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 behaviour is 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 Source: Berkowitz (1972) 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
Collective violence
Source: Berkowitz (1972)

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
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. Minimal group experiments (Tajfel, 1981)
Group Formation
Minimal group experiments (Tajfel, 1981)
Matrix 1 Klee
Group
Kandinsky 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 1 3 5 21 23 25
Matrix 2 Klee 22 20 27 29
Matrix 3 Klee
Matrix 4 Klee

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)