Why? Relative deprivation
- Egoistic relative deprivation - The individual’s sense of deprivation relative to other similar individuals
- Fraternalistic relative deprivation - Comparisons with dissimilar others
Why? Social protest and collective action
- You must be a sympathizer
- You must be informed about what you can do and what is being done
- You must be motivated (arises from the value you place on the outcome of the protest and the extent to which you believe that the protest will be successful)
- There must be no obstacles (this dimension may be overcome by stronger motivation)
Realistic conflict theory
The nature of the goals of individuals and groups determines the nature of inter individual and intergroup relations:
- Prisoner’s dilemma
- The trucking game
- The commons’ dilemma - Cooperation by all benefits all, competition by all harms all
- Free-rider effect
How? Minimal group paradigm
Minimum condition for intergroup behavior - Requires social categorization only (the fact of someone telling you ‘you’re a group’ is just enough)
Why? Social identity theory
- Ethnocentrism
- Ingroup favouritism
- Intergroup differentiation
- Stereotypes (and frustration aggression, and authoritarian personality…)
- Meta-contrast principle - The prototype has the largest ration of differences to in-group positions to differences to outgroup positions
- Categorisation (and depersonalisation)
- Social categories are salient to us
- Positive distinctiveness and self-enhancement
- Uncertainty reduction
Why? Because social cognition
- Accentuation effect - Due to categorization, we overestimate the in-group similarities and out-group differences
- Relative homogeneity effect - Similar to the accentuation effect (this can be interchanged with minorities)
- With categorization, we easily remember the group, but rarely the individual within that group
- Distinctive stimuli will have more influence
- Illusory correlation
- Optimal distinctiveness - We have both a need to find differences and a need to find similarities between people, we try to find a balance between these 2
Intergroup emotions
Intergroup emotions theory:
- We have positive emotions about what influences ‘I’ or ‘us’ positively. This is usually caused by in-group member therefore we feel positively towards the in-group.
- We have negative emotions about what influences ‘I’ or ‘us’ negatively. This is usually caused by out-group member therefore we feel negatively towards the out-group.
Collective and crowd behavior - Early theories
- Members are anonymous - They lose responsibility for their actions
- Ideas and sentiments spread rapidly and unpredictably through the crowd (where simple emotions are even faster)
- We have unconscious antisocial motives
Collective and crowd behavior - Deindividuation and self-awareness
2 major shortcomings:
- Anonymity does not automatically lead people to be more aggressive and antisocial
- Normative influences (external) may influence behavior more than anonymity itself
Check fig. 11.13 and 11.12! (p. 435-436)
Collective and crowd behavior - Emergent norm theory
- A collection of individuals which have no history of association, therefore there are no pre-existent norms
- Distinctive behavior is perceived as the implicit norm
- Normative influence comes into play, there are pressures to stick to the established norms
- As more people are influences by the norm, normative influence is greater, more people confirm
- Creates collective behavior
Collective and crowd behavior - Social identity theory
Social identity theory takes a greater look at social clues and symbols:
- There are situational cues which, although similar, have a different effect on different groups (police v. rioters v. observers)
- Crowd usually have an ‘enemy’ (the state, the police, the anti-riot…) towards which negative behavior is directed
Improving intergroup relations - How?
- Propaganda and education
- Intergroup contact
- Superordinate goals
- Pluralism and diversity - The bigger the group, the more benefit for each subgroup within that group
- Communication and negotiation (bargaining, mediation, arbitration and conciliation
How to improve? Intergroup threats
- Realistic threat - Threat to the very existence of one’s group
- Symbolic threat - Threat to the group’s values, beliefs, morals and norma
- Intergroup anxiety - Threat to self
- Negative stereotypes - Fear of intergroup anxiety
How to improve? Intergroup contact hypothesis
- Contact hypothesis:
- Similarity - Groups are more similar than they think, contact can emphasis these similarities and reduce fear (be careful, it might also emphasize the differences!)
- Generalisation - Better attitudes of the out-group as a whole, through bookkeeping, conversion and sub-typing (within the outgroup)
- Extended contact effect (‘my friend has a friend…’)
- Be ‘color-blind’? Wrong! It ignores disadvantages and ethnic differences
Social changes between group
Social mobility belief system - Groups can not change
Social change belief system - Belief that groups can only change by challenging the legitimacy of the highest group
Social competition - Belief that competition with the dominant group is the strategy to improve social position, opposed to social creativity
