to restore order • High level of unemployment, deprivation, and highly secularised (99% of the population were African-American)

7. Collective Violence • Race riots in South Central Los Angeles in 1992 were seen as a direct response to the jury acquittal of 4 white policemen for the beating on Rodney King • Set against a background of rising unemployment and deep disadvantage in black communities • 50 dead and 2300 injured • Attacks symbolised by beating of white truck driver Reginald Denny

8. Relative Deprivation • Relative deprivation: “A sense of having less than we are entitled to” (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005) • Deprivation is not absolute but relative to other conditions (c.f., Orwell, 1962 – taking overcrowding for granted) • Viewed as a precondition for intergroup aggression (Walker & Smith, 2002) • Relative deprivation introduced in Stouffer et al.’s (1949) and is formed through comparisons between experiences and expectations (Gurr, 1970)

9. Relative Deprivation • Formalised by Davies (1969) in the J-Curve hypothesis • J-Curve: A graphical representation of the way in which relative deprivation rises when attainments suddenly fall short of rising expectations

10. Relative Deprivation Relative deprivation Living standards Attainments t1 t2 Time Source: Davies (1969)

11. Relative Deprivation • While there is some suggestion that relative deprivation is responsible for intergroup aggression and conflict, it has not been supported by systematic research • There is little evidence that people’s expectations are constructed on the basis of immediate past experience based on survey data (Taylor, 1982)

12. Types of Relative Deprivation Runciman (1966) made the distinction between: • Egoistic relative deprivation: A feeling of personally having less than we feel we are entitled to, relative to our personal aspirations or to other individuals (comparisons with other similar individuals) • Fraternalistic relative deprivation: Sense that our group has less than it is entitled to, relative to the collective aspirations or other groups (group vs. group comparisons) • These types of deprivation have been found to be independent in survey studies (Crosby, 1982)

13. Types of Relative Deprivation • Research has implicated fraternalistic relative deprivation with social unrest • Vanneman and Pettigrew’s (1972) survey found that whites with more negative attitude towards blacks were more likely to perceive their group as relatively poorer compared to blacks even though demographically they were better off • A study on black militancy in the US was associated with perceptions of fraternalistic relative deprivation (Abéles, 1976) • Militant ‘Francophones’ in Canada felt more dissatisfaction and frustration when making intergroup salary comparisons (a fraternalistic indicator of relative deprivation) compared with those making egoistic comparisons (Guimond & Dubé-Simard, 1983) • Muslims in India were found to express greatest hostility toward Hindis (who were better off as a group) if they felt that were fraternalistically deprived (Triparthi & Srivasta, 1981)

14. Factors Affecting Relative Deprivation • Strong group identification: Strong identification with the group is necessary for fraternalistic deprivation to influence perceptions and collective action (Kelly & Breinlinger, 1996) • Perceived effectiveness of action: People who believe that taking action e.g. protesting will redress the imbalance shown in their perceived fraternalistic relative deprivation • Perceptions of injustice: Perceptions that you have less than you are entitled (distributive justice) and victim of unfair procedures (procedural injustice) (Tyler & Lind, 1992) • Ingroup-outgroup comparisons: Likelihood for action depends on the similarity of the outgroup e.g. ‘paradox of the contented female worker’ (Crosby, 1965)

15. Realistic Conflict • Key feature of intergroup behaviour is ‘enthnocentrism’ = “the view of things in which one’s own group is at the centre of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it” (Sumner, 1906, p. 13) • Sherif (1962) believed that perspectives on enthnocentrism should not be explained in terms of individual or interpersonal processes but intergroup relations • “We cannot extrapolate from the properties of individuals to the characteristics of group situations” (Sherif, 1962, p. 8) • Intergroup relations: Relations between two or more groups and their respective members – whenever individuals belonging to one group interact with another group or its members in terms of their group identifications, we have an instance of intergroup behaviour (Sherif, 1962)

16. Realistic Conflict • Competition between groups over scarce resources results in conflict and ‘ethnocentrism’ • E.g., Sherif’s (1966) summer camp experiments • Example of ‘realistic’ intergroup hostility and intergroup-co-operation • Four phases: • Spontaneous friendship formation • Ingroup formation • Intergroup competition • Intergroup cooperation (superordinate goals)

17. Realistic Conflict Notable points from Sherif’s (1966) summer camp experiments: • Latent enthnocentrism existed in absence of competition • Ingroups formed despite the fact that friends were actually outgroup members • Prejudice, discrimination, and ethnocentrism arose as a consequence of real intergroup conflict • Boys in summer camp did not have authoritarian or dogmatic personalities • The less frustrated group (winning group) was usually the one that expressed greater intergroup aggression • Simple contact between members of opposing groups did not improve intergroup relations

18. Realistic Conflict Theory • Sherif (1966) proposed realistic conflict theory • Individuals who share common goals that require interdependence will tend to cooperate and form a group • Individuals who have mutually exclusive goals (e.g., scarce resources) will be involved in interindividual competition which prevents group formation and contributes to the collapse of an existing group • At the intergroup level, mutually exclusive goals between groups results in realistic intergroup conflict and ethnocentrism while shared (superordinate) goals results in cooperation

19. Social Identity: Minimal Groups • Formation of groups spontaneously creates intergroup conflict and ethnocentric attitudes very quickly – even without ‘realistic conflict’ • Spontaneous emergent of conflict studied by Tajfel et al. (1971) using the ‘minimal group paradigm’ • Minimal group paradigm: Experimental methodology to investigate the effect of social categorisation alone on group behaviour • Truly a ‘minimal group’ effect: • Groups formed on a flimsy criterion • No past history or possible future • Members had no knowledge of other members • No self-interest in the money allocation task

20. Social Identity: Minimal Groups • Allocation of points in grid game to ingroup and outgroup in minimal group paradigm • Four possible strategies: • Fairness • Maximum joint profit • Maximum ingroup profit • Maximum difference

21. Group Formation Minimal group experiments (Tajfel, 1981)

22. Social Identity: Minimal Groups Therefore: • Mere awareness of being in a group can influence individuals’ perceptions of other group members • Individuals become ‘depersonalised’ – group attributes rather than personal become ‘salient’ in group situations • The group does not have to be well defined • Strong effect in hundreds of minimal group experiments which: • Allocated people to groups completely randomly • Removed the money-points

23. Social Identity Approach • Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) is the leading theory in social psychological analysis of group processes • Social identity theory: Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self-categorisation, social comparison, and the construction of a shared self-definition in terms of ingroup defining properties • Self-categorisation theory: • Sub-theory of identity theory (Turner et al., 1987) a significant development in the ‘Social Identity Approach’ • Theory of how the process of categorising oneself as a group member produces social identity and group and intergroup behaviours

24. Social Identity Approach • According to social identity theory people have a ‘social identity’ which is the self-concept which is derived from membership of social groups • This is distinct from ‘personal identity’ – group processes are not confined to personality traits and interpersonal relations (relations between individuals) • Social identities prescribe appropriate behaviour and specific tactics for group members (e.g., group norms) • Social identities predict a number of processes including: • Ethnocentrism • Ingroup favouritism • Intergroup differentiation • Stereotyping – Widely shared and simplified evaluative image of a social group and its members

25. Self-Categorisation Theory • Recall: two processes that are responsible – social categorisation and social comparison • People represent social categories and groups as prototypes = a ‘fuzzy’ representation of the typical/defining features of a category • Two principles driven by prototypes: • Metacontrast principle: Maximising the ratio of ‘differences to ingroup positions’ to ‘differences to outgroup positions’ • Entitativity: The property of a group that makes it seem like a coherent, distinct, and unitary entity • Depersonalisation = The perception and treatment of self and others not as unique individual persons but as prototypical embodiments of a social group

26. Metacontrast Principle Other member Prototype of Ingroup members Other member Me Prototype of Outgroup members Social comparison processes Other member Intergroup contrasts e.g. Dehumanisation Intragroup contrasts e.g. Depersonalisation

27. Categorisation and Relative Homogeneity • Social categorisation gives rise to some clear stereotyping effects • Accentuation effect: Overestimation of similarities among people within a category and dissimilarities between people from different categories • Relative homogeneity effect: Tendency to see outgroup members the same, and ingroup members as more differentiated (Brigham & Barkowitz, 1978) • The homogeneity effect is affected by group size as well – when a group is a majority the outgroup is seen as less variable when the group is a minority the ingroup is seen as less variable(Simon & Brown, 1987)

28. Categorisation and Relative Homogeneity Source: Brigham and Barkowitz (1978)

29. Categorisation and Relative Homogeneity Source: Simon and Brown (1987)

30. Collective Behaviour and the Crowd • Collective behaviour = The behaviour of people en masse such as in a crowd, protest, or riot • People in crowds usually behave in a uniform manner and can be volatile, highly emotional, and in violation of social norms • People do not usually resort to impulsive, aggressive and selfish behaviour because this contravenes social norms and individuals are clearly identifiable • In crowds identifiability is significantly reduced and people resort to such behaviours if there is sufficient cause • Deindividuation is an important mediating factor (e.g., Zimbardo, 1970; Zimbardo et al., 1982) • However, aggression and antisocial behaviour may be overridden by norms associated with the group (Johnson & Downing, 1979)

31. Collective Behaviour and the Crowd Source: Johnson & Downing (1979)

32. Inter-Group Co-operation • Much effort has been made to identify sources of group co-operation rather than conflict • Realistic conflict theory (Sherif, 1966) suggests that the existence of superordinate goals and cooperation reduces intergroup hostility, also avoidance of mutually exclusive goals • Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) suggests that hostility will be reduced if intergroup stereotypes become less derogatory and polarised and legitimised non-violent forms of intergroup competition exist

33. Inter-Group Co-operation • Much effort has been made to identify sources of group co-operation rather than conflict • Solutions sought to break down out-group prejudice are... (1) Promoting interpersonal contact to break-down attitudes derived from social comparison (2) Creating super-ordinate goals to promote intergroup cooperation on a task with mutual benefit… ….= Minimizing importance of group boundaries and perceptions of group differences

34. Interpersonal Contact • Contact hypothesis (Allport , 1954): View that bringing members of opposing social groups together will improve intergroup relations and reduce prejudice and discrimination • Allport suggested that contact should meet certain criteria: • It should be prolonged and cooperative (c.f. Sherif, 1966) • Integration should be institutionally supported • Groups should be of equal social status • A ‘melting pot’ policy: Intergroup contact policy aiming to be ‘colour blind’ and ignore intergroup differences • Ignores fact that some groups have been disadvantaged in the past • Ignores reality of ethnic/cultural differences • Minority groups become ‘stripped’ of their identity and may lead to perceptions of disadvantage • Multiculturalism: policy drawing attention to and responding to reality of intergroup differences to change negative attitudes and preserve integrity of cultural groups (Hornsey & Hogg, 2000) • Research has indicated that contact alone is not sufficient and attitudes towards outgroup members tend to change only if contact is positive and if the person is highly typical member of the outgroup (Wilder, 1984)

35. Interpersonal Contact More favorable Less favorable Source: Wilder (1984)

36. Superordinate Goals • Sherif (1966) illustrated the effectiveness of superordinate goals (goals that have an outcome of mutual benefit to groups) to reduce intergroup conflict • European Union is a good example illustrating the effectiveness of a superordinate identity (Europe) in inter-subgroup relations (nations within Europe) (e.g., Cinnirella, 1997) • Resistance against a shared threat is a common superordinate goal (Dion, 1979) • Will not work if groups fail to achieve the goal (e.g., Worchel, et al., 1977) • Unsuccessful intergroup cooperation to achieve as superordinate goal may worsen intergroup relations if failure can be attributed to the outgroup (e.g., Worchel & Novell, 1980)