Social identity salience effects on coping potential

Proposition 2 (see table 1.2.): In an interpersonal context people will tend to evaluate appraisals of causal agency/responsibility and power/control in terms of the self in relation to other(s) interpersonally. It is proposed that in an intergroup context and when a social identity becomes salient, people will tend to evaluate these appraisals more in terms of the salient ingroup in relation to the target outgroup than in terms of the self in relation to other(s) interpersonally.

When people make causal attributions about the behaviour of others, a distinction can be made between attributions that are internal (e.g., disposition) and external (e.g., situational) (Kelley, 1967; Jones & Nisbett, 1972; Weiner,1986). The particularity of

intergroup contexts is that when people make attributions about the behaviour of others, the internal and external attributions can also vary as a function of the social group to which the self and the other belongs (see Deschamps, 1983; Hewstone, 1983). As discussed by Deschamps and Beauvois (1994) and Hewstone (1990), in intergroup contexts attributions can also be based on the person’s salient social identity and on the stereotypes and existing knowledge that are attached to that social identity in a given situation (i.e., which are determined by the history of intergroup relations, how these groups are structured in society, etc.).

It has been shown that when asked to explain negative acts of others in intergroup settings, attribution of negative acts to internal factors tends to be lower for ingroup than outgroup actors, while for positive acts the opposite is true (Taylor & Jaggi, 1974). In fact, there is some evidence that when we explain the behaviour of ingroups and outgroups our attributions tend to be biased to favour the ingroup over the

outgroup (for a review of intergroup causal attribution research see Hewstone, 1990;

Hewstone, 1983, 1989)⁶. Thus, emotion responses to events obstructing ingroup’s goals may be more negative and stronger in situations of high ingroup salience, when one can target a clear target and responsible outgroup than, for example , when the event is caused by the ingroup.

If we take the woman professor in the previous example, her emotion responses to events obstructing women’s career advancement may be more negative and stronger when her “gender social identity” is salient and when she can target a clear target and responsible outgroup (i.e., men) than if the event is caused by her ingroup (i.e., women). Again, as previously argued it is also possible that events caused by ingroups lead to stronger negative emotions. As shown by Averill’s (1982) research

6Most research on intergroup attributions has focused around the “ultimate attribution error” which was Pettigrew’s (1979) extension of the fundamental attribution error to the intergroup level. Concretely, he argued that when an outgroup member performs a negative act that is consistent with our negative stereotype we are more likely to make an internal attribution (i.e., disposition or innate factors).

Furthermore, he argued that if the outgroup member performs a positive act that is inconsistent with our negative stereotype our attributions will vary depending on our perception of the event’s controllability (high/low) and our perceived locus of control of the actor (internal /external). Thus, we may attribute an outgroup positive act to: the fact that the person is an “exceptional” case (low control/internal locus); luck or a special advantage (low control/ external locus); high motivation or effort (high control/internal locus); and manipulability of the context (high control/external locus).

on anger, the target of anger is more often a loved one or a person you know well and like than someone you dislike⁷. In addition, nothing excludes that we may feel the same general type of emotion toward ingroups and outgroups, for instance anger, but that the quality of anger may be different (cold or hot anger, or even blend of anger with other emotions like disgust or pride). It also seems possible that in some

instances negative events caused by “ingroups” are perceived as so incompatible with ingroup norms of morality and justice (or other pertinent norms in a specific situation) that these deviant members may even be “re-categorized” as part of another outgroup (i.e., for example sexist women) or as deviant members of the ingroup (e.g., see research on the black sheep effect, Marques & Yzerbyt, 1988; Marques, Yzerbyt, &

Leyens, 1988).

In addition, social identity salience can influence our perception of control and power in intergroup contexts. In the past, intergroup differences in terms of power and control over rewards have been shown to affect ingroup phenomena (e.g., ingroup bias, intergroup discrimination) (e.g., see Mullen, Brown & Smith, 1992; Ng, 1980, 1982; Ng & Cram, 1988; Sadchev & Bourhis, 1991). However, little is know about how intergroup differences in terms of power, control and status may affect

intergroup appraisals and emotions. It has been suggested that in a situation of unequal ingroup/outgroup ratio where the ingroup represents the minority and the ingroup is under threat, social identity salience could lead to an appraisal of loss of control over the consequences of the event, and to a feeling of anxiety (Vanman &

Miller, 1993).

Recent research by Mackie, Devos and Smith (2000) demonstrates that in a situation of intergroup conflict, the stronger the appraised strength of the ingroup (i.e.,

operationalised in terms of increased support by the community to the ingroup) the stronger the anger responses toward the outgroup, and the stronger the tendency to want to move against the outgroup. Recently, Schmitt, Branscombe, Kobrynowicz, and Owen (2002) found that the objective status of the ingroup in comparison to the outgroup (i.e., in terms of being privileged or disadvantaged in a given social

7In fact, his survey on anger revealed that there was a positive affective relationship between the angry person and the target in over 50 % of the 140 episodes of anger studied that involved another person.

structure) affected perceptions of prejudice, as well as self-evaluative emotions and measures of psychological well being. When these authors compared men and women’s perceptions of gender discrimination, only women’s perceptions of discriminations were negatively related to measures of psychological well-being.

In the example of the woman professor describe below, the facts that in most universities women professors are underrepresented and that in western society women are perceived to hold less power than men, may affect the woman professor’s appraisal of control and power over events that hinder to women’s goal of career advancement at her university. It would be argued here that in when appraising the event her “gender social identity” becomes salient, her emotional reaction is more likely to be one of anxiety than of anger. However, nothing excludes that the same woman professor might feel angry. As shown by Averill (1982), in the majority of situations the target of anger will be a person judged to be an equal or peer. Thus, if she perceives the same event as being caused by another person who is her equal she might be more likely to feel anger than anxiety.

1.4.3. Social identity salience effects on compatibility with personal standards