Group Processes

Group Processes
Group Processes
Dynamics within and Between Groups
Rupert Brown and Sam Pehrson
Third Edition
This edition first published 2020
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
9781118719299
Cover image: Werner Bischot / Magnum photos

Cover design by Wiley
Set in 10/12pt WarnockPro by Aptara Inc., New Delhi, India
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to:
Issa, Celia and Lily (by Rupert)
and
Nina and Mirona (by Sam)
vii
Contents
Preface xi
1 The Reality of Groups 1

Definition 1
The Individual–Group Relationship 2
The Interpersonal-Group Continuum 4
Three Unifying Themes: Social Identity, Social Context and Social Action 6
Summary 11
Further Reading 12
References 12
2 Group Formation and Other Elementary Group Processes 15

Interdependence 15
All in the Same Boat: Interdependence of Fate 16
Working with Others: Task Interdependence 17
Social Categorisation 19
From Individuals to a Group: Entitativity 19
Us and Them: Intergroup Differentiation and Intragroup Assimilation 22
When ‘We’ Deserve More than ‘Them’: Minimal Conditions for Intergroup
Discrimination 23
Why Do They (and We) Look all the Same? Perceived Intragroup Assimilation
(Homogeneity) 26
On being Similar or Different but still a Group: Individuality, Interaction, and
Entitativity 28
Not Only in Our Heads: The Pragmatic and Rhetorical Use of Categories 30
Joining and Interacting in Groups: Some Elementary Group Processes 31
Joining Groups 31
From Getting Together to Sticking Together: Group Cohesion 36
What Goes on in Groups? Achieving the Task and Maintaining Relationships 41
Summary 42
Further Reading 43
References 43
viii Contents
3 Reaching Agreement in Groups 51

The Acquisition and Development of Group Norms 51
The Acquisition of Group Norms 52
Why People need Norms: Individual Functions of Group Norms 53
Why Groups need Norms: Social Functions of Norms 55
Stability and Change 56
The Power of the Majority 58
The Pervasiveness of Conformity 59
Why do People Conform? 61
Standing Out from the Crowd: On being a Deviate 65
Going to Extremes: Reaching Decisions in Groups 70
Explanations of Group Polarisation 71
Concluding Remarks on Group Polarisation 76
Summary 77
Further Reading 78
References 78
4 Innovation and Change in Groups 85

Minority Influence 85
Majority–Minority Influence is a Dynamic Process 88
Social Categorisation and Minority Influence: Which Group does the Minority
Belong to? 91
Two Influence Processes or One? 91
Concluding Comments 99
Leadership 100
Coercion and Reward 100
Charisma 102
Leadership Styles 105
Interaction of Leader Style and Situation 106
Leaders as Committed Group Members 109
Leader Prototypicality 110
Serving Group Interests 112
‘Entrepreneurs’ and ‘Embedders’ of Identity 113
Authority 115
Summary 116
Further Reading 117
References 117
5 The Effectiveness of Groups 124

Group Productivity 125
Does the Presence of Others Help or Hinder Performance? 125
Are Two Heads (or Bodies) better than One? 126
Potential and Actual Productivity: Theories of Group Deficit 128
Two Heads (or Bodies) really can be better than One: The Benefits of Working
in Groups 133
Contents ix
Group Decision-Making 140

Modeling Group Decisions: Social Decision Schemes Theory 140
The Quality of Decision-Making Process 142
Groups can be Good for You 146
Resilience 146
Health and Well-being 150
Summary 152
Further Reading 153
Health and Well-being Benefits of Groups 153
References 154
6 The Morality of Groups 161

Are Groups really more Aggressive than Individuals? Collective Aggression and Violence 161
Deindividuation 162
Experimental Evidence concerning Groups and Antisocial Behaviour 163
The Stanford Prison Experiment 166
How Group Norms shape the Nature of Crowd Violence 169
Identity Transformation and Emergence of Conflict in Crowds 171
Online Aggression 172
Groups and Helping Behaviour 174
The Bystander Effect and its Limits 174
Solidarity within the Group 176
Helping the Outgroup 182
Summary 184
Further Reading 185
References 186
7 Conflict and Inequality 191

Intergroup Relations and Real Group Interests 192
The Development of an Intergroup Perspective 192
The Summer Camp Studies 194
Lessons from the Summer Camps 196
Extending the Realistic Conflict Approach 197
‘Real World’ Evidence 197
Stereotypes and Intergroup Relations 198
Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Other Emotions 201
The Outgroup as Sub-human 203
Hierarchy and Oppression 206
Divide and Rule 206
Consensual Discrimination 207
Ambivalent Sexism 208
Outgroup Favoritism and System Justification 210
Social Dominance Theory 212
x Contents
Social Dominance Orientation 213

Evaluating Social Dominance Theory 216
Integrating SDO and RWA 218
Summary 219
Further Reading 220
References 220
8 Rebellion and Social Change 227

Angry Rejection of the Status Quo 228
Anger 230
Social Identity Theory 235
Individual Mobility 236
Social Creativity 239
Changing the Dimension of Comparison 240
Downward Social Comparison 242
Redefining the Meaning of the Devalued Attribute 242
Social Competition 243
Winning the Solidarity of the Advantaged 243
Resentment and Backlash 244
Experiencing Illegitimate Privilege 246
Intergroup Contact and Collective Action 248
Consequences of Collective Action 250
Summary 252
Further Reading 253
References 253
9 Bringing Groups Together 261

Getting to Know You: Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Reduction 262
Elaborating the Contact Hypothesis 263
How to make Contact Work Better: Decategorisation, Categorisation, or
Recategorisation? 263
Understanding how Contact Works: The Role of Emotion 268
Indirect Forms of Contact: Extended, Vicarious and Imagined 270
Intergroup Contact and its Critics 275
“From Both Sides Now”: The Importance of both Victim and Perpetrator Emotions 279
Group-Based Emotions: Guilt, Shame, Victimhood, and Forgiveness 283
Living Together or Living Apart: The Challenges of Diversity and Multi-culturalism 287
Acculturation and Well-Being in Minority Groups 288
Acculturation and Intergroup Relations 291
Summary 294
Further Reading 295
References 295
Name Index 309

Subject Index 325
xi
Preface
This book has a long history. Thirty years ago, one of us (Rupert) was presumptuous enough to think
that he could write a book that would integrate what we then knew about social processes operating
within small groups with the newly emerging field of intergroup relations (Brown 1988). In the event,
the book did well enough to warrant a second edition and 12 years later, it duly made its appearance
(Brown 2000). That revision was essentially an updating of the first edition to take account of the huge
expansion of the field of group processes over the preceding decade. However, its basic structure –
and much of its content – was unchanged.
A few more years went by, enough time to convince the publishers that a third edition was now due.
However, the idea of simply updating and enlarging the book yet again was not very appealing. Not
only was the task of coming to grips with the mushrooming literature on groups rather a daunting one
but also the book was in danger of losing any coherence it might once have had if the new material
was simply to be tacked onto the existing structure. It became clear that, if a third edition was to be
written, it should not be written alone.
With that thought in mind, Rupert approached his colleague Sam to join him in tackling the new
edition. They quickly decided that a radical overhaul was needed. In place of the rather eclectic
approach adopted in the earlier editions, they sought to make the book more thematic by organising
it around three inter-linked ideas: Social Identity, Social Context and Social Action.
Groups provide people with a sense of who they are – and who they are not – and much of what
happens within and between groups can be understood as attempts by people to express, clarify, or
defend their social identity. But social identities do not drop from the ether fully formed, nor are they
immutable entities, fixed for life. They emerge from particular social contexts as people react to and
strive to make sense of their social worlds. As those contexts change, so do identities. And, last but
not least, groups are a primary vehicle of social action, by means of which people often seek to achieve
change in their environments.
Armed with these three themes, we set about completely reorganising the book. Most of the chapter
titles are completely new as, indeed, is the material they contain. So, although the title on the cover
of the book is unchanged, what is contained in the pages within is quite different. This is partly to
give expression to those three recurring themes, but it also reflects our several and joint research
preoccupations. We have sought to do justice to what we see as the most interesting of contemporary
research on groups but, in doing so, we have tried also not to lose sight of classic contributions. We
are not big fans of the ‘cult of the new’; in our view, there is much in the history of our discipline
which should be remembered and respected (and, of course, some which quite properly deserves to
be consigned to oblivion).
xii Preface
We also wanted to offer a critical appraisal of theory and research on groups, rather than presenting
a bland overview. So, on occasion, we have not hesitated to say why we think a theoretical perspective
is misguided or myopic. We have also taken the liberty of liberally illustrating our discussion with
topical examples drawn from the worlds of sport, contemporary culture and politics. Our readers
may not always agree with us, either in the positions we take or the examples we choose, but we hope
that they will at least not be bored.
It is customary to conclude a Preface with some acknowledgements, and we do so gladly here.
We are both indebted to our many mentors and colleagues, past and present. Most notably, and in
alphabetical order: Hector Carvacho, Chris Cohrs, Kay Deaux, John Drury, Sam Gaertner, Mirona
Gheorghiu, Roberto Gonzalez, Miles Hewstone, Nick Hopkins, Colin Leach, Ken Mavor, Fergus
Neville, Steve Reicher, Clifford Stevenson, Henri Tajfel, Nicole Tausch, Viv Vignoles and Hanna
Zagefka.
Rupert Brown
University of Sussex
Sam Pehrson
University of St Andrews
April 2019
References
Brown, R. (1988). Group Processes: Dynamics Within and Between Groups. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brown, R. (2000). Group Processes: Dynamics Within and Between Groups, 2e. Oxford: Blackwell.
1
The Reality of Groups
In this book, the existence of human groups is taken for granted: We have assumed both the
reality of groups and some agreement over what we mean when we use the word ‘group.’ But, in fact,
both of these assumptions have been the subject of considerable controversy in the history of social
psychology. Since the turn of the twentieth century, there have been heated debates not just about
what groups are but whether, indeed, they exist at all. This chapter returns to those debates in order
to clarify some of the issues that will recur throughout the book. We begin, conventionally enough,
with a definition of the group which, while admittedly imprecise, will at least provide us with a few
signposts to guide us through the terrain ahead. The discussion then turns to the question of the rela-
tionship between the individual and the group: is the latter reducible to the former or can they both
be considered as real and inter-related entities? Our answer to this question stresses the importance
of making a distinction between behaviour when one is acting as a group member and behaviour
when one is acting as an individual, and we outline some of the social psychological processes that
underlie this distinction. A key concept here, as indeed it will be throughout the book, is that of social
identity – people’s sense of who they are and the importance of that self-definition to them. Which
social identities matter to people and when is not something set in stone however; it usually depends
on the situations they find themselves in or, more generally, on the social context. This is the sec-
ond concept which will recur in the pages to follow. How we evaluate our group memberships and
their meaning for us depends on other groups in our environment, on social structural factors (such
as status and power), and on wider cultural factors (such as prevailing value systems). Groups are
also important because they allow us to achieve our objectives. They are, in other words, vehicles
for social action, often in pursuit of social change, and this is the third theme we emphasise in
this book.
Definition
Even the most superficial survey of textbooks on group dynamics quickly reveals a wide diversity of
meanings associated with the word ‘group’ (Cartwright and Zander 1968). For some theorists, it is
the experience of common fate which is the critical factor (e.g. Campbell 1958; Lewin 1948; Rabbie
and Horwitz 1988). Thus, we can say that Jews in Nazi Europe constituted a group because of their
common (and tragic) fate of stigmatisation, imprisonment, and extermination. For other thinkers,
the existence of some formal or implicit social structure, usually in the form of status and role
Group Processes: Dynamics within and Between Groups, Third Edition. Rupert Brown and Sam Pehrson.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2 1 The Reality of Groups
relationships, is key (e.g. Sherif and Sherif 1969). The family is a good example here: we can regard
the family as a group because its members have very well-defined relationships with one another
(as parent, child, sibling, etc.), and these relationships usually carry with them clear power and status
differences. However, a third school of thought suggests that these structural relations come about
because of a still more elementary feature of groups – the fact that they consist of people in face-to-
face interaction with one another (e.g. Bales 1950). And, of course, this is a characteristic of many of
the groups we belong to – our family, our work group, and a host of others.
The second and third types of definition only really seem applicable to small groups (say, of 20
members or less) and would seem to exclude large-scale social categories such as ethnic groups (as
in the example of the Jews cited previously), social class, or nationality. And yet, as we shall see in
later chapters, these larger category memberships can influence people’s behaviour just as surely as
the smallest face-to-face group. This problem has led some writers to propose a more subjective
definition of the group in terms of people’s self-categorisations (Tajfel 1981; Turner 1982). According
to this view, a group exists when,
two or more individuals … perceive themselves to be members of the same social category.
(Turner 1982, p. 15)
Thus, to return to our first example, Jews constitute a group because a significant number of people
say to themselves ‘I am a Jew’. The value of this characterisation is its simplicity and its inclusiveness,
and for these reasons, it is the definition we shall adopt in this book. It is difficult to imagine a group
in which its members did not at some stage mentally classify themselves as actually belonging to it,
and the definition also encompasses the smallest unit (a dyad) as well as larger social categories like
ethnic groups or nations.
That said, it is worth noting that, for most practical purposes, a purely subjectivist conception of a
group might miss an important feature of most real-world groups – that their existence is typically
known to others (Merton 1957). A central theme of this book is that we need to consider groups not
just in their own right but also in relation to other groups. Thus, although Turner’s definition will
serve us well, we would emphasise that an additional factor in many group contexts is also the extent
to which that group is visible to or recognised by other groups. This becomes important for some
marginalised or stigmatised groups (e.g. sexual minorities) who may face a struggle to persuade the
majority to accept their existence.
The Individual–Group Relationship

Before we can begin investigating the properties of groups and their effects, there is an important
issue which must be discussed first.1 This concerns the nature of the relationship of the individual
to the group – what Allport (1962) described as social psychology’s ‘master problem’. To put it at its
simplest, the question is this: is there more to groups than the sum of the individuals that comprise
them?
1 For a more detailed discussion of the issues covered in this and the following section, see Brown and Turner (1981).
The Individual–Group Relationship 3
Allport himself was in no doubt about the answer. In one of the earliest social psychology texts, he
wrote
There is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and entirely a psychology of

individuals.
(Allport 1924, p. 4)
The thrust of this often-quoted remark was aimed at some of his contemporaries who held that
groups had some mental properties over and above the consciousness of the individuals which make
them up. Thus, Le Bon (1896) and McDougall (1920) both talked of a crowd possessing a ‘group
mind’ which led it to perform deeds which would be considered unthinkable by the individual crowd
members on their own. We shall return to the topic of crowd behaviour later in the book (Chapter 6),
but, for the moment, let us consider Allport’s argument against this ‘group mind’ thesis. Allport’s main
point was that a term like the ‘group mind’ could not be independently verified; it was not possible to
touch or observe this entity which was supposed to possess consciousness, apart from the individuals
that comprised it.
In this, he was surely right: to talk of a group having a ‘mind of its own’ does seem to be an unfor-
tunate lapse into metaphysics. However, in rejecting the idea of a ‘group mind’, Allport wanted to
go further and dispose of the concept of the group altogether. Although in his later writings (e.g.
Allport 1962) he appeared to modify his position somewhat, at heart he was still a strict individualist,
believing that group phenomena could ultimately be reduced to individual psychological processes.
This reductionist view has not gone unchallenged, however. Others have argued that a rejection
of the ‘group mind’ fallacy does not imply that we should abandon the study of group processes in
their own right. Beginning with Mead (1934), and followed by Sherif (1936), Asch (1952), and Lewin
(1952), these thinkers all insisted on the reality of social groups, believing them to have unique prop-
erties which emerge out of the network of relations between the individual members. This idea was
nicely expressed by Asch (1952) with a chemical analogy. A substance like water, he argued, is made
up of the elements hydrogen and oxygen and yet has very different properties from either constituent.
Furthermore, these same molecular constituents when differently organised or structured produce
substances with quite different characteristics (e.g. ice, water, steam). Thus, in a real sense, the com-
pound H2 O is not the simple aggregate of its constituents but is crucially affected by their arrange-
ment. So, too, with human compounds, or groups:
We need a way of understanding group process that retains the prime reality of individual and
group, the two permanent poles of all social processes. We need to see group forces arising out
of the actions of individuals and individuals whose actions are a function of the group forces
that they themselves (or others) have brought into existence.
(Asch 1952, p. 251)
For both Asch and Sherif, the reality of groups emerges out of people’s common perceptions of
themselves as members of the same social unit and in various relations to one another within that unit.
Associated with these perceptions are various group products such as slogans, norms, and values, and
these, too, can become internalised and hence serve to guide people’s behaviour. For these reasons,
it is possible to accept Allport’s critique of the ‘group mind’, and yet disagree with his conclusion that
the concept of ‘group’ has no place in a rigorous social psychology. Endorsing the words of Sherif,
that pioneer of group psychology, the view we take in this book is
We cannot do justice to events by extrapolating uncritically from man’s [sic] feelings, attitudes,
and behaviour when he is in a state of isolation to his behaviour when acting as a member of
a group. Being a member of a group and behaving as a member of a group have psychological
consequences. There are consequences even when the other members are not immediately
present.
(Sherif 1966, pp. 8–9)
The Interpersonal-Group Continuum

What does it mean to say a person is ‘acting as a member of a group’? Tajfel (1978a), an impor-
tant theorist of group processes, also stressed the need to distinguish interpersonal behaviour from
behaviour in group settings. He suggested three criteria which help us to make the distinction. The
first, and most crucial, is the presence or absence of at least two clearly identifiable social categories,
for example, a black and a white person, man and woman, and worker and employer. The second
is whether there is low or high variability between persons within each group in their attitudes or
behaviour. Group behaviour is typically homogeneous or uniform, while interpersonal behaviour
shows a range of individual differences. The coordinated singing and dancing of jubilant Icelanders
in Reykjavik following their victory over England in the 2016 European Football Tournament pro-
vide a graphic illustration of such behavioural uniformity (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/
06/28/incredible-scenes-in-reykjavik-as-iceland-knock-england-out-of-e/). Those same Icelanders,
the day before or after, went their multitudinous individual ways. The third is whether there is low or
high variability in one person’s attitudes and behaviour towards other group members. Does the same
person react similarly to a wide range of different others (as in group stereotyping – see Chapter 7)
or does she/he show a differentiated response to them? In brief, Tajfel saw all social behaviour as
lying on a continuum where, at one end, the interaction is seen as being determined by the member-
ship of various groups and relations between them while, at the other, it is decided more by personal
characteristics and interpersonal relationships (Brown and Turner 1981; Tajfel, 1978a).
This distinction is beautifully caught in a scene from Ken Loach’s (1995) film about the Spanish
Civil War, ‘Land and Freedom’. In it, the English hero of the story, a Communist Party member from
Liverpool, has been making love with a Spanish comrade that he met whilst fighting for P.O.U.M.,
one of the several groups aligned against Franco’s fascists. Just after their moments of intimacy he
reveals that he is leaving P.O.U.M. to join the communist-led International Brigade. Instantly, her
attitude towards him changes, and she leaves with hardly another word. The discovery that he was
abandoning P.O.U.M. for another party, a group she saw as opposed to the cause she was struggling
for, transformed their interpersonal relationship as two lovers into an intergroup one as members of
rival political factions.
As a more formal illustration of this interpersonal-group distinction, let us consider the findings
from an early experiment on gender stereotyping (Doise et al. 1978). Here, children were asked to
look at a series of photographs of boys followed by a similar set of pictures of girls (or vice versa).
For each picture, they had to check off various trait adjectives which they thought applied to the boy
or girl in question. In the ‘experimental’ condition, the children were made aware of the two sets of
The Interpersonal-Group Continuum 5
photographs from the outset. In the ‘control’ condition, they were not aware of the second set until
they had completed the first. In other words, we might assume that for the ‘control’ children, the
second set of pictures arrived somewhat as a surprise, and hence presumably gender was less salient
for them whilst they were making their initial judgements. We could, therefore, classify this sec-
ond condition as being somewhat more ‘interpersonal’ in nature as compared to the former more
group-oriented condition. The judgements made by the children seemed to be consistent with this
assumption. In the ‘experimental’ condition, the judgements were clearly patterned along gender
lines: the male and female photographs received few traits in common, and within each set, there
were more identical traits checked. In the ‘control’ condition, in contrast, the children seemed to pay
more attention to the idiosyncratic features of each picture: there was much less perceived differen-
tiation between the boys and girls and less perceived similarity within each category.
Before we leave this issue, there are three further points to be made. The first is that what dis-
tinguishes interpersonal and group behaviour is not primarily the number of people involved. Thus,
where police and strikers face each other across a picket line, what places that interaction towards the
‘group’ pole is not necessarily the fact that many people are involved. What indicates it as an instance
of group behaviour is the uniformity of their behaviour, which suggests that the participants appear to
be interacting in terms of their group memberships rather than their distinctive personal characteris-
tics. This is important because social encounters are frequently rather ambiguous to define. Take, for
instance, an interaction between just two people who happen to belong to different social categories
(e.g. a man and a woman). Is this encounter an interpersonal one because just two people are involved
or is it a group-based interaction because of the category difference? From the barest description we
have just given, it is not possible to say. What would be needed before we could characterise this sit-
uation would be a close study of the content of the interaction between them. If it appeared by word
and gesture that the participants were orientating towards each other in a relatively predictable and
sex-stereotypic fashion, then this would indicate an instance of group behaviour. In the absence of
this, the idiosyncratic nature of the interaction would suggest a more interpersonal encounter.
This raises the second point that the interpersonal-group distinction is based on a continuous
dimension and is not an either/or dichotomy. Most social situations will contain elements of both
interpersonal and group behaviours. After all, people enter even the most group-based interaction
with a unique prehistory and set of personal dispositions and even the most intimate exchange
between two lovers will contain some group-stereotypic features. While this necessarily complicates
a complete analysis of any particular situation, since both sorts of processes will be at work, it does
not obviate the need for a clear understanding of the difference between these sorts of processes and
how they both interact.
The third and most important point is that, if we accept this difference, then it follows that we
may need rather different kinds of theories to understand group process than we typically use to
explain interpersonal behaviour.2 Theories about interpersonal behaviour typically invoke either or
both of two kinds of process. One is the operation of some factor within the individual – for instance,
the person’s personality make-up, cognitive style, or emotional state. The other is the nature of the
relationship between individuals – for instance, whether they like or dislike each other or whether
2 Note that in suggesting that we may need other kinds of theories we are not denying that those could still aim to explain
the behaviour of individuals. Indeed, with Allport, we believe that a social psychology of group processes should be mainly
concerned with the behaviour of individuals. The difference is that we are concerned with individuals as group members
and not with individuals as individuals.
they have similar attitudes. In other words, variations in people’s behaviour are explained either by
differences between the people themselves or by differences in the personal relations between them.
But once we are dealing with group situations, such explanations are less useful because two of the key
characteristics of group situations have to do with uniformities between individuals rather than their
differences. One football fan may taunt another, particularly if they are wearing different coloured
scarves, in ignorance of, or despite, many similarities of attitude, socio-economic status, physical
appearance and personality. And if there are a thousand such supporters together, the multiplicity of
personality types and the complexity of interpersonal relations both within each group and between
the groups become enormous, and yet their behaviour is often strikingly uniform. The conclusion
must be, therefore, as one of us wrote elsewhere,
that the direct extrapolation of theories about interpersonal behaviour to group contexts is
inherently fraught with difficulties and thus that alternative theories, relating specifically to
group behaviour, are necessary.
(Brown and Turner 1981, p. 46)
One of the purposes of this book is to examine those other theories and assess their utility and
relevance for understanding group phenomena.
Three Unifying Themes: Social Identity, Social Context and Social Action
In the previous section, we noted how people’s behaviour can change dramatically and suddenly once
groups come to the fore psychologically. What underlies this ‘switching’ process? Tajfel (1978a), fol-
lowed by Turner (1982), suggested that it is governed by changes in the way people see themselves,
in their self-concepts. According to these theorists, the self-concept can be considered as having two
components: personal identity and social identity. Personal identity refers to self-perceptions in per-
sonal or idiosyncratic terms – for example, ‘I am an outgoing person’ or ‘I am a lover of blues music’.
Social identity, on the other hand, denotes self-definitions in terms of category memberships – for
example, ‘I am a Liverpool supporter’ or ‘I am a man’. It was this second conception of identity that
formed the heart of Social Identity Theory (SIT), Tajfel and Turner’s enduring contribution to our
understanding of group processes (Tajfel, 1978b; Tajfel and Turner 1979, 1986). Because we, too,
consider social identity to be such an important concept, we have chosen to use it as one of three
unifying themes of this book.
Tajfel defined social identity thus
…that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his3 (sic) knowledge of his
membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance
attached to that membership.
(Tajfel 1978b, p. 63; emphasis in original)
It is worth making a few comments about this definition before considering the theory which grew
out of it.
3 Of course, women can have a social identity too!

Note, first, that many group memberships can, in principle, contribute to our social identity
although probably not all will do so simultaneously. In different situations, different identities come
into play or, as we would say more formally, become psychologically salient. What determines identity
salience? One factor is one’s status as a member of a numerical minority or majority. Whilst writing
this chapter, one of us was enjoying a few months sabbatical in Italy. During that sojourn, his appear-
ance and his execrably accented Italian marked out his minority status wherever he went, with a
resulting much enhanced self-consciousness of his Englishness. Research confirms that this was not
an idiosyncratic impression; generally, minorities tend to have a stronger sense of their group identity
than majorities (McGuire et al. 1978; Simon and Brown 1987; Verkuyten 2005).
However, relative numerosity is not the only determinant of identity salience. Frequently, it will
be features of the situation itself which will evoke one identity rather than another. Consider the
following events, all occurring within 24 hours of each other in June 2016: BBC TV aired a debate on
the forthcoming referendum about whether Britain should remain in or leave the European Union
(EU) (15 June 2016); the University and College Union, the main trade union representing academics,
called a strike in support of its pay claim (15 June 2016); England played Wales in the European
football tournament (16 June 2016). Observing each of these events evoked three different identities
of one of the authors of this book (Rupert): in the first, as a European (fearful of Britain’s possible exit
from the EU4 ); in the second, as a trade unionist (angry at his employer’s continued miserly treatment
of its staff ); in the third, as an Englishman (ever hopeful that we might one day actually win a football
tournament5 ). In short, it is ‘horses for courses’ as far as identity salience is concerned – different
contexts, different identities (Oakes et al. 1994; Reicher et al. 2010).
Although our social identities are situationally labile, it is also true that, for some people, certain
identities may be chronically salient. Thus, for highly racist people, their ethnic identities are likely to
be always readily accessible, a permanent (if myopic) lens through which they view and interpret the
world. Or, to take another example, a person belonging to a stigmatised group, or who has a strong
concern about injustice faced by a particular group, might also have a chronically accessible social
identity based on this, for quite different reasons. This chronic accessibility may be due to any num-
ber of personal (biographical) reasons. Nevertheless, however deeply embedded a particular identity
might be, it is unlikely to prevent other identities being activated if a given situation demands it. To
pursue our above anecdotal example of group salience a little further, the other author (Sam) shares
all three relevant group memberships (European, trade unionist and English). The EU referendum
and the union’s call to strike had similar effects on the salience of his social identities. However, the
football match that roused such enthusiastic patriotism in Rupert was met with near-total indiffer-
ence by Sam, his fellow ingroup member. This highlights a further way in which situations interact
with individual differences: one of us has an English identity closely tied to football whilst the other
does not. Indeed, many of the large-scale complex collective identities that are so potent in most
societies – ethnicity, religion, nationality, class and gender – can be understood and defined quite
differently by members of the same group, a point that we will return to throughout this book.
A second point is that what makes a given aspect of identity social rather than a personal depends
on whether it serves to define us in collective rather than individual terms in any specific situation.
It is not that some aspects of ourselves always function as our social identities, and others are always
4 A fear which proved well-founded. On 23 June, 2016, a majority of British voters in the referendum voted to leave the EU.
5 A hope, alas, dashed once more. On 27 June, 2016, England were eliminated from the tournament, having been beaten
2-1 by Iceland.
part of personal identity. Features of ourselves that we usually think of as part of our individuality
could very well become social identities under the right conditions. For example, both authors of this
book wear glasses. Whilst this is an attribute that we presumably share with some readers and not
others, none of us is likely under normal circumstances to think of it as a group membership. Rather,
in combination with numerous other similarities and differences between us, wearing glasses – to
the extent that we even think about it at all – is simply one part of our individuality. Yet, as Simon
(1997) points out, it is possible to imagine hypothetical scenarios in which this would be different.
An oppressive government in some imagined (hopefully very unlikely!) dystopia might persecute
glasses-wearers as part of a eugenic project to eradicate imperfect vision from the population, for
instance. Under such circumstances, whether one wears glasses or not could become a crucial group
membership that binds us powerfully together (see also, Pehrson and Reicher 2014). The point here is
that the distinction between social and personal identities does not describe two inherently different
kinds of attributes, but rather different ways that attributes can function in context: either defining
us as unique individuals or bringing to the fore our commonality with others whilst simultaneously
distinguishing us as a group from those who do not share that attribute.
A third observation about Tajfel’s definition of social identity is that it is multi-faceted – it has
cognitive (‘knowledge’), evaluative (‘value’), and affective (‘emotional significance’) components. So,
when travelling abroad, we may become more aware of our nationality, we will usually have some
sense of our country’s standing relative to other countries, and we may have feelings towards or about
our country, especially if it has done something we are proud or ashamed of. Taken together, these
three components comprise our national identity. Although much of the early research inspired by
(SIT) focussed mainly on the first two elements, subsequent work turned its attention to the emo-
tional aspects of social identity (e.g. Mackie et al. 2009; Smith 1993; see Chapter 9). And measurement
attempts have also typically incorporated all three elements into scales of group identification (Brown
et al. 1986; Ellemers et al. 1999; Leach et al. 2008).
Armed with the concept of social identity, Tajfel and Turner (1979, 1986) sought to spell out its
implications for group and intergroup behaviour in their famous SIT. The theory rests on three simple
assumptions: (i) in general, people prefer to view themselves positively rather than negatively – they
seek to have a positive self-concept; (ii) since, as we have just noted, people’s self-concepts are often
bound up with their group memberships, it follows that they will also seek to have a positive social
identity; (iii) the evaluation of those group memberships, those social identities, is essentially com-
parative – our own groups are always regarded as similar to, or better (or worse) than some other
groups. From these three ideas, Tajfel and Turner then drew out two implications: given a general
preference for a positive identity, people will be motivated to seek out ways their ingroups can be
seen as different from and better than outgroups, the so-called search for ‘positive distinctiveness’
(Tajfel and Turner 1979, p. 44); when that search is thwarted, that is, where people’s social identity is
not positive, they will take steps to remedy the situation. These may mean abandoning their ingroup
for another or they could involve creatively developing new forms of intergroup comparison which
would show the ingroup in a more favourable light.
These, then, are the bare bones of SIT. In later chapters, we will put some flesh on that skeleton as
we discuss the theory’s implications for topics as varied as group formation (Chapter 2), social influ-
ence (Chapters 3 and 4), leadership (Chapter 4), group effectiveness (Chapter 5), collective behaviour
(Chapters 6 and 8), and intergroup reconciliation (Chapter 9). For now, though, let us just underline
some features of the ‘social identity approach,’ as Reicher et al. (2010) have dubbed it. Doing so will
allow us to introduce the other unifying themes of the book.
The first point is an obvious but important one. With the definition of social identity provided by
Tajfel (1978b), it follows that, given some degree of identification, whatever happens to the group
also happens to its members. Its successes become their successes, its travails their travails. This was
illustrated in an early study by Cialdini et al. (1976). They observed college students on the days fol-
lowing inter-collegiate football games. If their college had won, college scarves and clothing were
much more visible around campus than if it had lost (see also, Snyder et al. (1986) for an experimen-
tal demonstration of the same phenomenon). As a less trivial example, consider the reactions of the
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community in the USA following the horrific mur-
der of 50 people at a Gay night-club in Orlando, Florida in June 2016 (https://www.theguardian.com/
world/live/2016/jun/12/florida-nightclub-shooting-terrorism-suspect-updates). If the results of
some recent research of ours are to be believed, it is very likely that the LGBT community felt a
mix of threat, anger, and fear on learning of such a horrific homophobic attack (Paterson et al. 2018).
Even though (thankfully) the vast majority of American LGBT people were not directly affected by
the massacre, their shared LGBT identity will have meant that they felt such emotions vicariously.
The second point we wish to make is to re-emphasise what we wrote earlier about the importance
of the social context for evoking particular social identities. Now, given the snap-shot of SIT that
we have just provided, it is apparent that contextual variables are important in more ways than just
making this or that identity salient; they are also crucial because they provide the parameters within
which those social identities are evaluated and enacted. If our group occupies a somewhat privileged
(or deprived) position in society, this has an impact on how we evaluate it and how we respond to
that intergroup evaluation. We examine some of the implications of such social (dis)advantage in
Chapter 8.
In the sense in which we have just used it, ‘context’ refers to structures of group inequality that are
pervasive in most societies (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). But, there is another, more cultural, interpre-
tation of ‘context’. It is self-evident that all group and intergroup processes occur within systems of
cultural values and norms (Smith et al. 2013). This will sometimes mean that the operation of those
processes takes a very different form in different cultures.6 Let us examine one large cross-cultural
study conducted in 18 different countries by way of an illustration of this point (Becker et al. 2012).
The goal of this research was to investigate the generality of the motive to attain a distinctive iden-
tity. This is obviously relevant to the current discussion since, as we noted previously, SIT holds that
this motive is central to understanding intergroup relations. The participants (all 5158 of them!) were
first asked to write down ten answers to the question, ‘Who are you?’ (Kuhn and McPartland 1954).
Then, for each of their answers, they were asked how important or central it was to their identity and
how happy they felt about each one. Then came four distinctiveness questions where, for each of their
10 answers, participants had to indicate how much each distinguished them from others (general dis-
tinctiveness), gave them a particular role or position in relation to others (position distinctiveness),
made them a different kind of person from others (difference), and created a boundary between them-
selves and others (separateness). Finally, there were some questions about the endorsement of certain
cultural values (e.g. individualism–collectivism, Hofstede 1980. There were three main findings from
this study: first, distinctiveness was consistently regarded as an important facet of people’s identi-
ties across the whole sample, suggesting that it is, indeed, a fairly general motive; second, though,
6Not necessarily, of course. We do not rule out a priori the possibility of some quasi-universal processes. However, we do
not believe it is wise to adopt the latter hypothesis by default.
it seemed to be somewhat stronger motive in countries that were, on average, more collectivistic in
nature; and third, the kind of distinctiveness also depended on culture. In more collectivistic cul-
tures, it seemed to be more important to establish one’s distinctiveness via types of social roles or
positions, while in more individualistic societies, the distinctiveness was derived more from differ-
ences between people. Thus, although a need for distinctiveness is important, as surmised by SIT,
the ways that distinctiveness is established is quite context dependent.
There is one technical aspect of that study by Becker et al. (2012) that is worth mentioning because
it is a good example of how group researchers can incorporate the social context into their research.
By definition, ‘social context’ is not an individual level variable. It refers to some features of the
situation – for example, class-room norms, organisational climate, cultural values – at a supra-
individual level. To study such contextual variables properly it is often useful to use a statistical tech-
nique known as multi-level modelling (e.g. Hox 2002; Pettigrew 2006). This technique allows one to
investigate whether some particular process at an individual psychological level is affected by a vari-
able at a contextual level (or levels). Occasionally, such multi-level analysis yields counter-intuitive
results.
One such surprising discovery was made by us in some research into the relationship between
strength of national identification and anti-immigrant prejudice (Pehrson et al. 2009). From a straight-
forward reading of SIT, one might predict that this relationship should be positive: the more impor-
tant a country is to a person, the more s/he might want to differentiate her/his country from ‘for-
eigners’ – that is, show prejudice. We examined the correlation between national identification and
prejudice in a very large cross-national survey (over 37 000 respondents from 31 different countries).
Sure enough, the overall correlation at an individual level was (weakly) positive (median r = +0.13).7
However, that average correlation disguised much inter-country variation (from −0.06 to +0.37, with
12 countries actually showing effectively a zero correlation). Further investigation revealed some of
the reasons for that variability. It turned out that, in countries where people believed that national-
ity was based on speaking a common language, the identification-prejudice positive correlation was
stronger; where people believed it was based on acquiring citizenship, the correlation was weaker.
This is a classic example of how a relationship at an individual level can be affected by a factor at a
macro (group) level. We shall see other examples of such multi-level research in the chapters that
follow.
Before we conclude this chapter, there is one final point to make about the social identity approach
we are adopting in this book. This is that group processes are not just things that happen to us as
group members (although they often do, as we shall see), but they are also frequently the means by
which we act on the world to change it. In other words, groups, through the identities they confer,
provide the basis for social action. This potential for human agency (and change) stems from the core
idea of SIT and its successor, Self Categorisation Theory (Turner et al. 1987), that in certain situations,
the attributes of the group become internalised by its members. The values, norms, and goals of the
group become the values, norms, and goals of all (or at least most) of the group members. In this way,
they become capable of unified – and hence more effective – collective action.
The importance of this third social action theme will be readily apparent in the chapters which
follow. In our discussion of innovation and change in groups (Chapter 4), we will show how social
7 Interestingly, the same correlation at a country level (taking the average level of identification in each country and the
average level of prejudice) was (moderately) negative (−0.41). Although slightly counterintuitive, it is statistically perfectly
possible for the sign of a correlation at one level of analysis to reverse at a different level.
Summary 11
influence is not always about coercing people to behave uniformly; it is also a mechanism to bring
about change. The same argument reappears still more forcibly when we discuss leadership (Chap-
ter 4), where a key issue is how leaders can become effective ‘entrepreneurs of identity’, the better to
realise a group’s objectives (Haslam et al. 2011). It also surfaces in Chapter 5 where we show how,
in performance settings, groups can sometimes surpass the aggregate of individual capacities, per-
haps because the internalisation of group goals by the group members provides motivational added
value. And the link between social action and change takes centre stage in our discussion of collec-
tive behaviour (Chapter 6) and rebellion and social change (Chapter 8). The recurring theme of these
chapters is to show how social identity processes are implicated in any proper understanding of social
movements.
In summary, then, the three central arguments of this book are, first, that we cannot understand
how people behave in groups, both towards fellow group members and towards those in other
groups, without the concept of social identity – the manifold ways in which people define themselves
in group terms and then attach value and emotion to those self-categorisations. Second, such social
identity processes are always dependent on the social context in which people, and the groups they
belong to, find themselves. Such contextual variables may operate at many different levels, from the
micro-context of particular social environments to the macro-context of societal structures and value
systems. Third, groups provide the principal vehicle for people’s social actions to effect change in their
worlds. This is not to deny other forms of human agency to bring about personal or interpersonal
change but to emphasise the importance of collective action to achieve larger scale social change.
Summary
1. A group has variously been defined as two or more people experiencing some common fate or
coexisting within some social structure or interacting on a face-to-face basis. The simpler and
more comprehensive definition adopted here is two or more people possessing a common social
identity.
2. Some have argued that groups can be reduced to the simple aggregate of the members that com-
prise them. However, just as chemical compounds may differ radically from their constituent ele-
ments so, too, people in groups may act very differently from how they behave when they are in
isolation.
3. It is possible to conceive of all social behaviour as lying on a continuum from interpersonal settings
to group settings. The key features of the latter are that two or more social categories can be
identified, behaviour of group members is typically rather uniform, and individuals’ treatment of
others becomes stereotyped.
4. Groups are important psychologically because they provide people with social identities. This is
the central premise of SIT, a theoretical approach which has many ramifications for group and
intergroup processes. According to SIT, social identity has cognitive, evaluative, and emotional
components: it comprises our knowledge of our group memberships and their associated evalua-
tive and affective significance for us. Which identities are important for us at any moment depends
strongly on contextual factors.
5. SIT holds that people generally prefer a positive social identity and will work hard to sustain this.
A group’s positivity (or negativity) is most often established via comparisons with other groups.
This leads people to seek positive distinctiveness in their dealings with other groups.
6. Three recurring themes in this book are social identity (as just described), social context (the
micro- and macro-features of the environments in which groups operate), and social action
(groups are vehicles for achieving our goals and bringing about social change).
Further Reading
Asch, S.E. (1952). Social Psychology, chapter 9.
Brown, R.J. and Turner, J.C. (1981). Interpersonal and intergroup behaviour. In: Intergroup Behaviour
(eds. J.C. Turner and H. Giles).
Reicher, S.D., Spears, R., and Haslam, S. A. (2010). The social identity approach in social psychology. In:
Sage Identities Handbook (eds. M. Wetherell and C. Mohanty).
References
Allport, F.H. (1924). Social Psychology. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
Allport, F.H. (1962). A structuronomic conception of behaviour: individual and collective. Abnormal and
Social Psychology (64): 3–30.
Asch, S.E. (1952). Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Bales, R.F. (1950). Interaction Process Analysis: A Method for the Study of Small Groups. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press.
Becker, M., Vignoles, V.L., Owe, E. et al. (2012). Culture and the distinctiveness motive: constructing
identity in individualistic and collectivistic contexts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 102:
833–855.
Brown, R. and Turner, J.C. (1981). Interpersonal and intergroup behaviour. In: Intergroup Behaviour
(ed. J.C. Turner and H. Giles), 33–65. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brown, R.J., Condor, S., Matthews, A. et al. (1986). Explaining intergroup differentiation in an industrial
organisation. Journal of Occupational Psychology 59: 273–286.
Campbell, D.T. (1958). Common fate, similarity and other indices of the status of aggregates as social
entities. Behavioral Science 3: 14–25.
Cartwright, D. and Zander, A. (eds.) (1968). Group Dynamics: Research and Theory. New York, NY:
Harper & Row.
Cialdini, R.B., Borden, R.J., Thorne, A. et al. (1976). Basking in reflected glory: three (football) field
studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 34: 366–374.
Doise, W., Deschamps, J.C., and Meyer, G. (1978). The accentuation of intracategory similarities. In:
Differentiation Between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Integroup Relations
(ed. H. Tajfel). London: Academic Press.
Ellemers, N., Kortekaas, P., and Ouwerkerk, J.K. (1999). Self-categorisation, commitment to the group
and group self-esteem as related but distinct aspects of social identity. European Journal of Social
Psychology 29: 371–389.
Haslam, S.A., Reicher, S.D., and Platow, M.J. (2011). The New Social Psychology of Leadership: Identity,
Influence and Power. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage.
References 13
Hox, J. (2002). Multilevel Analysis: Techniques and Applications. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Kuhn, M.H. and McPartland, T.S. (1954). An empirical investigation of self attitudes. American
Sociological Review 19: 68–76.
Le Bon, G. (1896). The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Leach, C.W., van Zomeren, M., Zebel, S. et al. (2008). Group-level self-definition and self-investment: a
hierarchical (multi-component) model of in-group identification. Journal of Personality and Social
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Press.
McDougall, W. (1920). The Group Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGuire, W.J., McGuire, C.V., Child, P., and Fujioka, T. (1978). Salience of ethnicity in the spontaneous
self concept as a function of one’s ethnic distinctiveness in the social environment. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 36: 511–520.
Mead, G.H. (1934). On Social Psychology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Merton, R.K. (1957). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York, NY: The Free Press.
Oakes, P.J., Haslam, A., and Turner, J.C. (1994). Stereotyping and Social Reality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Paterson, J.L., Brown, R., and Walters, M.A. (2018). The short and longer term impacts of hate crimes
experienced directly, indirectly and through the media. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218802835.
Pehrson, S. and Reicher, S.D. (2014). On the meaning, validity and importance of the distinction between
personal and social identity: a social identity perspective on Identity Process Theory. In: Identity
Process Theory: Identity, Social Action and Social Change (ed. R. Jaspal and G. Breakwell), 97–116.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pehrson, S., Vignoles, V., and Brown, R. (2009). National identification and anti-immigrant prejudice:
individual and contextual effects of national definitions. Social Psychology Quarterly 72: 24–38.
Pettigrew, T.F. (2006). The advantages of multilevel approaches. Journal of Social Issues 62: 615–620.
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Reicher, S.D., Spears, R., and Haslam, S.A. (2010). The social identity approach in social psychology. In:
The Sage Handbook of Identities (ed. M. Wetherell and C.T. Mohanty). London: Sage.
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Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Cultures: Engaging with Others in a Changing World. London: Sage.
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121–138.
15
Group Formation and Other Elementary Group Processes
In this chapter, we consider some fundamental aspects of group life. We begin, appropriately enough,
with the process of group formation: How is it and why is it that groups come into being the first place,
both physically and psychologically? One important factor in the formation of groups is the existence
of some interdependence between people so that what happens to one person has implications for
others. This may be the result of some chance event or it can stem from the coordinated nature of
people’s activities. This is the topic of the first section. Being linked together, whether by circumstance
or task, has an important psychological consequence and that is that it instigates social categorisation
processes – people are seen as belonging to different groups. Some in our social environment are seen
as belonging with ‘us’ in the ingroup and, usually, others are categorised as ‘them’ in the outgroup.
The topic of social categorisation and its associated cognitive and behavioural phenomena is the focus
of the second part of the chapter. From there, we move to the dynamics of joining – and joining in
with – groups. How is the process of becoming a member of a new group typically accomplished and
what happens once we are in the group and participating in its activities? This is the subject of the
third section.
Interdependence
This is a book about how people think, feel, and behave as members of groups. Already we have
encountered quite a range of different groups, and, in the pages to come, we will meet many more:
protesting crowds; military units; political parties; trade unions; work groups; national, ethnic, and
gender categories; and, of course, the ubiquitous ad hoc laboratory group. The nature of these groups
and of people’s experiences within them differ in a multitude of ways – their size, the amount of face-
to-face interaction that typically occurs within them, the degree of interpersonal intimacy exchanged
between their members, the permeability of their boundaries (Lickel et al. 2000) – yet there is one
factor common to many, if not all, of them. This is that their members are – or perceive that they
are – interdependent: one person’s experiences, actions, and outcomes are linked in some way to the
experiences, actions, and outcomes of others in the group.
The importance of interdependence in the formation and functioning of groups was first noted by
Lewin (1948), who had a profound effect on the thinking of a whole generation of group researchers
(e.g. Cartwright, Deutsch, Festinger, and Rabbie). The idea arose out of his field theory of social
behaviour in which individuals and their social relations were conceived of in topological terms as
16 2 Group Formation and Other Elementary Group Processes
a series of ‘life spaces’ (e.g. family, work, church, etc.) under the influence of various ‘force vectors’
(Lewin 1952). The details of this rather abstract and formal theory need not concern us, especially
since the theory itself has attracted little systematic research. However, two key ideas which emerged
from it are important to an understanding of elementary group processes. One is interdependence
of fate, and the other is task interdependence.
All in the Same Boat: Interdependence of Fate

Lewin believed that groups do not come into existence in a psychological sense because their mem-
bers are similar to one another (although they may be); rather, a group exists when the people in it
realise that their fate depends on the fate of the group as a whole. As he put it:
it is not similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but interdependence

of fate.
(Lewin 1948, p. 165)
The importance of interdependence of fate – or ‘being in the same boat’ as it is colloquially known –
has been documented by Drury and his colleagues in a series of interview studies with survivors of
disasters and emergencies (Drury et al. 2009a,b). Some of these literally involved people being in
the same boat together (the sinking of cruise ships in the Mediterranean (1988) and off the coast of
South Africa (1991)); others involved people caught up in football crowd tragedies (e.g. Hillsborough
Stadium, 1989) or terrorist bombings (e.g. 7 July 2005 in London). Reading through the accounts
provided by these survivors, a striking commonality amongst them is how collections of strangers
(on a ship, underground train or football stadium) became welded together by the events that were
befalling them. Here is how one witness of the London bombings described it:
Interviewer: Can you say how much unity there was in a scale of one to ten?
Respondent: I’d say it was very high I’d say it was seven or eight out of ten.
Interviewer: Ok and comparing to before the blast happened what do you think the unity was
like before?
Respondent: I’d say very low – three out of ten, I mean you don’t really think about unity on a
normal train journey, it just doesn’t happen you just want to get from A to B, get a seat maybe.
(Drury et al. 2009b, p. 82)
An interesting consequence of this strong feeling of ‘we-ness’ that seems to emerge in events like
these is that people often show remarkable courtesy and helpfulness towards others around them
(Drury 2012). This is in striking contrast to the images of ‘panicking’ ‘selfish’ mobs that are sometimes
conveyed by newspaper accounts of the same events. As we shall see in Chapter 6, such conceptions
can trace their roots back to a nineteenth century theory of the crowd (Le Bon 1896) and have been
challenged by more recent studies of how groups of people actually behave when faced with life-
threatening situations.
The role of interdependence of fate in group formation was demonstrated experimentally by Rabbie
and Horwitz (1969). Stimulated by Lewin’s ideas, they set out to establish what were the most mini-
mal conditions for the formation of a group. Dutch school children who were strangers to each other
were first divided into small groups (of four persons) on a random basis. The groups were labelled
Interdependence 17
‘green’ and ‘blue’, allegedly for ‘administrative reasons’. They then worked individually on some irrele-
vant tasks for a few minutes. Then, depending on experimental condition, one of a number of things
happened. Some of the children were told that one of the groups was to receive a reward (some new
transistor radios) for helping with the research, whilst the other would not, apparently due to a short-
age of resources. This common outcome of ‘reward’ or ‘deprivation’ was decided by the toss of a
coin, by the experimenter in an arbitrary fashion or by one of the two groups themselves. In Lewin’s
terms, all these groups experienced ‘interdependence of fate’, whether they obtained the radios or
not. However, in the remaining control condition, this experience was omitted; the group members
thus had nothing more in common than their colour label. Finally, the participants were asked to rate
each other privately on a number of sociometric scales (e.g. how ‘open’, ‘responsible’, or ‘desirable as a
friend’ each of them was). The question was: would these impressionistic ratings of what were more
or less complete strangers be influenced by their respective group memberships and thus indicate
that some primitive group had formed? The results showed that in the conditions in which some
interdependence existed there did indeed seem to be clear signs of group influence on the ratings.
Those who came from the children’s own group were consistently rated more favourably than those
from the other group. This was true regardless of whether they had been ‘rewarded’ or ‘deprived’
and irrespective of how that fate had been decided. On the other hand, the ratings from the control
condition appeared to show no such favouritism; the ratings of ingroup and outgroup members did
not differ. Rabbie and Horwitz (1969) concluded from these results that mere classification itself was
not sufficient to form a group and influence people’s judgements along group lines. What seemed to
be necessary for group formation was some elementary sense of interdependence.
Actually, as we shall see shortly, that conclusion turned out to be premature. Under the right condi-
tions, simply being arbitrarily categorised into one group rather than another does reliably generate
forms of group behaviour. Indeed, Rabbie and Horwitz themselves found just this when, in a follow-
up study, they increased the size of their control group. With the larger sample (and hence greater
statistical power), some significant ingroup–outgroup differences were then visible, even in this most
minimal of group situations (Horwitz and Rabbie 1982). Nevertheless, these biases were still much
weaker than those observed in the ‘common fate’ conditions, thus supporting Lewin’s initial surmise
about the importance of fate for the actual and psychological formation of groups.
Working with Others: Task Interdependence

Interdependence of fate is the weakest form of interdependence. Much more important as far as
group process is concerned, argued Lewin (1948), is some interdependence in the activities and goals
of group members: where the group’s task is such that each member’s achievements have implications
for his/her fellow member’s achievements. These implications may be positive or negative. In positive
interdependence, one person’s success either directly facilitates others’ success or, in the strongest
case, is actually necessary for those others to succeed. Thus, in a sports team, one player’s brilliance
(or ineptitude) has beneficial (or deleterious) consequences for the other players in the same team.
In some teams, there is a high degree of complementarity between the members, with each person
playing a crucial role. A group of scientific researchers comprised of theoreticians, experimentalists,
and data analysts would be a case in point. In negative interdependence – known more usually as
competition – one person’s success is another’s failure. The practice in some companies of providing
financial incentives based on individual performance relative to other individuals is an example of
negative interdependence.
This emphasis on the nature of the group’s task and the relationship amongst the group members
sprang from Lewin’s concern to find a better explanation for behavioural uniformity in the group than
those provided by psychoanalytic theory (Freud 1921), or one of its offshoots at that time, frustration–
aggression theory (Dollard et al. 1939). Such theories require individuals in the group to be in the same
state of psychodynamic tension simultaneously for uniform group behaviour to be explained (Tajfel
1978). In contrast, Lewin’s own account in terms of movement to or away from similar ‘goal regions’
made much less of an assumption of equivalence of psychological states. Whatever the individual
dispositions of group members, so long as they shared a common objective they would be likely to
act in concert to achieve it.
What evidence is there for the importance of task interdependence in determining group formation
and subsequent group processes? To begin with, we should note that, for a great many groups, the
very rationale for their existence is explicitly defined in terms of some common objective (Zander
1972). In the rule book of our trade union, for example, the first paragraph of substance spells out the
‘Aims and objects’ of the union, of which the first two are as follows:
2.1 To protect and promote the professional interests of members individually and collectively,
to regulate the conditions of their employment and the relations between them and their
employers, and to safeguard their interests;
2.2 To promote Adult, Further and Higher Education and Research.
(University and College Union 2011)
What effect does defining the group’s task in different ways have on the subsequent group pro-
cess? The first serious attempt to answer this question was made by Deutsch (1949a). Deutsch began
by defining formally the terms ‘cooperation’ and ‘competition’ in terms of the goal interdependence
between a person (X) and several others. In situations of positive (or what Deutsch called ‘promo-
tive’) interdependence, the actions of others towards their goals directly benefit X’s goal attainment,
as we have already noted. It follows, argued Deutsch, that under such conditions X will be motivated
to cooperate with and help these others, will tend to like them also, and the group as a whole will be
propelled strongly towards its goal. On the other hand, in situations of negative (or ‘contrient’) inter-
dependence, X will be more motivated to complete with others, will like them less and the overall
group force in the direction of the goal will be lessened. Associated with these effects should be a
greater amount of communication about the task and higher group productivity in the promotively
interdependent situations.
Some years later, Rosenbaum et al. (1980) put these ideas to the test. They examined both group
performance and group process in a tower construction task where the degree of positive or negative
interdependence was carefully controlled. In groups of three, the object of the exercise was to build
as high a tower as possible. Depending on which condition the group was in, they were financially
rewarded in the following ways: as a function of the total number of blocks comprising the tower
(maximum positive interdependence), according to who had contributed the most blocks to the con-
struction – the winner receiving all the money (maximum negative interdependence) – or according
to some combination of these two allocation systems. As can be seen from Table 2.1, as the degree of
interdependence amongst the group members became more negative, the productivity drops off, the
degree of coordination (indicated by turn-taking) declines, and the amount of interpersonal attrac-
tion decreases. Just as Deutsch had predicted some 30 years earlier, where the group task links its
members in a cooperative structure, the result is greater cooperation, increased group cohesion, and
enhanced performance.
Table 2.1 Group performance and group process under different forms of interdependence
Type of interdependence
100% positive 80%/20% 50%/50% 20%/80% 100% negative
Productivity (# of blocks) 110.5 84.5 88.4 75.6 69.0

Coordination (turn-taking) 0.8 0.7 0.7 0.7 0.5
Attraction for other group members 27.2 26.1 22.4 24.5 23.2
Source: Rosenbaum et al. (1980), table 4. Reprinted with permission of American Psychological Association.
Social Categorisation
As we have seen, interdependence provides a basis for group formation: the things that happen to
us (interdependence of fate) or the things we engage in (task interdependence) can quickly effect a
transformation from us seeing ourselves (and acting) as individuals to seeing ourselves (and acting) as
members of a group. However, powerful though interdependence is, it may not be sufficient by itself to
explain the social psychological process of group formation, the changes that occur in people’s heads
that underpin that emerging sense of group belonging. Of those changes, the most fundamental is
categorisation, the mental allocation of people (including ourselves) to different social groups. For
group formation to occur, some people in our environment must be seen as belonging to the same
category as us and often – though not always – other people will be seen as belonging to a different
category from us. In other words, it is only when people categorise each other as a group that they
actually begin to behave as a group: that is, a so-called psychological group comes into being (Turner
1982, p. 16; Turner et al. 1987, pp. 1–2).
For this insight, we are indebted to self-categorisation theory (SCT), a theory that grew out of the
social identity theory that we introduced in the previous chapter (Turner et al. 1987). With this theory,
Turner and his colleagues sought to explain many of the phenomena discussed in this book: social
influence (Chapter 3), leadership (Chapter 4), group polarisation (Chapter 3), and various forms of
biased intergroup perceptions, evaluations and behaviour (this chapter).
From Individuals to a Group: Entitativity

To understand how categorisation processes can help us understand group formation, let us use an
everyday example. Picture the following scene. You enter a cafeteria of a student union. It is quite full,
this being lunch time in the middle of term. At first glance, there appear to be roughly equal numbers
of both sexes, mostly aged between 18 and 25 but with a sprinkling of older people and one or two
children running around as well. Some different ethnic groups also seem to be represented, since
several languages, accents, skin colours and dress styles are immediately audible or visible. At one
table you notice a group of sportsmen who seem to be celebrating something, at least to judge from
the increasingly raucous songs they insist on subjecting their neighbours to. In this situation there
are obviously several different ways of viewing the people present, including yourself – for example,
in terms of gender, age, ethnicity and so on. Which of these will you be most likely to use and what
factors govern that choice?
To answer this question we need to know more both about you (what are your habitual ways of
seeing the world? What are your needs and goals?) and about the situation you are confronted with
(what are the actual similarities and differences amongst those present? Are any of them engaged in
common activities?).
These ideas were provided by Bruner (1957) who suggested that the categories most likely to
emerge are those which are most ‘accessible’ to a person – this is short-hand for the first set of ques-
tions – and those which best ‘fit’ the situation he or she is faced with – the second kind of questions
(see also Higgins 1989; Oakes et al. 1994). To illustrate these concepts of ‘accessibility’ and ‘fit’, let us
re-examine our opening scenario. We can imagine a number of reasons for you being there or char-
acteristics that you possess which will influence your behaviour. For instance, perhaps you are there
to meet a friend who has just picked up their child from the nursery. In that case, a rapid scanning
of the room by age may be the most efficient way to locate any young children and their parents.
Alternatively, you may be there on a romantic mission, hoping to meet the partner of your dreams.
For such purposes, gender might be a more functional category. Or then again, possibly you have
just come from a demonstration against racism which might sensitise you to the variety of ethnicities
present.
But whatever categories you bring with you, from some personal predisposition or temporary task
goal, they will only be useful if they roughly correspond to the actual people in the cafeteria. Thus,
the categories of stock-broker or bus-driver are unlikely to be used, simply because most student
cafeterias are peopled with so few members of those categories for it ever to make sense to do so.
On the other hand, categorisation by gender or nationality does correspond to some real differences
amongst the participants. Some of these differences are more clear-cut than others and many form
only very fuzzily defined groupings. Campbell (1958) suggested that there are three factors which
lead discrete entities (individual people) to be seen as groups – a property he called ‘entitativity’, a
term that has phonetically challenged generations of social psychologists ever since. The first factor
is familiar to us from the previous section, common fate. People who do things together, or to whom
similar things happen, are more likely to be seen – and to see themselves – as a group. The second is
similarity. People who share common characteristics like language, physical appearance, or dress style
may well classify themselves – and be classified – together. Finally, there is proximity. Those physically
near each other may well be categorised together. On all three counts, those rowdy sportsmen in the
cafeteria might well be regarded as a group.
Further analysis of category accessibility and fit is provided by SCT (Oakes et al. 1994; Turner et al.
1987). In this theory it is noted, first of all, that the two concepts are neither fixed nor independent of
one another. Which categories are most accessible to the observer can change from situation to situ-
ation (according to varying temporary goals), and this naturally has implications for their fit with real
differences amongst those being perceived. Secondly, not all categories are psychologically equiva-
lent: we belong to some and not to others. According to the theory, the categorical dimension most
likely to be adopted in any particular instance is that which simultaneously minimises the difference
between self and the most prototypical ingrouper and maximises the difference between the self and
the prototypical outgroup member. By ‘prototypical’ we mean the person or kind of person who best
represents a group in terms of the attributes which best define it.
This principle is formalised into what is termed the optimal ‘meta contrast ratio’, a symbolic com-
putation in which the average inter-category difference forms the numerator and the average self-
‘ingroup other’ difference constitutes the denominator. This is not a fixed formula for every situation.
If, for some reason, a different ingroup identity becomes salient for the perceiver, a different meta
contrast ratio comes into play. As we saw in the example earlier, depending on whether our observer’s
identity as a (would be) lover or anti-racist protestor was uppermost, very different categories would
be likely to be activated, hence differentially affecting the probability of which groups would emerge.
A simple demonstration of how virtually the same social situation can elicit very different categor-
ical perceptions was provided by Gaertner et al. (1989) in a study investigating how ingroup bias can
be reduced. Gaertner et al. reasoned that if members of two groups could be perceived as belong-
ing to a single superordinate group or, alternatively, simply as separate individuals then any ingroup
bias associated with these categories would be reduced. Accordingly, in three different experimental
conditions they sought either to maintain a group division, to subsume it in a larger category, or to
eliminate group cues altogether. Using artificial group labels (different colour tags), six participants
were initially assigned to one of two groups and had to work in those groups. The two groups were
then brought together to work in a further task, and the nature of this encounter was varied. In the
‘two group’ condition, the groups sat opposite each other at a table, keeping their original group labels,
and interacted mainly amongst themselves with a view to winning a prize for the best solution to the
task. In contrast, in the ‘one group’ condition, the members of the two groups sat in alternate places
around the table, devised a new group label for the larger entity formed by the joining of the groups,
and worked with each other to win a prize for the best joint group solution to the task. And in the
‘individual’ condition, each person sat at a separate table, was asked to think up an idiosyncratic name
and worked towards the best individual solution. Notice how this experimental manipulation incor-
porated all three of Campbell’s (1958) criteria for entitativity – physical proximity (where they sat),
similarity (the labels), and interdependence of fate (the reward outcomes) – and, in so doing, changed
the likely ‘fit’ of one category system over another. As can be seen from Table 2.2, participants’ per-
ceptions of the situation and how they categorised each other reflected the different environmen-
tal cues and interdependencies. We will come back to this study and the theory it gave rise to in
Chapter 9.
The social situation in this experiment was a fairly realistic one, albeit created in the laboratory
with ad hoc groups. However, the cues that give rise to entitativity can be much more minimal than
this. In several experiments, researchers have shown that, by varying the colour and movement syn-
chronicity of various computer generated shapes and cartoon characters, it is possible reliably to
alter perceptions of whether they were seen as belonging together (Dasgupta et al. 1999; Ip et al.
2006; Lakens 2010). Such entitativity perceptions can also be elicited by artificially manipulating the
similarity of composite photographs using a technique known as ‘morphing’ (Dasgupta et al. 1999),
Table 2.2 Situational effects on perceived entitativity (percentage of subjects in each condition
choosing each cognitive representation of the situation)
Experimental condition
Cognitive representation Two-group One-group Separate individuals
Two groups 80.0 21.7 16.7

One group 18.9 71.7 15.8
Separate individuals 1.7 6.7 67.5
Source: Gaertner et al. (1989), table 1. Reprinted with permission of American Psychological Association.
or by systematically varying the emotional expressions of people’s faces (Magee and Tiedens 2006).
In all these experiments, essentially what the researchers do is to vary the within group similarities
and the between group differences among a set of otherwise identical stimuli, thus effectively alter-
ing the meta contrast ratio for the perceiver and increasing the likelihood of the stimuli being seen
as belonging to discrete groups.
Us and Them: Intergroup Differentiation and Intragroup Assimilation

Once collections of people become seen as ‘entitativities’ (groups), other psychological processes
come into play. Of these, perhaps the two most fundamental are intergroup differentiation and intra-
group assimilation (sometimes known as homogeneity) – seeing members of different groups to be
more dissimilar than they really are, and seeing members of the same group to be more similar than
they really are.
Categorical differentiation and assimilation are well-known cognitive phenomena. Two early
demonstrations of these were by Campbell (1956) and Tajfel and Wilkes (1963), both of which
involved a simple physical judgement task. Campbell had his participants learn the physical location
of some nonsense syllables that were presented along a horizontal line. There were two ‘categories’
of syllable, one with the central letter of ‘E’, the other with the final letter as ‘X’. The ‘E’ stimuli always
appeared towards the left, the ‘X’ stimuli to the right, with some overlap in the middle. Participants
made consistent errors in recalling the positions of the overlapping syllables: the ‘E’ stimuli were
remembered as being further to the left than they had actually appeared, and the ‘X’ stimuli further
to the right. In other words, perceiving the stimuli as two distinct sets led participants to exaggerate
the differences between their positions along the line. Tajfel and Wilkes’ task involved judging the
lengths of a series of lines, presented singly. In the experimental condition one simple variation was
introduced: all the shorter lines carried the label ‘A’, the longer lines ‘B’ (see Figure 2.1). This caused
the difference between the longest ‘A’ line and the shortest ‘B’ line to be overestimated: the actual
difference in their lengths was just under a centimetre but they were seen to differ by about 2 cm
(see also, Doise 1976; Eiser and Stroebe 1972; Krueger and Clement 1994).
Most of these studies involved very simple tasks – judging line lengths and so on – and few of them
demonstrated the other categorisation phenomenon, assimilation. However, the same paradigm has
been extended to more obviously social forms of judgements – for example, estimating the polit-
ical orientation of journalists from anonymous newspaper articles or inferring personal attributes
from photographs of boys and girls (Doise et al. 1978; McGarty and Penny 1988). These studies not
only found inter-category differentiation found but also intra-category assimilation: articles or faces
Figure 2.1 Stimuli that are categorised may be subject to estimation

biases. Illustrative examples of the kinds of stimuli used in Tajfel and
Wilkes (1963). Note: These are not the actual stimuli used.
belonging to the same group were seen as more similar to one another when group labels were salient
than when they were not.
When ‘We’ Deserve More than ‘Them’: Minimal Conditions for Intergroup Discrimination
It is one thing to show that people’s cognitive and perceptual judgements become slightly distorted
when categories provide a good ‘fit’ to the situation, but can one find similar biases in more socially
meaningful evaluations and behaviours? Indeed one can.
As we saw earlier (Section ‘All in the Same Boat: Interdependence of Fate’), Rabbie and Horwitz
(1969) showed that experiencing a common fate was sufficient for groups of young children to start
showing ingroup favouritism in their evaluations of their fellow participants. However, it is a moot
point whether a classification like this really constitutes a pure example of social categorisation or,
instead, more of a ‘common fate’ experience in the classic Lewinian sense. Certainly, Tajfel and his
colleagues, when they devised their famous ‘minimal group’ paradigm, believed that the latter con-
ceptualisation of Rabbie and Horwitz’s situation was more precise (Tajfel et al. 1971).
So, in a now celebrated series of experiments, Tajfel and his colleagues set out to find out if they
could create an even more spartan situation in which the mere fact of belonging to a group would be
enough to instigate a rudimentary form of behavioural prejudice – that is, the differential treatment
of ingroup and outgroup members. Like Rabbie and Horwitz, they assigned schoolboys to one or
two groups on a very arbitrary basis, their alleged preference of one of two abstract artists, Paul Klee
and Vassilij Kandinsky.1 In this experiment, the children knew only which group they themselves
had been assigned to, the identity of their fellow ingroup and outgroup members being kept hidden
by use of code numbers. Then, under the pretext of the experiment (‘a study of decision-making’),
the children were asked to allocate money to various recipients using specially prepared booklets of
decision matrices (see Table 2.3 for examples). The identity of the recipients was unknown, but their
group affiliation was revealed. To eliminate self-interest as a possible motive, the children were never
able to award money to themselves directly.
The results were clear. Although they made some effort to be fair in their allocations, the children
showed a persistent tendency to award more money to ingroup recipients than to those they believed
belonged to the other group. Thus, in matrix 1 in Table 2.3, over 70% of the participants made choices
favouring their own group with a mean response from people in the Klee group (say) of between the
14/9 and 13/10 boxes. This was true even when, in absolute terms, the ingrouper might be worse off.
For example, in matrix 2 in Table 2.3, the mean response from people in the Kandinsky group was
somewhere between 13/13 and 11/12 options. Notice that this choice results in the ingroup recipient
actually receiving 6 or 7 points less than s/he might otherwise have done but, crucially, s/he thereby
receives more than the Klee recipient. The results are rather surprising when one considers how
sparse this social setting was. The children were allocated to two meaningless groups on a flimsy
criterion. They did not interact with members of their own or the other group. The two groups had
no current or past relationship with each other. And yet, when asked to allocate sums of money to
anonymous others, the children consistently favoured ingroup members over outgroupers. Simply
being assigned to a group does, after all, seem to have predictable effects on intergroup behaviour.
1 This is but one of several procedures which have been used for group allocation in the minimal group paradigm. Others
include: musical preferences (Brown and Deschamps 1981), dot estimation tasks (Tajfel et al. 1971) and, most minimally of
all, the toss of a coin (Billig and Tajfel 1973).
Table 2.3 Two sample matrices from minimal group paradigm
Reward points
Matrix 1
Member 72 of Klee group 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5
Member 47 of Kandinsky group 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Matrix 2
Member 74 of Klee group 25 23 21 19 17 15 13 11 9 7 5 3 1
Member 44 of Kandinsky group 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7
On each page subjects must choose one pair of numbers (in the same column). These are two of several different types of
matrix used. Matrix 1 was designed to measure general ingroup favouritism, while matrix 2 was designed to measure the
tendency to maximise the difference between ingroup and outgroup recipients. In the experiment, these matrices would be
presented at least twice: once as above and once with the group affiliations of the two recipients reversed. (Technical aspects
of the scoring of these matrices can be found in Bourhis et al. (1994).) In the original experiments, 1 point = 1/10p. Given
that each book contained some 16 pages (each with point values ranging from 1 to 29), the total amount of money which
each boy thought he was dispensing was not inconsiderable. In 1970, this probably amounted to about £0.50 which, at
today’s prices, is probably equivalent to several pounds.
Source: Tajfel et al. (1971).
Intergroup discrimination in this minimal group situation has proved to be a remarkably robust
phenomenon. In more than two dozen independent studies in several different countries using a wide
range of experimental participants of both sexes (from young children to adults), essentially the same
results have been found: the mere act of allocating people to arbitrary social categories is sufficient
to elicit biased judgements and discriminatory behaviour (see Brewer 1979; Diehl 1990; Tajfel 1982).
Despite this empirical consensus, the minimal group paradigm has attracted controversy. This
has focused on the interpretation of the observed data as revealing discrimination or fairness
(Branthwaite et al. 1979; Turner 1980, 1983a; Bornstein et al. 1983a), possible demand character-
istics associated with the paradigm (Gerard and Hoyt 1974; Tajfel 1978a), statistical treatment of
the data (Aschenbrenner and Schaefer 1980; Brown et al. 1980), rival ways of measuring intergroup
orientation (Bornstein et al. 1983a,b; Turner 1983a,b), doubts about the paradigm’s external validity
associated with its obvious high degree of artificiality (Aschenbrenner and Schaefer 1980; Brown et al.
1980), the extent to which economic self-interest can explain the typically observed discrimination
(Rabbie et al. 1989; Turner and Bourhis 1996), and whether the results can be generalised to multi-
group contexts (Hartstone and Augoustinos 1995; Spielman 2000) or to discrimination involving the
allocation of penalties instead of rewards (Hewstone et al. 1981; Mummendey et al. 1992).
Space does not permit us to discuss all these issues here. Nevertheless, some of them do deserve
further consideration. First, can the intergroup discrimination so frequently observed in the minimal
group situation be explained by the operation of self-interest motives (Rabbie et al. 1989)? At first
glance, this seems paradoxical since the paradigm was devised to eliminate self-interest by preventing
participants from giving any money to themselves. However, Rabbie et al. (1989) argue that, while
such direct self-interest may be excluded, participants may still believe that members of each group
will tend to favour each other. In other words, there may be some perceived interdependence and
so people will respond to this by maximising the benefits to fellow ingroup members and hence, by
reciprocity, to themselves (see also, Diehl 1989; Sachdev and Bourhis 1985).
People probably do respond to self-interest considerations when these are made explicit. How-
ever, it is doubtful that self-interest accounts for the discrimination typically observed in the conven-
tional minimal group paradigm, as Turner and Bourhis (1996) have forcefully argued. For one thing,
it remains to be explained why being categorised as a member of a group should, in itself, generate
particular expectations of others’ behaviour. Second, Diehl (1989) shows that the link between reci-
procity expectations and actual behaviour is not a simple one. In this experiment, participants were
given false feedback about outgroup members’ intended (and not actual) allocation strategies. They
were then asked of their own intentions as well as actually to distribute the rewards. There was some
correlation between participants’ own intentions and their assumptions about what outgroup mem-
bers would do. But when it came to their actual behaviour, there was no reliable difference between
those who expected the outgroup to be fair and those who anticipated it being discriminatory. Finally,
there is evidence that when the economic interests of minimal group members are fully satisfied
(by telling them that they will receive full payment for participation irrespective of anyone else’s allo-
cations), they still show intergroup discrimination (Gagnon and Bourhis 1996). Thus, while percep-
tions of interdependence and mutual reciprocity can play a role in guiding group member’ behaviour
in certain circumstances, they do not provide a complete explanation for the minimal intergroup
discrimination.
Second, what happens to intergroup discrimination in the minimal group paradigm if there is more
than one outgroup? In many real-world intergroup contexts, there may be several interacting groups.
As we write, Afghanistan is still an occupied country with NATO forces, the Taliban, the Afghani
army and various ethnic groups all vying for military and political power. In many liberal democ-
racies, it is common to have three or more political parties contesting elections. And, in an age of
global migration, most societies contain a plethora of different cultural groups. When Hartstone and
Augoustinos (1995) extended the standard minimal paradigm by confronting participants with two
outgroups instead of one, few signs of the usual ingroup favouring biases were observed (see also,
Spielman (2000, Study 2)). It is possible that in this case, the minimal categories lose some of their
psychological utility as sociocognitive devices. If we took this to an extreme, let’s say by creating a
dozen or more different minimal groups, one probably would not expect people to attach much sig-
nificance to them and use them as guides for their behaviour.
The third issue is more interesting because it has wider implications for various forms of discrim-
ination outside the laboratory, which involves the negative treatment of members of other groups.
Mummendey et al. (1992) adapted the standard paradigm so that participants were asked to distribute
(what they thought would be) durations of an unpleasantly high-pitched tone or time to be spent on
a boring task. With this measure ingroup favouritism seemed to be eliminated completely and strate-
gies of equalising outcomes (fairness) or minimising the total aversive experience were much more
in evidence. Only in special circumstances – for example, when participants are placed in a low sta-
tus minority group – did the ‘usual’ ingroup favouritism appear. This difference between positive
and negative forms of discrimination is rather pervasive and can also be observed in people’s inter-
group judgements on positively and negatively worded value dimension (Buhl 1999; Mummendey
and Otten 1998).
What seems to happen in this case is that the participants in the minimal group experiments recat-
egorise the situation into ‘us’ (all the participants, whatever their group membership) versus ‘them’
(the experimenters). This could be caused by a feeling of it being inappropriate (counter-normative) of
being asked to inflict unpleasant experiences on one’s peers. If such a recategorisation did occur, then
it would follow from categorisation principles that differences amongst participants (e.g. between
members of Klee and Kandinsky groups) would be reduced while differences between participants
and experimenter would be accentuated. And, indeed, there is some evidence for this explanation
(Gardham and Brown 2001). In Chapter 7, we will return to the topic of relations among three or
more groups when we consider ‘divide and rule’ in the context of intergroup oppression.
Why Do They (and We) Look all the Same? Perceived Intragroup Assimilation (Homogeneity)
We have seen that one reliable indicator that groups have formed or that pre-existing group member-
ships have become salient is the emergence of ingroup favouritism in people’s behaviour or judge-
ments. In SCT’s terms, this is an expression of categorical differentiation, sharpening the contrast
between different groups. What of the complementary process, the enhancement of intragroup
similarities?
Common sense has it that people generally see members of an outgroup as more similar to one
another than members of the ingroup: ‘they are all alike be we are all different’. John Motson, a well-
known (White) football commentator once caused some mild controversy when he admitted that he
sometimes found it difficult to distinguish Black players:
There are some teams where you have got players who from a distance, look almost identical.
And, of course, with more black players coming into the game, they would not mind me saying
that that can be very confusing.
(Independent Newspaper, 5 January 1998)
Although he was roundly criticised for these remarks, Mr Motson was exhibiting what some social
psychologists have claimed is a general principle of group perception (e.g. Ostrom and Sedikides
1992; Quattrone 1986). However, although we have no reason to believe that Mr Motson was anything
but sincere (if somewhat tactless) in his confusion, it turns out that the outgroup homogeneity effect
(as it is known) is far from being a universal characteristic of intergroup variability judgements.
One of the first attempts to study this phenomenon was by Jones et al. (1981) who asked members
of university clubs to rate members of their own club as to how similar they were on a number of
trait dimensions. The exercise was repeated for the members of other clubs. Jones and his colleagues
found a consistent tendency for members of outgroups to seen as more similar to one another than
members of the ingroup (see also, Linville et al. 1989; Quattrone 1986).
What is the explanation for this outgroup homogeneity effect? One view is that it stems from the
different amount of information we have about ingroup and outgroup members (Linville et al. 1989).
We usually know more individuals in our own group, we may interact with them more often and, as
a result, be more aware of the differences among them. Members of the outgroup, on the other hand,
because they are less well known are likely to be seen in a more global and undifferentiated fashion.
A second idea takes a different view, suggesting that it is not information about a number of specific
exemplars which is important but the nature of the category as a whole (Park et al. 1991). According
to this perspective, people hold in their heads, not a tally of specific ingroup outgroup people known,
but more abstract conceptions of the categories as a whole, modelled on the prototypical member of
each and some estimate of the variability around this typical person. The reason that the ingroup may
be seen as more variable is that the conception of that category is both more important (because it
contains the self ), more concrete (again because we have at least one case very well known to us), and
more provisional (because of a presumed greater motivation to form an accurate impression about
those close to us psychologically).
Although intuitively plausible, the first (familiarity) hypothesis does not have much empirical sup-
port. True, Linville et al. (1989) did find that over the period of a semester, members of a university
course rated their fellow class mates as increasingly more variable. However, these findings stand
against a number of other studies which have either found no effects for familiarity, or even an inverse
correlation (e.g. Brown and Smith 1989; Jones et al. 1981; Simon et al. 1991).
Even more problematic is evidence from several studies which have examined variability judge-
ments during the process of group formation. Brown and Wootton-Millward (1993) studied groups
of student nurses over a year of their training. These groups were small (typically fewer than 20 in
each), and their members had extensive daily face-to-face contact with one another. If Linville and
her colleagues are right, the greater mutual acquaintanceship afforded by this experience should have
led to enhanced perceived variability within the ingroup over time, and thus, a more pronounced
outgroup homogeneity effect. In fact, there was no consistent tendency towards greater perceived
ingroup variability over time and, still worse for the familiarity hypothesis, on at least two judgemen-
tal dimensions, it was the ingroup, and not the outgroup, which was seen as more homogenous (see
also, Oakes et al. 1995; Ryan and Bogart 1997).
In fact, there is a whole series of studies which have shown that the outgroup homogeneity effect
is by no means the rule in intergroup perception (Devos et al. 1996; Simon 1992). One important
factor in determining whether it is the ingroup or the outgroup which is seen as more homogenous
is the relative size of the groups concerned. This was shown by Simon and Brown (1987). Reasoning
that where an ingroup is in the minority, it may feel its identity under threat from the larger minority
group, Simon and Brown believed that such threat might lead to a greater need to protect the integrity
of the ingroup by seeing it in more homogenous terms – a kind of psychological closing of ranks.
Using a minimal group paradigm, they independently varied the size of both the ingroup and out-
group and found, as expected, that those who found themselves in a relatively smaller group showed
clear ingroup homogeneity; those in the non-minority groups showed the usual outgroup homo-
geneity effect (see Figure 2.2). Two further details from the experiment confirmed the suspicion that
people’s identities might be involved in this reversal. One was the data from the control conditions in
which exactly the same judgements were made but with one crucial difference – the participants were
not themselves allocated to a group and hence were acting as neutral ‘observers’. These participants
showed no tendency to see smaller groups as more homogenous, thus ruling out the possibility that
our results could be explained as simply an effect of group size (Bartsch and Judd 1993). A second and
clinching point was the finding that those in the minority groups identified more strongly with their
ingroup and members of larger groups (see also Brown and Smith 1989; Simon et al. 1991; Hewstone
et al. 2011 for real-world replications of these minority-majority effects).
We have seen, then, that people’s personal knowledge of ingroup and outgroup members can-
not satisfactorily explain the asymmetry in perceptions of intragroup homogeneity. Moreover, the
existence of ingroup homogeneity in certain intergroup contexts also raises problems for the sec-
ond explanation, which posits more abstract conceptions of ingroup and outgroup (Park et al. 1991).
Another explanation is suggested by the supplementary findings from some of these studies which
revealed that identity was more important for minority than for majority group members (Simon
and Brown 1987; Simon and Pettigrew 1990). As we noted earlier, Turner et al. (1987) have suggested
that the process of identifying with a group involves the simultaneous operation of two processes:
the matching of oneself to what are seen as the key defining, or ‘criterial’, attributes of the ingroup
44 Figure 2.2 Perceived intragroup variability in

minority–majority contexts. Source: Derived from Simon
and Brown (1987), table 1, with permission of American
43 Outgroup Psychological Association.
Perceived variability (0–100)
42
41
Ingroup
40
39
38
Non-minority Minority
Size of ingroup
prototype, and the maximisation of the distance between this and outgroup prototype. To the extent
that people strive to make themselves more similar to what a ‘good ingroup member’ should be, this
will tend to induce an enhanced perception of ingroup similarity – at least along certain dimensions
(Haslam et al. 1996; Kelly 1989).
All in all, therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that an important factor contributing to asym-
metries in group homogeneity perceptions are processes stemming from people’s identities as mem-
bers of certain groups and not others.
On being Similar or Different but still a Group: Individuality, Interaction, and Entitativity
As we have seen, when aggregates of people form themselves into groups they possess increased
entitativity; they are seen as more as a unit and less as a collection of individuals. But this property of
‘groupness’ is not simply a cognitive or perceptual phenomenon, it can have real social consequences
for what the group members feel about themselves and each other. Moreover, and rather contrary
to the tenor of the last section, that sense of entitativity and its associated effects do not necessarily
depend on the actual or implied presence an outgroup and nor either do they require that the group
members relinquish their individuality.
Let us first consider what people feel about belonging to more clearly bonded or entitative groups
as compared to fuzzier or less well-defined units. Common-sense would indicate that people regard
families and friendship groups as more important than neighbourhoods or fellow spectators at a
sports event, and, for once, common-sense would not be wrong. A number of studies have found
clear positive correlations between the entitativity of natural groups and how strongly people identify
with them (Castano et al. 2002; Hogg et al. 2007; Lickel et al. 2000). But can we feel part of a group
even if there is no outgroup on our mental horizon? The short answer is, of course we can! Many
of the groups we belong to, whether these be our families, hobby groups or even boring work-based
committees, do not have obvious – or any – outgroups that give them their raison d’être.
In an elegant series of experiments, Gaertner et al. (2006) set out to demonstrate this simple point
experimentally. In one of these, they allocated people to an arbitrary group of three by drawing cards
from a pack. This group had to undertake a group problem-solving task either in the knowledge
that another group was tackling the same task nearby (outgroup present) or no mention was made
of another group (outgroup absent). Independently of this manipulation, the group members could
either interact with one another face-to-face to solve the task (intragroup interaction present) or had
to tackle the task individually (intragroup interaction absent). Afterwards, they indicated how enti-
tative they saw the ingroup (using a diagrammatical scale where the ‘self ’ was represented at varying
distance from the other ingroup members). If SCT is right, one should have expected the presence of
an outgroup to heighten the perceptions of entitativity, perhaps augmented by any intragroup interac-
tion since this might increase within-group similarities. One would certainly expect little entitativity
when there was no outgroup to create a meta-contrast. In fact, outgroup presence had little demon-
strable effect on entitativity (see Figure 2.3). The key determinant of entitativity was whether the
members had had a chance to interact.
Notice, too, that even in the absence of an outgroup (the lighter bars in Figure 2.3), entitativity was
still higher when there was intragroup interaction than when the outgroup was present, but there
was no interaction. In sum, as Gaertner et al. (2006) put it, there can indeed be an ‘us without them’.
So far, in discussing what factors can transform a collection of individuals into a group-like entity,
the emphasis has been on how similarities among people (and differences from others) facilitate the
emergence of social categories and then people’s subsequent identification. In other words, group for-
mation should be most likely and identification strongest when potential group members are all highly
similar to one another. Yet, as Postmes et al. (2005) have pointed out, this may only be part of the story
Outgroup present
Outgroup absent
3
2
Present Absent
Intragroup interaction
Figure 2.3 The effects of outgroup presence and intragroup interaction on perceived entitativity. Source: Derived
from Gaertner et al. (2006), table 1, with permission of American Psychological Association.
of group formation. There are a great many groups that we belong to where it is precisely the range of
individual differences within the group that helps to give the group meaning and allows it to function
well. Take a football team: for this group to play well, it is usually advantageous for it to contain several
kinds of players, those that can stop goals being scored, those that can create openings for others, and
so on. It is thus defined not so much by its internal homogeneity but by its heterogeneity.2 The same
could be said for many other groups – peer friendship networks, families, work teams, and so on.
Drawing on Durkheim’s (1893/1933) distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity,
Postmes et al. (2005) call the traditional view of entitativity and self-categorisation deductive iden-
tity formation because identities are deduced from shared group attributes. They contrast this with
inductive identity formation, where the group is induced form the individual qualities of the group
members and the interactions among them. In support of this idea, Jans et al. (2011) asked people to
rate various groups that they belonged to on the extent to which they felt the group identities were
formed by the members themselves (inductive identity), how unique they felt within the group (indi-
vidual distinctiveness), how entitative it was, and how strongly they identified with it. Across three
studies, the researchers found an associative chain from inductive identity to distinctiveness to enti-
tativity to identification. They followed this up with an experiment in which four strangers came to
the laboratory and were formed into ‘deductive’ or ‘inductive’ groups (Jans et al. 2012). In the former
condition, each person was given a white t-shirt with four blank spaces on it into which they had to
copy the same team design. In the inductive condition, on the other hand, each person had to devise
their own individual design and copy that onto one square of their team mates’ t-shirts. In this way,
each person was making a distinctive contribution to the team design. Participants in the inductive
condition saw their group as more of a unit and identified more strongly with it than those in the
deductive condition.
So, groups do not always require a suppression of individual difference to provide a satisfactory
identity for their members; indeed, sometimes the complementary interdependence derived from
that heterogeneity helps to create the group in the first place. Group cohesion and diversity can some-
times reinforce each other.
Not Only in Our Heads: The Pragmatic and Rhetorical Use of Categories
We have dwelt at length on how the process of social categorisation is indispensable to group forma-
tion. A group cannot really be said to exist unless it has some psychological reality for its members,
a cognitive boundary that encompasses them and, usually, which excludes others. As we have seen,
where those boundaries are drawn is quite situation-specific and is mainly determined by how well
they ‘fit’ the social context we find ourselves in. But putting it like this makes social categories seem
to be purely cognitive constructions, ready to be activated at a moment’s notice according to the cues
and contingencies of our immediate social environment. Such a view may not do justice to how social
categories can also be used – exploited even – for political purposes and how, too, they can develop
out of intragroup and intergroup interaction.
The latter point is well illustrated by the studies of Gaertner et al. (2006) and Jans et al. (2011,
2012) described in the last section. In both cases, there was clear evidence of people coming to see
2 Perhaps England’s singular lack of success on the international football stage over past decades has been precisely its over-
reliance on a uniform style of player, in contrast to the diversity of many of its more successful competitors.
themselves as members of a group as a consequence of a short period of interacting with others on a

common task. Interactions with outgroups can have a similar effect of creating new social categories.
This was vividly documented by Stott and Drury (2000) and Drury and Reicher (2000) in their par-
ticipant observational studies of political demonstrations. In both cases – one a protest against the
introduction of the ‘poll tax’ in Britain in the 1990s (Stott and Drury 2000), the other an environ-
mental protest against the extension of a motorway (Drury and Reicher 2000) – the heavy-handed
tactics of the police welded previously rather disparate clusters of protestors with different political
views into a unified single group against the police. And, in turn, police perceptions of the crowd as
an orderly and loose-knit collection of protestors were transformed into views of them as a ‘violent
mob’ hell bent on breaking the law. We will look more closely at crowd behaviour in Chapter 6.
Such changes in social categorisation can also be effected from above by leaders hoping to garner
support for their political ends. Reicher and Hopkins (1996, 2001) showed this in their detailed anal-
yses of politicians’ speeches. One example involved Margaret Thatcher and Neil Kinnock, at the time
(1984) leaders of rival political parties in Britain. A close study of their speeches to their respective
party conferences revealed how each of them presented a view of the then dominant political issue of
the day, the 1984–1985 miners’ strike, in a way which sought to marginalise their opponents as a small
extremist group with no political legitimacy. Each was seeking to redefine the political landscape by
invoking hitherto unused social categories and identities. Thus, a category is not just something that
is perceived from the stimuli, but can be something that is argued for, against other possible ways of
categorising the same situation.
We will return to the dynamic relationship between leaders and their groups in a later chapter
but, for now, let it remind us that, whatever else leaders may do, they are sometimes involved in the
process of categorisation itself.
Joining and Interacting in Groups: Some Elementary Group Processes

Joining Groups
The process of joining a group often provokes anxiety. Whether it be a child going to a new school
or an adult changing jobs, the experience of entry into the group, while often exciting, may involve
a degree of stress. Why should this be? It is tempting, perhaps, simply to label these reactions as
‘fear of the unknown’ and leave it at that. Indeed, as we shall see in a later chapter, the process of
new group members acquiring norms may well be motivated by attempts to reduce uncertainty in a
novel situation. But a more detailed study of what happens when people join groups reveals that there
are other processes at work too. These have been discussed in some detail by Levine and Moreland
(1994), who have proposed a temporal model of group socialisation covering the whole sequence from
people’s initial investigation of the group and recruitment to it to their eventual exit. An important
feature of their model is its emphasis on the reciprocity of the individual and the group: it is not
just the individual who experiences changes as a result of entering the group; the group also has to
accommodate its new members. In this section, we deal with three of the many phenomena discussed
by Levine and Moreland: reconnaissance of prospective groups, changes in people’s self-concepts as
they join a group, and the process of initiation into the group. There is an important stage in becoming
a group member that occurs before entering the group. This is the reconnaissance process, the whole
business of investigating – and then deciding between – the various potential groups we might join.
Of course, for some of the groups we belong to, such decisions are made for us. We do not get to
choose which gender we are assigned to, nor into which culture or class we are born. Such ‘ascribed’
group memberships, as they are sometimes termed, are undeniably important influences on us, as
will become clear in subsequent chapters. Nevertheless, throughout our lives, there are many other
groups that we can (and do) choose to belong to, or not. Children can choose which clubs to join at
school; on entering university, students are confronted with a bewildering array of societies aiming
to sign them up; some people still get to decide which jobs to do, even if in these times of economic
recession it is a luxury permitted to a fortunate few. What factors govern our choice to seek out and
then to attempt to join groups such as these, sometimes called ‘achieved’ groups?
Levine and Moreland (1994) suggest one answer: people look to join groups that will be maximally
rewarding to them and minimally costly. This proposition stems from an old idea in social psychology,
social exchange theory (e.g. Homans 1950), which broadly conceives of people’s social relations in
terms of profit maximisation, where investments and outcomes can take psychological as well as
material forms. The obvious inference from this approach is that people’s reconnaissance activities
will be mainly concerned with sizing up what groups can do for them, and what they will expect in
return. (Parenthetically, we can note that exactly the same analysis would apply to groups’ efforts to
investigate and recruit new members – see, for example, Cini et al. (1993).)
But what affects people’s perceptions of rewards and costs? Pavelchak et al. (1986) reasoned that an
important source of information in this regard is people’s prior experiences with other groups. If these
have been favourable, they will be more likely to seek out membership in groups that they anticipate
will furnish them with similar kinds of rewards. Pavelchak et al. (1986) surveyed a large number of new
students to a university and found some evidence in support of this. They asked their respondents
various questions about groups they had belonged to at school, and how pleasant and important
they now rated those memberships. These ratings were significantly, though weakly, related to the
students’ efforts to identify and join university societies. In addition, these same students’ evaluations
of their prospective groups showed a clear bias towards perceiving more rewards associated with the
groups than costs (the number of rewards outnumbered the costs by about two to one). Interestingly,
those who had belonged to a similar organisation at school noted both more rewards and more costs,
suggesting the realistic informational value of that prior experience.
But does the social exchange model which Levine and Moreland (1994) propose tell the whole story
of group reconnaissance? Drawing on self-categorisation theory (Section ‘Social Categorisation’),
Hogg (1992) has suggested that another important factor guiding people’s attraction to different
group is the extent to which they perceive themselves as corresponding to the prototypical mem-
ber of each group. In effect, he argues, people’s social identities, whether derived from prior group
memberships or more generally from sociocultural socialisation, need to be well-matched to that
likely to be provided by the new group. Evidence for this was provided by Niedenthal et al. (1985),
who asked students for their preferences for different types of accommodation (e.g. apartments, dor-
mitories, fraternities, sororities). In addition, they also obtained measures from the students of their
self-concepts (on a large number of trait adjectives) and of the typical person belonging to each of the
different housing types (on the same list of traits). As expected, there was a clear correlation between
choice of residence and the similarity between self and the housing prototype: those who saw them-
selves as more similar to the typical resident showed a stronger preference.
As should be now clear, our social identity – our sense of who we are and what we are worth – is
intimately bound up with our group memberships. Thus, one of the major consequences of becom-
ing a member of a group is a change in the way we see ourselves. Joining a group often requires us
to redefine who we are which, in turn, may have implications for our self-esteem. This process of
redefinition was nicely illustrated during interviews one of us once conducted with trade union shop
stewards in an aircraft engineering factory (Brown 1978). One of the questions in the interview asked
the respondents was what they felt about belonging to their particular section and what they would
feel about moving elsewhere. The majority of those interviewed expressed a strong desire to remain
where they were and many of them went on to explain why that particular group membership was
important to them. As one of them put it:
I went into the army. I had no visions of any regiment to go in or different kind of preference
for tank or artillery. But once I was in the artillery, to me that was the finest regiment. Even
now it is and I’ve left the army twenty years … I think it’s the same as when you come into a
factory. You get an allegiance to a department and you breed that. And you say, ‘fair enough
I’m a Development worker’, and you hate to think of going into Production … Once someone
gets in a department you’ve got that allegiance to it.
(Brown 1978, p. 426)
This change in self-definition so graphically described by that shop steward is a very common conse-
quence of joining a group. Kuhn and McPartland (1954) devised a simple instrument to explore these
self-definitions. Respondents were asked to pose themselves the question ‘Who am I?’ and to provide
up to 20 answers to it. Kuhn and McPartland found that all but a small handful of their respondents
gave at least one ‘consensual’ or group reference (e.g. ‘I am a student’, ‘I am a Baptist’), and over half
gave 10 or more such responses.
So far, we have discussed changes in self-concept consequent on group membership simply as
changes in the way we define or describe ourselves. But becoming a member of a group may also
have consequences for our self-evaluations, for our self-esteem. If we internalise our group member-
ships as part of our self-concept, it follows that any prestige or value associated with those groups will
have implications for our feelings of self-worth (Tajfel and Turner 1986). This was shown by Zander
et al. (1960), who studied the psychological consequences of belonging to cohesive and non-cohesive
laboratory groups which then experienced success or failure. Cohesive groups were created by max-
imising the cues for ‘groupness’ that we discussed earlier in the chapter: members were seated close
to one another, encouraged to think up a name for their group, and attention was drawn to the mem-
bers’ interpersonal similarities. By contrast, in the non-cohesive ‘groups’ – although it is doubtful
whether the word ‘group’ is really appropriate here – members were allowed to sit anywhere, the
group was assigned a number rather than being allowed to generate a name, and the participants
were never openly referred to as a group. The groups were set a fashion design task at which half
were deemed to have done well relative to other groups, while the remainder was alleged to have done
poorly. In measures of self-esteem, this group outcome only affected members of cohesive groups: the
group’s success or failure being reflected in raised or depressed levels of self-esteem (see also Hogg and
Sunderland 1991). For the other groups, the outcome of the group task was immaterial.
Although, as we shall see later in the chapter (and elsewhere in the book), the effects of group
success and failure can sometimes be more complex than this, this early experiment does underline
how the positivity of our self-concept can be influenced by the social evaluation of the groups to
which we belong.
Up until now, we have concentrated on changes in individuals as they become group members.
How does the rest of the group respond to these newcomers? Moreland and Levine (1982) note that
entry into the group is often marked by some ceremony or ritual. This is especially true of established
or formal groups and organisations, although somewhat less typical of informal friendship and peer
groups. These initiation ceremonies can take different forms, ranging from a warm welcome to a dis-
tinctly unpleasant (not to say painful) experience in which the newcomer is mocked, embarrassed,
or even physically assaulted. Examples of the former type include the fringe benefits and privileges
that some organisations bestow on their new employees and the celebrations that accompany the
achievement of full membership of some religions (e.g. the Jewish Bahmitzva). Examples of negative
entry experiences are numerous. Anthropologists have noted the prevalence of initiation ceremonies
in a wide variety of cultures (e.g. van Gennep 1960). These are used to mark transitions in status
or role within a society – what van Gennep (1960) termed ‘rites de passage’ – and may involve the
inflicting of pain or some act of bodily mutilation (e.g. circumcision rituals). Such entry proceedings
are not restricted to non-industrialised societies. Joining military organisations frequently involves a
series of humiliating experiences. Apparently, US marines have to undergo brutal initiations involv-
ing the driving of metal spikes into their bare chests (Observer Newspaper, 2 February 1997; see also
Dornbusch 1955). Some North American college fraternities and high school sports teams still engage
in practices of ‘hazing’ new members. These require initiates to perform some degrading or humil-
iating activities for the amusement of existing members of the group (Gershel et al. 2003; Keating
et al. 2005).
Why should groups go to these lengths to mark the entry of new members into their ranks? There
are several possible reasons. The first is that they may serve a symbolic function both for the new-
comer and for the group itself. For the newcomer, it helps in the process of identity transition that we
discussed earlier. After the initiation, the individual can say, ‘I am not what I used to be’ (van Maanen
1976, p. 101). The group, too, may need symbols to define its boundaries. If the initiation involves the
acquisition of characteristic markings or the donning of new clothing, it helps to underline the group’s
distinctiveness from other groups, an important feature of intergroup relationships (van Gennep
1960; Tajfel and Turner 1986). Secondly, some entry procedures may serve as an apprenticeship for
the individual, introducing him or her to the normative standards of the group and relevant skills
needed for effective functioning in it. We shall return to this process of norm socialisation in a later
chapter. A third function served by initiation rituals may be to attempt to elicit some loyalty from the
new member. This applies particularly to initiations which involve favourable treatment or special
dispensations for the novice. The gratitude and perhaps even guilt which these favours may induce in
the newcomer may enhance his or her commitment to the group’s goals and activities (Lewicki 1981).
A fourth possibility is that the initiation, to the extent that it is coercive, will introduce the novitiates
to the status and authority structure in the group. As will become apparent in Chapter 4, a feature of
a great many groups is that they are hierarchically organised, and it will usually be functional for new
members to acquaint themselves quickly with who has (and who does not have) power and influence.
Initiation procedures, because they are often orchestrated by leading members of the group, may well
serve this purpose.
The widespread occurrence of initiations which involve negative experiences is more puzzling,
however. Although these may still serve the symbolic and status functions just noted, intuitively they
would seem to act as a deterrent for the would-be member rather than as an inducement to iden-
tify with the group. Aronson and Mills (1959) proposed a rather ingenious explanation to account
for these unpleasant experiences. They suggested that for most people, the experience of group life
is rarely completely positive. Attracted though they may be to the group, there will still be some
aspects which do not appeal. This, then, may lead to a weakening of the cohesion of the group.
However, Aronson and Mills suggested that groups can counter these effects by having group mem-
bers undergo an unpleasant initiation. This will happen, they argued, because people’s awareness
that they have undergone the unpleasant experience to gain entry to the group is inconsistent with
their subsequent discovery that there are things about the group which are not as they had antic-
ipated. Drawing on Festinger’s (1957) famous Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Aronson and Mills
reasoned that this perception of inconsistency (or dissonance) is psychologically uncomfortable and
that people will look for ways to reduce it. Since the initiation may be too vivid or painful to repress
easily, one avenue to reduce dissonance is to enhance one’s evaluation of the group: ‘if I went through
all that to become a member of this group, it must be really attractive for me’. This led Aronson and
Mills to the non-obvious hypothesis that the more severe the initiation, the more attractive the group
would appear.
They tested this hypothesis in a now classic experiment (Aronson and Mills 1959). Women college
students were recruited to take part in group discussions on the ‘psychology of sex’ which, they were
led to believe, would involve them joining an ongoing discussion group. Before doing so, however,
they were asked to take part in a ‘screening pre-test’. This test (or initiation) involved the subjects
reading out some sexually orientated material. The nature of this varied in the different experimental
conditions. In the ‘severe’ initiation condition, the women were asked to read out loud some lurid
passages from sexually explicit novels. In the ‘mild’ condition, on the other hand, they simply had
to read out five words which had some sexual connotation but which were not obviously obscene.
There was also a ‘control’ group who did not have to read anything. On some pretext, the subjects
were actually prevented from joining in the expected group discussions, but they were permitted to
listen in on a discussion which appeared to be already in progress. In fact, however, the discussion
was pre-recorded and was identical for all subjects. And pretty dull it turned out to be. Far from
the interesting discussion on the psychology of sex which had been promised, the excerpt which they
heard was a tedious and stilted conversation about the ‘secondary sexual behaviour of lower animals’!
Afterwards, the subjects were asked to rate both the discussion and the group on a number of scales.
Despite the fact that they had all heard the same boring discussion, those who had experienced the
‘severe’ treatment rated both the discussion and its participants more favourably than those in the
‘mild’ or ‘control’ conditions.
Gerard and Mathewson (1966) subsequently confirmed this finding and showed that the results
could not simply be attributed to, for example, the possibly greater sexual arousal in the ‘severe’ con-
dition, or to feelings of ‘relief ’ at discovering that the discussion group was not as embarrassing as
the pre-test. They accomplished this by modifying Aronson and Mills’ design in a number of ways,
the most crucial change being that real electric shocks (‘mild’ or ‘severe’) were used as the initia-
tion procedure. This was designed to circumvent the ‘sexual arousal’ alternative explanation. All sub-
jects received these shocks, although in the control condition it was alleged that they were simply
part of a ‘psychological experiment’, whilst in the experimental conditions they were clearly linked
to a forthcoming group experience. This was to test whether it was the unpleasant experience itself
(and subsequent ‘relief ’ afterwards) which caused the effects, or the fact that it was an unpleasant
initiation. The results were clear cut. Evaluations of the (boring) group discussion and its participants
were in general more favourable when the electric shocks were seen as an initiation rather than as
simply part of an experiment. The effects of altering the severity of the shock depended on this factor
also. Those people who believed that the shocks were really an initiation test gave higher ratings of
the group when the shocks were ‘severe’ than when they were ‘mild’; in the control condition, this
result was reversed (see Figure 2.4).
Figure 2.4 Effects of severity of initiation on the

40 ‘Severe’ shock condition attractiveness of the group. Source: Derived from
Gerard and Mathewson (1966), table 1, with
Attractiveness of group participants (range 0–120)
permission of American Psychological

‘Mild’ shock condition Association.
30
20
10
Painful experience seen Painful experience

as initiation to group unrelated to group
Whether the underlying psychological process here is really one of dissonance reduction or some
other mechanism has been a matter of controversy (Alexander and Sagatun 1973; Schlenker 1975).
An influential alternative to the dissonance explanation has been the social dependency hypothesis
(Keating et al. 2005). According to this view, the unpleasant initiation experience induces a state
of uncertainty which most people find aversive. People’s responses to stressful situation are often
affiliative – they seek out others, especially other in a similar situation. As Schachter (1959) famously
had it: ‘Misery loves not just any kind of company, it loves only miserable company’ (p. 24). Putting
new group members through a discomfiting ritual can help to make them more dependent on the
group and more liable to be influenced by others in the group. In two experiments, Keating et al.
(2005) showed how a harsh initiation (taking part in an embarrassing charade or having to handle
unpleasant material like dog food) resulted in more positive feelings towards others in the group,
as measured by both ratings and a seating proximity index, and greater perceived and actual social
influence from the other group members.
Whatever the explanation, there seems little doubt about the phenomenon itself: undergoing an
unpleasant experience does result in greater attraction to the group and hence may be used by group
as a device to bolster loyalty and cohesion. However, as we shall see shortly, it is but one of several
factors implicated in the generation of group cohesion.
From Getting Together to Sticking Together: Group Cohesion

A recurring theme in several of the previous sections has been how various social psychological pro-
cesses can contribute to the development and maintenance of group solidarity, commitment, morale,
esprit de corps – call it what you will. It is this collection of terms, usually subsumed under the general
heading of ‘cohesion’, which is the focus of this section. What exactly do we mean by cohesion? And
what gives rise to it?
In everyday language, it is reasonably clear what we mean when we talk of a cohesive team or work-
group: It is a group which seems to stick together and in which the members want to remain. This
common-sense definition of cohesion is reflected in one of the first scientific definitions of the term:
the ‘cement’ binding together group members and maintaining their relationships to one
another.
(Schachter et al. 1951, p. 229)
The trouble with this early formulation is that it was rather vague as to what the ‘cement’ consisted
of. As subsequent researchers grappled with the issue, a consensus emerged that cohesion should be
regarded as the sum of the interpersonal attractions which existed among the group members (e.g.
Lott and Lott 1965). In other words, a cohesive group was one in which everyone liked one another,
and, moreover, the degree of cohesion could be measured by how much they did so. As we shall
see, equating cohesiveness with friendship patterns in this way strongly influenced three decades of
research into the origins of group cohesion.
Treating cohesion and positive interpersonal relations as equivalent had an attractive simplicity and
certainly made life easier for the empirically oriented groups researcher. For now it seemed possible
to obtain a quantitative measure quite straightforwardly from the collated sociometric preferences of
the group members. Unfortunately, as Hogg (1992) has pointed out, such a conceptualisation was an
over-simplification. First of all, it reduced a quintessentially group phenomenon to the mere aggre-
gate of some individual properties, implying that the group was no more (or no less) than the sum of
its constituents (Gross and Martin 1952). As we saw in Chapter 1, such a reductionist viewpoint is
not without its problems. Second, it ran into problems at an empirical level since some measures of
attraction to the group seemed unrelated to measures of sociometric preference (Eisman 1959). Even
more problematically, as we shall shortly discover, it is possible for a group to remain cohesive even
when its members dislike each other! Third, conceiving of cohesion in terms of what are presum-
ably face-to-face relationships excludes its use in connection with much larger groups in which the
majority of the members may not know each other at all. Such groups could include sports crowds
or employees in a large corporation about which it is still possible (and useful) to talk of cohesion.
Such difficulties led researchers to abandon uni-dimensional conceptions of cohesiveness based
on attraction and to propose instead definitions and measurement tools that had more than one
component (Dion 2000). One influential model was Carron’s (1980) theory of sports team cohesion
which distinguished between ‘group integration’ (team members’ perceptions of the group’s beliefs
about its closeness and degree of unification), and ‘individual attraction to the group’ (their feelings
towards the group and their fellow group members). Each of these two components can have a ‘social’
aspect (relationships within the team) or a ‘task’ aspect (relating to the team’s goals). Associated with
this model was a Group Environment Questionnaire, a measuring instrument for assessing sports
team cohesiveness (e.g. Carron et al. 1985). Although this approach has been successfully applied to
a wide variety of sporting contexts, some doubts exist about its wider applicability to other kinds of
groups (Carless and De Paola 2000; Dion 2000).
Another important development was Hogg’s (1992) self-categorisation account of cohesion. Hogg
(1992) defines cohesion in terms of group members’ attraction to the idea of the group, its consensual
prototypical image and how that is reflected in typical member characteristics and behaviour. That
is, a group is cohesive to the extent that its members identity strongly with its key features and aspi-
rations. This perspective stems from SCT which, as we saw earlier, proposes that assimilation (to the
ingroup prototype) and contrast (from an outgroup prototype) are the basic processes determining
all group behaviour. Thus, for Hogg (1992), group cohesiveness stems from ‘social’ attraction to one’s
fellow group members as group members, whatever they are like as individuals. This should be dis-
tinguished from the traditional perspective which emphasises ‘interpersonal’ attraction to other indi-
viduals who happen to be in the group and who happen to possess desirable personal characteristics.
Not surprisingly, given the initial definitions of cohesion in terms of mutual liking among group
members, early work on the origins of cohesiveness tended to focus on factors which were associ-
ated with interpersonal attraction. The simplest of these is physical proximity which usually leads to
greater frequency of interaction and hence to liking, presumably through the discovery of similarity
of tastes and attitudes. The classic demonstration of the effects of proximity was a study of friendship
networks in a student housing complex (Festinger et al. 1950). Festinger et al. (1950) showed how
groups of friends tended to spring up within a particular apartment block and often within the same
corridor within these blocks. The researchers were able to link this friendship formation quite pre-
cisely to the physical distance apart that people lived, a finding later confirmed by others (Ebbeson
et al. 1976). Moreover, that these were genuine groups (as opposed to a series of personal friend-
ships) was demonstrated by observing the operation of normative standards within each residence
block (Festinger et al. 1950).
Such normative standards lead to greater uniformity of opinion within the group which, over time,
reinforces the mutual attraction. This was observed by Newcomb (1961) in a famous longitudinal
study of acquaintanceship, also conducted in a college residence. The development of dyadic and
triadic networks amongst a collection of students who were initially all strangers to one another was
related to an increasing tendency for them to develop similar attitudes.
However, similarity amongst members is not always the crucial determinant of cohesion. In task-
focused groups, the ease with which the group goal can be achieved may assume priority. This was
shown by Anderson (1975) who created laboratory groups which were actually composed of peo-
ple with similar or dissimilar values. Their goal was to design a new student dormitory. This goal
was facilitated (or impeded) by providing the group members with similar (or different) briefing and
training materials. Cohesion was measured by a simple question at the end of their discussion: would
they wish to remain in the group for a further session? The results were clear: the majority (85%) of
those whose task interaction had been more straightforward said they wished to stay put whilst only
45% of those in the ‘impeded’ condition so indicated. Importantly, value similarity had no effect on
desire to remain in the group.
The fact that successful cooperation on a joint task increases cohesion should come as no surprise.
Earlier, we noted how positive task interdependence was an important ingredient of many groups
and typically leads to better morale and performance. It is important to realise that it is not just inter-
dependence within the group which affects cohesion; the nature of the intergroup relationship is also
significant. Anyone who has ever participated in a team competition or been involved in any kind
of intergroup dispute will verify how these lead to an increase in the solidarity within the ingroup.
In 2018, university staff all over Britain staged a fourteen days of strike action over changes to their
pension arrangements. Despite (or perhaps because of ) the novelty of this form of industrial action
for most academics, it was remarkable how, in the days before and after the strike, previously unac-
quainted colleagues engaged in much supportive interaction with each other.
Many years ago, the sociologist William Sumner, commenting on this phenomenon, suggested a
direct and functional link between intergroup conflict and cohesion:
The relation of comradeship and peace in the we-group and that of hostility and war towards
others-groups are correlative of each other. The exigencies of war with outsiders are what make
peace inside, lest internal discard should weaken the we-group for war.
(Sumner 1906, p. 12)
This is, of course, exactly what Sherif and his colleagues observed in their famous ‘summer camp’
studies (Sherif 1966; see Chapter 7). As the competition between the groups intensified so each group
became more tightly knit (see also, Julian et al. 1966). However, although intergroup competition
usually generates an increase in cohesion, the reverse is not necessarily the case. That is, peace inside
the group does not depend on war with outsiders, as Sumner supposed.
In intergroup competitions, there are winners and losers. What are the consequences of such out-
comes for group cohesion? Common sense suggests that when result is favourable for the ingroup,
cohesion will increase; when the ingroup looks like losing, there may be forces towards resentment
and disintegration. A study by Myers (1962) lent support to this idea. He compared over a four-week
period the changes in morale of army cadet rifle teams who took part in either a competitive league
(against one another) or a non-competitive league (against some absolute standard). As usual, inter-
group competition had the effect of increasing group morale, but this greater cohesion was strongly
qualified by how well the teams did in the rifle shooting events. In general, those who succeeded
(whether in competition or not) showed higher morale; those who did badly reported less satisfac-
tion with one another (see also Worchel et al. 1975).
But does defeat always result in such negative outcomes? Experience suggests not. Many years ago,
one of our children was playing for his school football team. They had a disastrous season, losing every
match except one, sometimes by double-figure margins! And yet, despite this string of ignominious
defeats, the team remained remarkably buoyant and pleased with itself, after each match finding
solace in the reduced size of the deficit, the number of goals they had scored or how hard they had
tried. A similar phenomenon was observed (somewhat more systematically) by Taylor et al. (1983) in
their longitudinal case study of a college ice-hockey team. Like the children’s football side, this team
did not have a very good year, winning only three of their twenty-five games and in one match going
down by a full sixteen goals! Nevertheless, Taylor and his colleagues, who were able to obtain ratings
from team members after every game, reported that the overall level of cohesiveness and team spirit
stayed high throughout the season and the team members’ levels of cohesion seldom dipped below
the midpoint of the satisfaction scale, even after that crushing sixteen goal defeat.
There is also some evidence that reactions to negative outcomes may be linked to developmental
processes. In a study of children’s intergroup comparisons, we allocated 3, 5, 7 and 9 year-old children
to an obviously ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ team for a forthcoming egg-and-spoon race (Yee and Brown 1992). One
of our dependent measures assessed cohesion (‘how much would you like to stay in your team?’). Not
surprisingly, a vast majority (86%) of the ‘fast’ team members elected to stay, and this was true in
all four age groups studied. Those in the ‘slow’ team generally showed the opposite reaction – with
the exception of one age group, over 70% now wanted to leave their group. The exceptions were
the five-year-olds, of whom over two-thirds still felt sufficiently positive about their group to want
to remain in it. It is possible that this strong attachment to the group in these children, even in the
face of imminent loss of group status, is associated with a more generic collectivist orientation at
the age which manifests itself as strong ethnic and gender identification and, not infrequently, in an
ethnocentric outlook towards other groups (Aboud 1988; Brown 2010).
How can this maintenance of cohesion in the face of repeated failure be explained? According to
Turner et al. (1984), it may have to do with group members’ high level of identification with the group
which has been fostered by them choosing to belong to the group in the first place. Resurrecting an
idea from cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger 1957), they argued that when people feel personally
responsible for their behaviour – for example, when they have voluntarily chosen to join a group –
then if that behaviour results in negative consequences for them (i.e. the group does badly), they will
justify these negative consequences by increasing their identification with the group. Such reasoning
might go as follows: ‘I chose to enter this group because it seemed attractive to me. Nevertheless,
the group failed in its objectives. Why, then, did I join this apparently not so good group? It must
have been because it was even more important for me than I originally thought’. To test this hypoth-
esis, Turner and colleagues designed an experiment in which schoolgirls took part in an intergroup
competition. The crucial variable manipulated was whether the girls believed they had chosen to
belong to their group or, alternatively, whether it seemed to have been decided completely by the
experimenters. The distinction was, in fact, illusory since nobody was really given any choice but in
half the groups it was made to seem that they were by giving them a form to sign which stated that
they agreed to stay in their present group. After the competition which, of course, one group had to
lose, various scales measuring self-esteem and cohesiveness were administered. For those who had
had ‘no choice’ about their group membership, the usual pattern emerged: winning groups showed
greater cohesiveness and reported higher levels of self-esteem than losers. However, for the voluntary
‘choice’ groups, this pattern was completely reversed; losing groups had more cohesion (and higher
self-esteem) than winning groups.
The emphasis on interpersonal similarity and the outcomes of interdependence in which of the
work as cohesion has its roots in a functionalist perspective of the group: People are attracted to a
group insofar as it satisfies certain of their needs (e.g. of affiliation, or of goal achievement). However,
as we saw in discussing how to define cohesion, this is not an undisputed view. Hogg (1992), in partic-
ular, has argued that an elementary form of cohesion stems from categorisation processes: the simple
dichotomy of the world into ingroup and outgroup. As noted earlier, he terms this ‘social attraction’
and argues that it results from group members’ desire to model themselves more closely on what
they perceive to be the prototypical position of the ingroup. They are thereby attracted to those who
resemble that prototype, whether or not they have much else in common with them personally.
Two interesting implications follow from this analysis. One is that it ought to be possible to dis-
tinguish this form of cohesion from the more traditional variety based on interpersonal attraction.
They should be independent and have separate effects and antecedents. The second is that cohe-
sion should be observable even in what are otherwise ‘unattractive’ groups (i.e. groups comprised of
unlikeable individuals). The evidence for these two predictions is mixed. On the one hand, a series of
studies conducted with both real groups (e.g. sports teams) and experimental groups have found that
there is usually a stronger correlation between social attraction and prototypical group members than
between personal attraction and those same people (Hogg et al. 1993; Hogg and Hardie 1992; Hogg
and Hains 1996). Nevertheless, the two types of cohesion are not usually completely independent as
a strict interpretation of Hogg’s (1992) model should suggest. Hogg and Hardie (1992) and Hogg et al.
(1993) reported significant and sometimes sizeable correlations between measures of personal and
social popularity – i.e. people’s ‘best friends’ were often also ‘good group members’. Whether these
associations reflect the complexity and multiplicity of variables which are inherent in the naturalistic
settings in which these studies were conducted or some underlying common causation is still too
early to say.
What Goes on in Groups? Achieving the Task and Maintaining Relationships

So far, in discussing how groups come into being and what helps to keep them together, we have hardly
touched on what actually happens within the group. How do group members interact with each other
as they go about the group’s business? For our understanding of this aspect of group process, we are
indebted to the work of Bales who, together with Lewin, came to exert a considerable influence on
the development of social psychology, particularly the social psychology of the small group.
Bales’s starting point was to assume that the raison d’etre of any small group is the achievement of
some task. Thus, for Bales, any activity in the group is seen as being ultimately directed towards this
end.3 From this basic standpoint, Bales went on to make a number of important observations.
The first and most fundamental is his distinction between task-related or ‘instrumental’ behaviour
and socio-emotional or ‘expressive’ behaviour. Eventually, as we have just noted, Bales believes that
people’s actions in a group are geared towards the group goal. Thus, whether they be social workers in
a case conference, jurors in a trial, or engineers grappling with a design problem, what the participants
say and do to one another will mainly revolve around the group’s goal (recommend a course of action
for a client, reach a verdict, or solve the technical difficulty). However, in all this ‘instrumental’ activity,
certain problems may arise which threaten the stability of the group. People may disagree with one
another over the way the group should tackle the task at hand; the discussion may expose conflicting
value systems; or perhaps there is some urgency implied by an externally imposed timetable. These
kinds of factors are likely to generate tensions which, suggests Bales, may impede the group’s progress
towards its goal. Accordingly, counteracting socio-emotional processes will come into play to deal
with those tensions.
A second key aspect to Bales’s theorising is his assumption that groups have a natural tendency
towards equilibrium (Bales 1950). Any action is likely to produce a reaction. Questions will tend to
elicit answers; ‘instrumental’ activities need to be balanced by ‘expressive’ activities, and so on. This
homeostatic principle is closely tied to Bales’s conception of how groups typically tackle their tasks.
He proposed that this has three components: orientation, evaluation, and control. The group must
first orientate itself to the problem it faces and acquaint itself with all the relevant information. Typi-
cally, this will involve a high level of communication and exchange of opinions. These different ideas
then need to be evaluated to enable the group to move towards some decision. As the decision time
approaches, the members of the group will start to exert control over each other in order that the
decision is successfully articulated and implemented. Typically, at this stage, there is also a need for
an increase in socio-emotional activity to reduce any tensions aroused by the preceding stages.
On the basis of these ideas, Bales (1950) devised a coding scheme for the observation and analysis
of group interaction. In this scheme – called interaction process analysis (IPA) – the interaction in the
group is broken down into a series of microscopic ‘acts’. For example, a sentence in a verbal utterance,
some non-linguistic vocalisation and non-verbal behaviours such as facial expressions, or gestures.
Each ‘act’ is classified by the observer(s) into 1 of 12 mutually exclusive categories, together with a
3 In this he adopts a functionalist perspective, a point underlined by his close association with Parsons, a leading figure in
functionalist sociology (e.g. Parsons 1951).
note of the committer of the act and its intended recipient. For example, someone making a joke
would be counted as a positive socio-emotional act; the offering or asking for information would
be categorised as task acts; and disagreement or antagonism would be regarded as negative socio-
emotional behaviours.
At the end of the period of observation, it is possible to collate the observations in each category
and provide an interaction profile of the group as a whole (in terms of the percentages of time spent
engaged on the different categories of behaviour), or of individuals in the group, or (the most com-
plete picture of all) the proportion of time each person spent interacting with each other and in what
manner. These profiles have many uses. They can be used as data for the testing of particular research
hypotheses about the consequences of certain independent variables on group process. Or they may
be used in clinical and educational settings for identifying the recurrent interaction patterns in, for
example, a family or a seminar group. Examples of studies which have used IPA are reviewed in Hare
(1976) and McGrath (1984).
Summary
1. One of the most elementary aspects of group formation is the experience of common fate, the
perception that one’s outcomes are bound up with the others. This can happen as a result of a
chance event or it may stem from the nature of the group’s activities such that the achievement of
the group’s goals depends on the mutual coordination of its members’ efforts. When people are
linked together in this way, they are said to be interdependent. Interdependence is an important
basis for group formation.
2. Psychologically a group does not exist until it is seen as a bounded entity with some people belong-
ing within it and, usually with others not belonging to it. This is the process of social categorisation.
For people to be categorised together, they will typically be seen as interdependent in some way,
as similar to one another, and as being in physical proximity to each other.
3. Accompanying the act of categorisation are the twin processes of intergroup differentiation and
intragroup assimilation – a sharpening of the differences between groups and blurring of the dis-
tinctions within them. These processes occur not just on a cognitive or perceptual level but can
have behavioural consequences also. Even the most minimal of social categories have the power
to evoke intergroup discrimination in the allocation of rewards.
4. Although the existence of groups is commonly deduced from the shared similarities among people
and their differences from others, sometimes a sense of groupness can be induced even from a
collection of dissimilar people. This may happen if there is a degree of complementarity in the
individual differences such that the group is able to function well because of them and not despite
them. Categories are also not purely cognitive constructions but arise out of people’s interactions
and political activities.
5. Joining groups brings about many changes, not least in how people see themselves. Those changes
in self-concept may be facilitated by the entry rituals that many groups seem to practise, rituals that
may be embarrassing or painful for the newcomers. The function of such rituals may be symbolic –
to delineate more clearly who belongs and who does not. They may also be functional in serving
as an apprenticeship to the norms, values, and practices of the group. And, through a process of
dissonance reduction, they may serve to increase subsequent commitment to the group.
References 43
6. Groups may be more or less cohesive. That is, the bonds between the members may be strong
or weak resulting in a greater or lesser chance of them sticking together in times of adversity.
Group cohesion is more than the sum of the interpersonal attractions among the group mem-
bers however. It involves an attraction to the idea of the group and what the group represents.
Intergroup conflict usually increases cohesion within the competing groups especially for the ‘suc-
cessful’ group. However, group failure does not always result in lowered cohesion, particularly if
membership in the group is voluntary.
7. A fundamental distinction in group life is that between behaviours focused on achieving the group
goal and behaviours concerned with feelings for others in the group. This task – socio-emotional
dimension can be discerned by careful observation of interacting groups. One useful observation
system is Bales’ IPA.
Further Reading
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Dion, K.L. (2000). Group cohesion: from “field of forces” to multidimensional construct. Group
Dynamics 4: 7–26.
Hogg, M.A. and Tindale, S. (eds.) (2002). The Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes,
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Postmes, T., Haslam, S.A., and Swaab, R. (2005). Social influence in small groups. European Review of
Social Psychology 16: 1–42.
Reicher, S. and Hopkins, N. (2001). Self and Nation.
Voci, A. (2000). Perceived group variability and the salience of personal and social identity. European
Review of Social Psychology 11: 177–221.
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51
Reaching Agreement in Groups
A central message of this book is that groups are inescapable and powerful determinants of our
behaviour. Whether for good or ill, the groups we inhabit – and even those which we do not – have
the capacity to affect what we think, feel, and do. In this chapter, we examine some of the ways that
this happens.
We begin by investigating how group norms develop and their crucial role in shaping people’s
behaviour. Norms act as ‘signposts’ for the individual, guides for our behaviour in novel or ambiguous
situations, helping to reduce uncertainty. They also serve important social functions. They assist
group members in regulating and coordinating their behaviour for the achievement of group goals;
and they can also be key identity markers for the group, distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’.
An obvious indication that norms are at work is some uniformity of attitude or behaviour amongst
the group members. Once people get into collective settings they appear only too ready to conform
to the majority in the group and to abandon their own personal beliefs and opinions. As we shall
see in the second part of this chapter, this turns out to be a remarkably robust and culturally
near-universal phenomenon.
One of the most persuasive attempts to explain this widespread prevalence of conformity was pro-
posed by Festinger. According to Festinger, we need to assess the correctness of our beliefs about
the world, and this is accomplished primarily by reference to others. The information gleaned from
these comparisons is particularly potent if it reveals the existence of a social consensus since that
strongly implies a ‘correct’ way of looking at things. Accordingly, Festinger suggested that groups are
motivated to establish and maintain uniformity in the group.
However, such pressure to achieve uniformity or agreement does not mean that groups will con-
verge on the ‘average’ or modal position of the group members’ opinions on any given issue. Instead,
it is more common to observe a shift towards a more extreme position when the group seeks to
arrive at a group decision. As we shall see, there are several potential processes underlying this group
polarisation.
The Acquisition and Development of Group Norms

In the previous chapter, much of the emphasis was on the regularities in the patterning of behaviour
as groups come to being. Here, by contrast, the key word is idiosyncrasy rather than communality.
For, as even the most superficial observation confirms, groups have manifold ways of viewing the
52 3 Reaching Agreement in Groups
world; they hold a huge variety of different values and attitudes; and, in the last analysis, they behave
quite uniquely. Underlying all this diversity are systems of norms, systems which are to be found in
every imaginable human group – from the loosest knit collection of friends to the most structured of
institutions. Because of the universality of such systems and because of their importance in governing
and constraining people’s behaviour, the factors involved in the acquisition and functioning of norms
are central to an understanding of groups.
Just what is a norm? Paraphrasing Sherif and Sherif (1969), a norm is a scale of values, which defines
a range of acceptable (and unacceptable) attitudes and behaviours for members of a group. Norms
specify, more or less precisely, certain rules for how group members should behave and thus are the
basis for mutual expectations amongst the group members. Examples of group norms in action would
include the different styles of dress and appearance adopted by various subgroups in Britain, rang-
ing from the sartorial unorthodoxy of ‘Goths’ to the bizarre traditionalism of the royal enclosure at
Ascot.
Our interest in group norms is not just an exercise in the exotic however. As we shall see, group
norms are powerful determinants of people’s behaviour in a host of different domains. For now, let
one example suffice. It is a truism amongst health professionals that a key factor in the initiation and
maintenance of substance abuse, (e.g. alcohol, tobacco and other addictive drugs) is the peer group
(e.g. Borsari and Carey 2001). A revealing analysis of how that peer group influence can operate in
a single group was provided by Phua (2011). Using social network analysis – a technique that maps
social relationships within a group by analysing group members’ friendship nominations – Phua was
able to show that 34 members of a college fraternity house fell into three clusters, one primarily com-
posed of smokers and two mainly non-smoking sub-groups. Following up that same fraternity three
years later revealed that the three clusters had given way to two, with smokers and non-smokers
forming two separate groups. Moreover, those individuals who took up – or quit – smoking could be
partly predicted from the other individuals they were closely connected to in the network (smokers
or non-smokers, respectively). Popularity within the fraternity was positively correlated with smok-
ing behaviour (number of cigarettes per day smoked) and that popularity–smoking association was
mediated by conformity to peer norms. Similar findings were obtained for alcohol consumption.
The Acquisition of Group Norms

What happens when people join a group for the first time? One of the earliest attempts to docu-
ment this process was Newcomb’s study of an American college in the 1930s, the Bennington Study
(Newcomb 1961). Bennington College was a small private college with a strong liberal political ethos.
However, despite its progressive outlook, it recruited mainly from very conservative upper middle-
class families. What Newcomb showed, by a careful longitudinal study of cohorts of students through
the college, was that their initially conservative attitudes underwent a radical reversal during their
college career. For example, during the study, the 1936 US presidential election occurred, and within
the college, a mock election was also held. Newcomb was able to analyse the votes cast in this mock
election. From the first-year students, who had only been at the college a month or two, there was a
solid majority for the conservative Republican candidate over the more liberal Roosevelt (62% versus
29%). This was entirely consistent with their conservative family backgrounds. However, the third-
and fourth-year students, whose families were no less reactionary, voted 54% to 19% in favour of
Roosevelt and fully 30% of them even voted for the Communist/Socialist candidates! (versus only 9%
of the first years). The impact of Bennington’s liberal norms on its students seems clear.
Of course, it could be objected to Newcomb’s findings that the different year groups within the
college were not strictly comparable. For instance, the senior students were also older. Perhaps what
he had discovered was simply a maturational effect rather than any effect of group norms. That this is
an unlikely explanation was shown by Siegel and Siegel (1957) in a rather similar study. In the college
they studied, there were two kinds of housing available to students. There were the traditional and
rather conservative sorority-type residences, and there were more liberal dormitories and halls of
residence. Allocation to these different types of housing was essentially random, names being drawn
out of a hat. Siegel and Siegel exploited this almost perfect natural experiment by measuring students’
attitudes in these different residences at the beginning and end of their first year, using a measure
of political conservatism. Because the groups had been formed randomly (as in a good laboratory
experiment), they should have been very nearly equivalent at the start of the year. Their conservatism
scores confirmed this: the mean score in the sorority group was 103 as against 102 in the other group.
However, by the end of the year, the effect of the different group norms prevailing in the two residences
was plain: the mean conservatism in the liberal group had dropped by nearly 15 points, while in the
more traditional sorority, it had declined by a trivial four points.
There seems little doubt, then, that the group’s norms, whether these be long-established traditions
or merely informally evolved patterns of activity, have considerable significance for group members.
What functions do these norms serve and why are they so fundamental to an understanding of group
behaviour? We can answer this question in two ways: first by considering what functions they serve for
the individual; and then by assessing their social significance from the perspective of the group itself.
Why People need Norms: Individual Functions of Group Norms

For the individual, norms act as frames of reference through which the world is interpreted; they
bring order and predictability to a person’s environment. Thus, the norms which our students and
we evolve over the first few meetings of a seminar group about the extent of preparatory work which
will be needed and about how the seminar discussions should proceed help us all to function more
effectively in the seminar. Norms are especially useful in novel or ambiguous situations where they
can act as pointers as to how to behave.
The idea of norms as ‘signposts’ guiding the individual through unfamiliar territory was beautifully
illustrated by Sherif (1936) in what is justly regarded as one of the single most significant experiments
in the history of social psychology. In this experiment, Sherif made use of an optical illusion known
as the autokinetic effect. The illusion can be experienced by staring at a minute pin-prick of light
in a completely dark room. Very soon the light appears to move erratically even though the source
itself remains stationary.1 Sherif confronted individual participants with this illusion and asked them
to estimate orally how far the light moved on each occasion. Over a hundred trials, Sherif found
that each participant’s estimates tended to stabilise around some idiosyncratic mean value. He then
ran exactly the same experiment in groups of two and three and made a remarkable discovery: the
participants’ estimates of movement rapidly converged until they were giving almost indistinguish-
able answers from one another. They had, in other words, developed a primitive group norm which
1 This illusion has long been known to astronomers and navigators used to observing stars at night. The experience of
movement is compelling and persists even if one is fully aware that the light does not, in fact, move. Participants in Sherif ’s
(1936) experiment, however, were not told that the movement was illusory, merely that ‘after a short time the light will start
to move’ (Sherif 1936, p. 95).
served to constrain their judgements within quite narrow limits. Intriguingly, this norm continued to
be influential even when they were retested on their own, their subsequent estimates deviating very
little from the previously established value.
One interpretation of these findings is that the judgements of the others took the place of the usual
physical cues which aid visual perception (Gibson 1966). The group norm served as a useful ‘frame of
reference’ to provide some structure to what was otherwise a rather ambiguous and perhaps some-
what anxiety-provoking situation. And there is no question that this norm was a genuinely group
product. Objectively, the light is fixed and so there can be no right or wrong judgements. Conse-
quently, left to their own devices, people reported widely different amounts of movement. It is only
when they were exposed to the influence of each other that they converged to a common point of
view.
Of course, the idea that group norms can provide pointers to our behaviour is not restricted to
estimates of ‘moving’ dots of light; it can also shed light on one of social psychology’s oldest research
questions, the nature of the link between attitudes and behaviour. According to one well-known the-
ory, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Fishbein and Ajzen 1975), people’s attitudes towards an issue –
let us say, taking more exercise – will generally predict their intentions to go to the gym more often,
and those intentions, in turn, will predict how often they actually turn up for their aerobics class
(or whatever). An additional factor which is also thought to predict our gym-going intentions is what
other people close to us think about taking exercise, the so-called ‘subjective norm’ variable (Fishbein
and Ajzen 1975). Much research has been amassed in support of Fishbein and Ajzen’s (1975) theory,
although the influence of subjective norms on intentions has generally been found to be rather weaker
than that of attitudes (Ajzen 1991).
Terry and Hogg (1996) suggested that one reason for the weak results for subjective norms is that
they are often only vaguely measured, and no account is taken of how important those ‘other peo-
ple’ are to the research participants. In their studies, Terry and Hogg (1996) were careful to specify
the ‘other people’ as ‘friends and peers at university’, thereby hoping to tap into peer group norms.
They also asked participants how much they identified with that group of friends. The results from
two studies focusing on people’s health behaviours (taking exercise, using sun-screen) were consis-
tent: group norms by themselves had only weak effects on behavioural intentions. But when group
identification was factored in, it became clear why. Those identifying strongly with that peer group
showed a clear association between group norms and intention; the more weakly identified respon-
dents showed no relationship at all (see also, Fielding et al. 2008; Terry et al. 1999).
When do we need guides the most? Presumably when the situation in which we find ourselves
is novel or ambiguous (as in Sherif ’s (1936) autokinetic paradigm for instance), thus giving rise to
feelings of uncertainty. Long ago, Festinger (1950) suggested that most people find uncertainty to be
a rather aversive state and will take steps to reduce it. Later in the chapter, we shall examine some
of the implications of Festinger’s hypothesis for conformity, but here let us explore what uncertainty
might mean for our need for group affiliations. According to Hogg (2007), self-uncertainty is a major
driver for people to seek out and identify with groups, particularly those groups which have well-
defined boundaries that demarcate themselves from other groups (‘entitative’ groups, to recall a term
introduced in Chapter 2 – Campbell (1958)). Such groups give us a clearer sense of who we are – and
who we are not – and will usually provide us with some normative expectations of how to consider
ourselves and how to behave, a process known as self-stereotyping in Self Categorisation Theory
(Turner et al. 1987). According to Hogg (2007), it is this self-stereotyping process afforded by groups
that often provides an effective palliative to subjective uncertainty.
Hogg et al. (2007) showed this process at work by asking their participants either to think about
aspects of their life which made them feel uncertain (in Uncertainty conditions) or which made them
feel certain (Certainty conditions). They were asked to dwell on those aspects for a few minutes by
writing a few sentences about them. Immediately following this, they were asked how strongly they
identified with their preferred political party. The uncertainty manipulation caused people to identify
more strongly with their political party, but only if they saw that party as a cohesive (entitative) group.
A similar effect was observed in a follow-up study using artificial groups (Hogg et al. 2007).
If uncertainty leads us to seek out groups to identify with then, in theory, it should also increase
our adherence to group norms. As yet, the research evidence is not clear on this point. In two studies,
Smith et al. (2007) again manipulated self-uncertainty in a similar way to Hogg et al. (2007) and then
assessed the extent to which participants were willing to display attitude-consistent behaviours in
line with group norms. In one study, as expected, uncertainty did lead to greater following of group
norms, but this was not replicated in a second study on a different topical issue.
Why Groups need Norms: Social Functions of Norms

If norms are useful to individuals in helping them to construe and predict their world, they also serve
equally useful functions for the group. First, they help to regulate social existence and hence help
to coordinate group members’ activities. To return to our seminar example: if we did not have those
norms concerning the conduct of the seminar (e.g. that people should not all talk simultaneously), it is
doubtful whether the group could really function as a learning unit at all. This social regulatory func-
tion is, of course, closely related to the predictability which norms contribute on an individual level.
Second, norms will be closely tied to the goals of the group, which we have already seen as being
of critical importance (Chapter 2). Once a group develops a clearly defined goal, inevitably norms
encouraging goal-facilitative actions and discouraging inhibitory behaviours will emerge. An example
of this was observed by Coch and French (1948) in their study of group productivity in a factory.
A worker was transferred to a new department which had a well-established production norm of
around 50 units per hour. After a few days, the newcomer’s productivity started to creep up to nearly
60 units per hour. This was regarded by the others in the group as contrary to the group’s interests
since it might be seen as giving management the chance to worsen their working conditions, and so
they put strong pressure on the new member to come into line with the group norm.
Finally, norms may serve to enhance or maintain the identity of the group. This is particularly true of
norms concerning particular styles of dress or forms of linguistic or cultural expression. Unorthodox
clothing, hairstyles, or distinctive dialects, while not directly functional in themselves, help to demar-
cate members of the group from non-members and thus define that group’s identity more clearly
(see Chapter 1).
This idea that there is a connection between group norms and social identity has a number of
interesting implications. It suggests, first of all, that those who are likely to adhere most closely to
the norms will be the group members for whom the group is more important. Internalising and con-
forming to the centrally defining norms is a way they can express their identity. This was illustrated
by Reed et al. (2007) in their study of alcohol consumption by American college students. Reed and
his colleagues correlated how much these students said they drunk on each social occasion with their
perceptions of how much their friends approved of heavy drinking (norms) and how strongly they
identified with that group of friends. Unsurprisingly, the friendship group norms were strongly cor-
related with how much the students drank, but, crucially, this relationship was particularly strong
for those who identified the most with their group. Similar qualifying effects of group identification
were also observed when the groups in question were peers or fraternity/sorority members (Reed
et al. 2007). Recall, too, those stronger norm-behaviour interaction effects for high group identifiers
that we discussed earlier (Terry and Hogg 1996; Terry et al. 1999).
If group norms are a component of a group’s identity, then what happens when these norms pre-
scribe behaviours that run counter to the ‘usual’ tendency for group members to favour the ingroup
over the outgroup in judgements or reward allocations (see Chapter 2)? This question has been inves-
tigated by Jetten and her colleagues in a whole series of studies (Jetten et al. 1996, 1997; McAuliffe et al.
2003). In one study, the researchers led members of one university to believe that their fellow ingroup
members were typically ‘fair’ or ‘discriminatory’ (depending on experimental condition) in how they
allocated rewards between their own university and a rival institution. They also provided analogous
feedback for how members of that rival university usually behaved (‘fair’ or ‘discriminatory’). The par-
ticipants were then asked to distribute money between the two universities. Not surprisingly, people
showed the most ingroup bias when the norms for both ingroup and outgroup dictated discrimina-
tion. However, when fairness norms appeared to prevail (either in the ingroup or the outgroup), levels
of ingroup bias were lower.
Stability and Change

It should not be thought that norms always prescribe exactly how group members should behave.
Depending on the domain to which they refer and the person’s position in the group, the range of
acceptable behaviours – what Sherif and Sherif (1969) call the ‘latitude of acceptance’ – may be quite
broad or very narrowly defined indeed. General norms and norms which refer to peripheral aspects
of group life will have wide tolerance, while on issues which are central to the group’s existence, or
which concern one’s loyalty to the group, the bounds of acceptable behaviour will be quite restric-
tive. Thus, while in many communities there may be some latitude regarding such matters as cloth-
ing, appearance and personal eccentricities, on such antisocial behaviours as theft or physical assault
which threaten the viability of the group, the limits of acceptability are tightly drawn.
A person’s standing in the group will have a great influence on how closely he/she must adhere to
established norms. As we shall see in Chapter 4, typically, high-status members will be able to deviate
much further from norms than their subordinates. However, once again, on key group activities and
particularly activities relating to dealings with outgroups, leaders will be expected to be model group
members and stick strictly to the ‘party line’. There is an interesting tension here. On the one hand, we
expect our leaders to embody and conform to the values and norms of the group – to be prototypical
group members (Hogg 2001) – but, on the other, we also expect them to be innovative. How leaders
can successfully reconcile these two expectations is discussed in the next chapter.
Much of the evidence to support these conclusions was uncovered by Sherif and Sherif (1964) in
their study of adolescent gangs. Groups of teenage boys in several different American cities were
infiltrated by participant observers, who made a detailed study of each group over several months.
These observers were able to identify clear norms in all the groups over a number of issues. Most
groups had given themselves names and had adopted various insignia (e.g. tattoos). Often these were
associated with rivalry with neighbouring groups. The type of clothing permitted in each group was
often very rigidly defined which may seem surprising for such an apparently inconsequential matter.
However, it is clear that for these particular subcultural groups, style of dress was a crucial marker
45
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30
25
20
15
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0
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1989
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Figure 3.1 Changes in British norms about the open expression of prejudice, 1983–2013. The question was, “Would
you describe yourself as very prejudiced/a little prejudiced against people from other races?” The light grey line shows
the 5-year moving average. Source: http://www.natcen.ac.uk/media/338779/selfreported-racial-prejudice-
datafinal.pdf; reprinted by permission of the National Centre for Social Research – British Social Attitudes Survey.
distinguishing one gang from another; hence, the importance attached to clothing norms (see also,
Sherif et al. 1973). Each group had its own well-defined sexual mores and rigid codes of conduct
for dealings with ‘outsiders’ (e.g. parents, police). As already noted, group leaders could get away
with much more (for example, being able to commit fouls in games which would not be permitted
from lower-status members) except in certain critical areas. The Sherifs report how one of the gang
leaders was criticised by his fellow gang members for being picked up by the police in possession of
an offensive weapon, an incident which threatened the existence of the group.
One can also observe changes in societal norms over time. An interesting case in point is people’s
willingness to describe themselves as prejudiced, for instance in response to a survey question. Quite
apart from what responses to such a question tell us about how prejudiced people actually are, they
also provide a revealing glimpse into what people believe it is acceptable to say – in other words, it
reflects a prevailing social norm. Examining British people’s responses to just such a question over
a 30-year period (1983–2013), one can see considerable variation (NatCen Social Research 2014): It
reached its peak in 1987 (just under 40%) and was at its lowest in 2000 and 2012 (at around 25%)
(see Figure 3.1). It is interesting to speculate what factors might have given rise to these peaks and
troughs in norms about the acceptability of prejudice expression. One newspaper report identified the
murder of Stephen Lawrence (1993), the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA (2001), and
the financial crisis (2008) as events preceding rises in prejudice expression and the Olympic Games
(2012) as one anticipating a fall (Guardian, 27 May 2014). Whatever the causes – and they are likely
to be multiple and complex – it is safe to say that they will have had their impact by changing the way
many Britons perceived their own ethnic group in relation to others – changing intergroup relations
resulting in changing social norms.
Of course, some norms are more labile than others, and many group practices and traditions are
remarkably stable. Sherif and Sherif (1967) reported a follow-up study of one of their adolescent
groups through three generations. They were able to locate former members of the gang, then in their
twenties and thirties, as well as the current group. They found that very little had changed. Although
the individuals comprising the group had come and gone, the customs were very similar to those
observed in the original study and the same rivalry with a nearby gang persisted. This lasting impact
of adolescent group norms was confirmed by work following up the classic studies of Bennington
College students’ political values that we previously described (Institute for Social Research
1991–1992; Newcomb et al. 1967). This managed to trace a substantial number of the students that
had been studied so intensively decades previously. It was clear that many of the progressive values
imparted by the college in the 1930s had stayed with the students. On a number of comparisons they
were politically more liberal than a variety of groups of similar age and socioeconomic status. Even
in the highly artificial autokinetic paradigm described earlier, it is possible to observe an effect on the
experimentally generated norm 28 days and, remarkably, 1 year later (Bovard 1948; Rohrer et al. 1954).
The Power of the Majority

A British television documentary, which examined the causes of civil aviation accidents (‘The Wrong
Stuff ’, BBC 2, February 1986), attributed one of the major causes of such accidents to human error,
particularly arising out of the group dynamics of the flight crew. In the programme, a serious airline
accident was recreated using the actual sound recording of the final few minutes interaction in the
cockpit of the plane. The accident had been caused by the captain of the plane totally misjudging his
landing approach. Only eight miles from his destination, he was approaching the airport 40 knots too
fast and 200 ft lower than he should have been. Here is what took place between the captain (John),
his co-pilot, and the flight engineer as the co-pilot realised from his instruments that something was
wrong and called the attention of the captain to the incorrect glide slope.
Co-pilot (cautiously) Isn’t this a little faster than you normally fly this John?
Captain (confidently) Oh yeah, but it’s nice and smooth. We’re going to get in right on time.
May be a little ahead of time. We’ve got it made.
Co-pilot (uncertainly) I sure hope so.
Engineer You know, John, do you know the difference between a duck and a co-pilot?
Captain What’s the difference?
Engineer Well a duck can fly!
Captain Well said!
(Pause of several seconds)
Co-pilot (anxiously) Seems like there’s a bit of a tailwind up here, John.
Captain Yeah, we’re saving gas – helps us to get in a couple of minutes early too.
(Another pause)
Co-pilot John, you’re just a little below the MDA here.
Captain Yeah, well we’ll take care of it here.
The captain then attempted to leapfrog the plane up over the glide slope to compensate for the
incorrect altitude. This caused the plane to be too high for a safe landing and the accident was
unavoidable.
If one had to choose a group that would be resistant to internal conformity pressures, one might
well have thought that a small group like this, consisting as it did of three highly skilled professionals,
would be a safe bet. Each could clearly see the instruments revealing the danger signals and were
well trained to respond to them. Yet only one of the three saw any cause for alarm and, significantly,
the majority not only chose to ignore his increasingly anxious comments but actually ganged up
to ridicule him. The dissenting voice, it seems, was as unwelcome here as it is in other groups the
world over.
The Pervasiveness of Conformity

Real-life examples of conformity like this are inevitably complicated by such factors as the status rela-
tionships in the group and the personalities of those involved. Is it possible to demonstrate the exis-
tence of conformity to group pressure in conditions where such variables are either absent or experi-
mentally controlled? This was the question posed, and answered, by Asch (1956) in some experiments
which, like those of Sherif (1936) some years earlier, have rightly acquired classic status.
The basic procedure used in Asch’s experiments is as follows: participants are recruited for what
they are told will be an experiment in visual judgement. On arrival, the participant is shown to a lab-
oratory where a number of other participants are already assembled. The experimenter explains that
their task is to compare the lengths of some vertical lines. On each presentation, there is a standard
line, and their task is to identify which of three comparison lines is the same length as the standard.
They call out their answers in turn. This seems a simple enough task and, sure enough, in the first two
trials, everyone calls out the obviously correct answer. Then, on the third trial – and on eleven others
occurring at intervals – the others in the room give what appears to be a completely wrong answer.
What is more, they are unanimous in their errors, giving their answers confidently and calmly. In fact,
of course, those already in the room before the start of the experiment are confederates of the experi-
menter who have been briefed to give incorrect answers on two-thirds of the trials. Asch’s interest was
in the behaviour of the one genuine participant: how would he/she react to the testimony from these
apparently quite unexceptional people which contradicted so dramatically the evidence of his/her
own eyes? Asch’s findings were surprising: fully three-quarters of those ‘naive’ participants gave at
least one incorrect response on the critical trials when the confederates went astray. Looking at the
results another way: out of all the genuine participants’ responses on the critical trials, over 36% of
these were either the same as or in the direction of the incorrect majority.
What gave these results such impact was the unambiguous nature of the task. What Asch had
demonstrated was an apparent willingness on the part of people to deny this obvious veridical judge-
ment in order to ‘go along with’ the majority. And that, according to Asch, was precisely the moti-
vation behind most of the conforming responses. From detailed debriefings, Asch established that it
was rare for the compliant participants actually to have ‘seen’ the lines as the same when they were
different. Rather, they lacked confidence in their own judgement, assuming that the others in the
experiment were privy to some additional information that was guiding their responses. Others, on
the other hand, while not actually doubting what they saw, simply conformed so as not to be differ-
ent. These reactions suggest that we should distinguish between conformity which involves a private
perceptual or cognitive change – seeing the world differently – and conformity which is merely a
behavioural or public compliance – ‘going along with the others’ (Festinger 1953). The latter seems
best to characterise the participants in Asch’s experiments, while Sherif ’s (1936) experiments with
the autokinetic effect seemed to elicit the former reaction.
In other experiments, Asch (1955) explored the effects of altering various aspects of his conformity-
inducing situation. The most obvious factor to vary was the size of the confederate majority. Asch’s
results showed that with just one confederate there was negligible conformity on the critical trials.
However, with the addition of one or two further confederates, the conformity level rose sharply,
only to level off with the addition of further confederates. Indeed, Asch reported that 15 confederates
seemed to elicit slightly less conformity than four. This rapid increase in conformity with majorities
of two to three has been confirmed in subsequent research. For example, Milgram et al. (1969), in a
naturalistic study of the influence on passers-by of different-sized crowds staring upwards apparently
at nothing, found that the number of people who also looked up was initially linearly related to the
size of the crowd, although there was a tendency for the relationship to flatten off with larger crowds
(see also, Gerard et al. 1968). A meta-analysis of over 100 experiments employing variants of Asch’s
paradigm confirms that, indeed, there is a positive association between the amount of conformity
and the size of the majority, albeit not a very strong one (Bond and Smith 1996). In general, then,
larger majorities do elicit more conformity than small ones, although increasing group size beyond a
certain point appears to have diminishing effects on the level of conformity.
Another variation which Asch (1955) introduced was to break up the consensus of the confederate
majority, and this proved to be crucial. In one experiment, there were two naive participants facing
the incorrect majority. Immediately, the level of conformity dropped to around 10%. In another exper-
iment, one of the confederates was instructed always to give the correct answer, and this resulted in
even less conformity, a negligible 5%. However, it was clear that it was the breaking of the unanimity
that was the critical factor rather than simply the presence of an ‘ally’. This was revealed in a third
experiment in which one of the confederates was instructed to deviate from the majority but still
give incorrect answers. Once again, the level of conformity declined. Subsequent research has con-
firmed the importance of dissent for reducing conformity, although for some sorts of behaviours –
particularly those involving subjective opinions rather than objective judgements – it is apparently
necessary for that dissent also to support the participant’s own position (Allen 1965, 1975).
Exact replications and various modifications of Asch’s experiments have been conducted in many
different countries, and the basic conformity which he discovered seems to be remarkably preva-
lent.2 Although there are often substantial variations in the level of conformity observed, nearly all
cross-cultural studies find at least some conformity (Mann 1980; Smith et al. 2013). Perhaps more
interesting than this near-universal occurrence of conformity are the reasons for the cultural differ-
ences in its manifestation. One intriguing theory has been advanced by Berry (1967), which relates
the degree of conformity to the nature of the economy in different societies. Berry suggests that in
societies whose economies require a high degree of interdependence – for example, high food accu-
mulating cultures – there will typically be greater pressures to conformity (and socialisation practices
consistent with this) than in societies where food accumulation is less important and where people
2 An ingenious modification of Asch’s paradigm has been reported by Mori and Arai (2010). They dispensed with the use
of a confederate majority and a single naı̈ve participant. Instead, they painted the tips of twelve of the ‘standard’ lines with
green or magenta ink; these were the twelve stimuli that confederates would normally give incorrect answers to. Then, four
naı̈ve participants were given Polaroid sunglasses to wear, allegedly to protect them from the glare of the screen. One of
these pairs of glasses allowed green light to pass, the other three pairs, magenta light. In this way, the same stimuli would
be perceived differently by the lone ‘green’ spectacle-wearer than his/her three ‘magenta’ spectacle-wearing peers. Those
minority persons did typically make more errors in their judgements, but the conformity effect was confined to women
participants. It is not uncommon for women to show slightly more conformity in Asch type experiments (Bond and Smith
1996; Eagly and Carli 1981).
are more independent of one another. Adapting Asch’s judgement task, Berry found evidence in sup-
port of this idea. The Temne of Sierra Leone, who depend on a single crop each year and are thus
high food accumulators, showed substantially more conformity than indigenous groups in the Arctic
who rely on regular hunting and fishing trips for survival.
Berry’s theory applies most readily to non-industrialised societies. Smith et al. (2013) argue that
such an analysis can be extended by considering the kinds of values which predominate in any
given society. In individualistic cultures, there is much emphasis on individual achievement, sep-
aration from and competition with fellow ingroup members, and a more general concern for self-
determination and independence. Collectivistic societies, on the other hand, tend to reward collec-
tive achievements, closeness to and cooperation with the ingroup, and a desire for consensuality
(Hofstede 1980; Schwartz 2006; Triandis 1995). It turns out that the individualism–collectivism
dimension is reliably correlated with the amount of conformity shown in the Asch paradigm (Bond
and Smith 1996). People in collectivist cultures (e.g. Brazil, Japan) tend to show higher compliance
rates than those in more individualistic cultures (e.g. Britain, United States).
Why do People Conform?

Conformity is not restricted to the judgements of line lengths in experimentally contrived settings. A
moment’s reflection will confirm that we have a rather general propensity to change our attitudes and
behaviour so as to bring them into line with others around us. This seems to be as true of the relatively
minor issues of clothing fashion and musical taste as it is of more fundamental moral values and socio-
political action. To underline this point, let us consider briefly some research which has shown that
people are prepared to administer what they believe is painful and potentially dangerous punishment
to fellow research participants. Milgram (1963) devised a paradigm in which people taking the role
of ‘teacher’ in a ‘learning experiment’ are requested to administer negative reinforcement (increasing
voltage of seemingly real electric shocks) to the ‘learner’ (who is a confederate of the experimenter).
Surprisingly, large numbers of participants were prepared to obey the experimenter and go on to
administer shocks of 400 V or more (the obedience rates vary between 30% and 65%).
In two follow-up experiments, Milgram showed the power of group influence on this antisocial
behaviour (Milgram 1964, 1965). In the first variant he had two further confederates assist the real
participant in the learning experiment. These two stooges consistently suggested higher voltages, and
the experimenter announced that on any trial, it was the lowest voltage mentioned by anyone that
should be administered. It was thus open to the real participant always to propose a low voltage. In
fact, though, just as Asch (1955) had found, the genuine participants consistently complied with the
implicit pressure exerted by their two fellow ‘teachers’, over half of them administering ‘shocks’ of
more than 210 V; this compared to a paltry 2.5% of a control group who participated in the exper-
iment alone (Milgram 1964). But group pressure can also be used to restrain anti-social behaviour
as Milgram (1965) subsequently showed. This time, the unanimity of the two ‘teacher’ confeder-
ates was deliberately fractured by having one of them refuse to continue with the experiment once
the shock level reached ‘150 V’, and the other withdraw at ‘210 V’. The result of this ‘group pres-
sure to disobey’ was that fewer of the real participants persisted in administering the ‘very strong
shocks’ (see Figure 3.2). It is tempting to dismiss Milgram’s findings on grounds of the high degree of
duplicity and artifice involved in his procedure and the difficult ethical issues that these raise. Nev-
ertheless, the well-documented instances of group instigated atrocities against civilians in Vietnam,
Bosnia, Rwanda, and other war zones before and since suggest that social pressures to conform are as
60
50
Percentage of participants proposing
‘shock levels’ greater than 210 V
40
30
20
10
0
Group pressure to Group pressure to No group pressure
obey disobey after 210 V
Figure 3.2 Group pressure and obedience. Source: Milgram (1964, 1965), tables 3 and 1. Adapted from American
Psychological Association.
prevalent in their frequency as they are tragic in their consequences. The question is, then, what
underlies this widespread tendency towards uniformity in groups?
One of the most influential explanations of these conformity pressures was put forward by
Festinger (1950). He proposed that there are two powerful processes which result in individuals being
influenced by the majority in the group. The first concerns the social construction of reality. Festinger
started from an assumption that all of us hold a number of beliefs about the world. These act for us, he
suggested, like mini-theories, guiding our actions and helping us to interpret social events. Because
of this, it is important for us to have some way of verifying or testing our theories. But, unlike more
formal scientific theories, we usually do not have any objective means or agreed procedures for doing
so. Anticipating his later social comparison theory (Festinger 1954), Festinger hypothesised that what
we do instead is to turn to other people for information about the correctness (or otherwise) of our
beliefs. Where everyone else appears to agree with us, then that offers some reassurance that our
beliefs are not completely at variance with reality. Festinger concluded that this validational function
provided by social comparisons would mean that people will generally value uniformity in groups
and will often behave so as to maintain it.
Pressures towards that uniformity are likely to increase in novel or ambiguous situations since
here are fewer ‘objective’ cues to guide our judgements – recall Sherif ’s (1936) autokinetic effect
experiment described earlier. Social consensus becomes still more valuable when decisions also
have important consequences. This point was neatly demonstrated by Baron et al. (1996). Using
a clever adaptation of Asch’s (1955) procedure, they modified the judgement task to resemble an
identification parade: participants were shown a picture of a suspect and then asked in which of four
other pictures the suspect appeared. The task was varied in difficulty by presenting the stimuli just
once and briefly, or twice for a longer duration. The significance of the task was also manipulated by
leading half of the participants to believe that they were participating in an important eye-witness
testimony research project and that their data would contribute to new procedures used by the police
and courts. Furthermore, they were offered the prospect of a substantial reward if they performed
accurately. The remainder thought that they were taking part in a run-of-the-mill pilot experiment
and were offered no rewards. As usual, two confederates of the experimenter gave consistently
misleading answers on about half the trials. As expected, most conformity (about 51%) was observed
under conditions of high difficulty and high importance.
The second determinant of conformity identified by Festinger is the presence of some important
group goal. When a group has a clearly defined objective, this may, by itself, induce some uniformity
of action amongst the group members, especially where achievement of the goal is dependent on the
aggregation of their efforts. The effectiveness of a tug-of-war team, for example, critically depends
on their success in maximising and coordinating their pull on the rope. However, with more com-
plex group tasks, it is also vital that the group members can agree not just on the goal itself but on
the means to the achievement of that goal. Without that uniformity of opinion, the group members’
efforts are likely to be fragmented and the attainment of the goal rendered less likely.
The power of a new goal to bring about attitude change in group members was convincingly
demonstrated by Lewin (1965). As part of a health education programme after the war to persuade
American families to eat more of various unfashionable, but nutritionally rich, cuts of meat (e.g. heart,
kidney), Lewin compared the effectiveness of a lecture by a nutrition expert to a participative group
discussion. In both cases, the participants were housewives, and the key measure was whether or
not they would subsequently attempt a recipe at home with one of these novel ingredients. Nearly a
third of those who had taken part in the group discussion were persuaded so to experiment, whilst
a negligible 3% of those who had only heard the lecture did so. One of the key differences between
the two methods of persuasion was that in the discussion groups each session ended with the group
deciding as a whole to give the new recipes a try; in the lecture, on the other hand, there was no such
clearly defined group goal, merely an exhortation by the lecturer. Moreover, the active participation of
the members of the discussion groups ensured that the group goal was internalised and not imposed
from outside.
Both of these motives for conformity presuppose that the group has some attractiveness for its
members. The other people in the group – and their opinions – must matter to the person subjected
to the influence. Presumably, the more they matter (i.e. the more cohesive a group is), the more con-
formity should occur. This seems to be the case. Festinger et al. (1950), investigating relationships in
a student housing project, found a strong positive correlation between the degree of cohesiveness of
student groups and how effectively group standards were maintained (see also, Lott and Lott 1961).
Such pressures to uniformity can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. Earlier in the chapter,
we noted how patterns of smoking and drinking behaviour among college students were linked to
their evolving social networks (Phua 2011). Other health behaviours may also be effected by group
processes. Crandall (1988) studied the incidence of eating disorders within friendship cliques in two
American sororities. He noted how, over a period of six months or so, each woman’s binge-eating
level converged to that of her closest friends, suggesting that some form of social contagion through
norm acquisition was responsible.
Important though these motives for conformity are, neither seems adequate to explain the com-
pliance observed in Asch’s experiments. In the first place, there was no ambiguity in the situation.
People’s opinions on the lengths of lines were easily and objectively verifiable; why then should the
confederates’ (incorrect) opinions have been so influential? Furthermore, there was no real or cohe-
sive group. The participants were taking part in what they thought was an experiment in individual
perception judgement; there were none of the usual criteria to mark a group’s existence (interdepen-
dence, identification, etc. – see Chapter 2).
Noting these anomalies, Deutsch and Gerard (1955) suggested a third reason for conformity which
is really the obverse of the social reality function which Festinger had proposed. People may have
conformed, they suggested, not because they were relying on the confederates’ judgements to define
reality for them but rather to avoid the possibility of social ridicule, of being the ‘odd one out’. There is
a great deal of evidence that we are attracted to others with similar attitudes to us (Byrne 1971) – or,
perhaps more accurately, repelled by those with dissimilar attitudes (Rosenbaum 1986) – presumably
because of the social validation (or disconfirmation) such people provide. Thus, if we dislike others
who disagree with us, we may reasonably anticipate that others will dislike us if we express very dif-
ferent opinions from them. Assuming that most people prefer to be liked rather than disliked, this
might give them a motive to conform to the majority’s opinion in Asch-type situations. Deutsch and
Gerard (1955) labelled this form of conformity ‘normative influence’, to distinguish it from the ‘infor-
mational influence’ implied by Festinger’s (1950) account. If such a motive is a reason for conformity,
then the amount of influence should be reduced if people make their responses privately.
Deutsch and Gerard (1955) designed an experiment which would simultaneously test this idea and
the earlier reality-testing and goal achievement hypotheses put forward by Festinger. The experiment
involved several modifications to Asch’s procedure. In one condition (the closest replication of Asch),
participants gave their responses in a face-to-face situation where there was an incorrect majority of
three. In half the trials, responses were made whilst stimuli were still visible; in the remainder, the
stimuli were removed before the judgements were made. This enhanced the ambiguity of the situa-
tion. The next condition was identical to the first except that participants could not see each other and
gave their responses anonymously. It was thought that this would reduce any conformity which is due
to the need to be liked. In a third condition, Deutsch and Gerard stepped up the conformity pressures
by informing participants that they constituted one of twenty groups and that the five groups which
made the fewest errors would receive an attractive prize. In this way, a clear group goal was introduced
which was expected to increase cohesion and conformity. Finally, Deutsch and Gerard devised three
conditions in which participants had to commit themselves by writing down their answers before
hearing the responses of others and before giving their own responses.
Deutsch and Gerard’s results confirmed that all three motives were significant influences on con-
formity. As the group was made psychologically more significant by providing a collective goal, the
number of errors (or level of conformity) increased. This was despite the fact that the group goal was
to make the fewest errors! This supports Festinger’s group-goal hypothesis. It was clear Festinger’s
reality-testing hypothesis – the need for information in ambiguous situations – was also supported
since there was greater conformity found in the more uncertain trials where stimuli were removed
before responding. The need to be liked must have been influential too. With anonymous respond-
ing, there was less conformity than in the face-to-face situation. This conformity dropped still fur-
ther when participants first committed themselves by writing down their judgement. However, it is
interesting that even in these prior commitment conditions, conformity did not disappear completely,
as it had in Asch’s control conditions when no confederates were present. This suggests that there was
some residual influence due to the confederates, even though the stimulus situation was clear-out and
the individuals could be assured of complete anonymity from their peers.
Such persistence of social influence when both ‘informational’ and ‘normative’ pressures for it are
virtually absent, poses something of a difficulty for the explanations for conformity we have con-
sidered so far. Turner (1991) proposed a rather different explanation for conformity which may help
resolve this problem. Turner’s starting point was to assume that a fundamental feature of group mem-
bership is that it provides people with a social identity – it helps them to define who they are, (this
is already a familiar idea which we discussed in Chapter 2). When people identify with a group,
argued Turner, they categorise themselves as members of it and, as a consequence, mentally asso-
ciate themselves with the attributes and norms which they perceive as being part of that group. It is
this ‘self-stereotyping’ process which Turner believed is the key to understanding conformity. Thus,
his explanation of the presence of conformity in Deutsch and Gerard’s (1955) experiment was to
assume that the participants believed that others in the experiment belonged to the same ingroup
(they could reasonably infer that they were college students like themselves) and hence perceived their
rather unusual actions as being normative for that group in that situation. Their self-categorisation as
‘college students’ then led them to assimilate those same actions for themselves. Turner (1991)
labelled this form of influence ‘referent informational influence’ to distinguish it from the other types
of influence we discussed earlier.
If this theory is correct, then people should be more affected by sources of influence which come
from their ingroup than from some outgroup. There is much evidence that this is the case. Abrams
et al. (1990, experiment 2) used a modification of the Asch-paradigm in which the confederates were
perceived to be students studying the same degree (psychology) as the real participants or studying
a different degree (ancient history). As a further independent variable, responses were given either
privately or publicly. Overall, there was markedly more conformity to the confederates’ responses in
the ingroup condition (same degree subject) than in the outgroup condition (different degree), espe-
cially when participants were required to respond publicly and hence be more open to the scrutiny of
others. Several other experiments have confirmed this greater influence exerted by ingroup sources
(e.g. Van Knippenberg and Wilke 1988; Wilder 1990). There is more to conformity, it seems, than
simply ‘defining social reality’; it all depends who is doing the defining.
Standing Out from the Crowd: On being a Deviate

The main result of conformity is, of course, greater uniformity amongst the group members. How
does this uniformity come about? In most experimental demonstrations we have discussed so far, it
seemed to happen as a result of individuals cognitively restructuring the situation, either to justify
giving an ‘incorrect’ response or perhaps to reinterpret the meaning of the stimuli themselves (Allen
and Wilder 1980). But conformity is not always as private a phenomenon as this. Very often the
majority will bring overt pressure to bear on those with deviant opinions. This was another hypothe-
sis to emerge from Festinger’s (1950) theory. He argued that those in the majority would direct most
of their communication towards those in the minority subgroup in an attempt to persuade them to
change their position. The greater the discrepancy between minority and majority, the more com-
munications one would expect. Since the object of these communications is to exert influence on
the deviants, if these influence attempts are unsuccessful (that is, if the deviants maintain their non-
conformist stand), Festinger believed that the other members of the group will come to dislike the
deviants even, in extreme cases, expelling them from the group altogether.
Schachter (1951) put these ideas to the test. He observed the behaviour of student discussion groups
who had to solve a ‘human relations’ problem involving a delinquent boy and his family. Unknown
to the half-dozen or so real participants in each group, Schachter introduced three experimental
confederates. One was instructed to take up a deviate position in the group. Once the group’s view
began to crystallise, his job was to argue for a directly contrary point of view using some standard
arguments. The second confederate was also to be a deviate initially, but about a third of the way
through the discussion he had gradually to change his position and come into line with the rest of
the group. He was dubbed the ‘slider’. The third confederate (the ‘mode’) had an easier role since
he simply had to go along with the prevailing opinion in the group throughout. Schachter carefully
monitored the number of remarks each person addressed to these three bogus group members, and
the results are shown in Figure 3.3.
As can be seen, most attention was paid to the ‘deviate’. In the first 10 minutes of the discussion,
each group member addressed about one communication on average to this confederate, rising to
2.0
1.5
Number of communications
1.0
0.5
5–15 15–25 25–35 35–45

Time during discussion (min) Mean
desirability
Recipients rank
Deviate (maintained counter-normative position) 6.1
Slider (changed position after 15 minutes) 4.8
Mode (maintained pro-normative position) 4.5
Figure 3.3 Deviants become the target of the group’s attention. Source: Schachter (1951), tables 3, 7, and 8. Derived
from American Psychological Association.
over twice that by the end of the session. In contrast, the ‘slider’, who initially received nearly as many
communications as the ‘deviate’, was increasingly ignored, especially after he had apparently changed
his mind. The ‘mode’ was virtually ignored throughout; since he already agreed with the group, there
was no need for them to pay him any heed. These findings were neatly paralleled by some sociometric
data which Schachter also collected. Everyone was asked to rank order their fellow discussants in
terms of their desirability as group members. The mean ranks given to each confederate are shown
at the bottom of Figure 3.3, and it is clear that the deviate was given a consistently lower ranking than
the other two and well below the median rank of 5. Just as Festinger had predicted, the deviate who
resisted the group’s social pressure was not well regarded by his peers.
The discovery that deviates are not particularly liked has stood the test of time (Tata et al. 1996).
Some years later, Schachter and seven colleagues conducted an enormous cross-cultural study which
used a very similar procedure to the experiment just described, but which omitted the ‘slider’ and
‘mode’ roles (Schachter et al. 1954). Nearly 300 groups of schoolboys from seven European countries
were observed discussing a project to build a model aeroplane. A number of prototypes were available.
Most were highly attractive motor-driven models and were generally preferred by the boys. One of
the models, however, was a glider, and this was the model which the deviate always ‘preferred’ in the
ensuing discussion to choose which model they would build. In the rank ordering measure at the
end (this time to elect a group leader), the deviate’s mean rank was below the median in every single
country tested, confirming once again that deviates are seldom very popular members of the group.
This classic work on how people who deviate from the group’s norms are treated viewed the group
in isolation. And yet, in most real-world contexts, groups exist in a web of relationships with other
groups, and the norms that prevail within these groups serve not only to regulate behaviour within
them but also to help differentiate each group from its neighbours. This being so, when someone
deviates from the group norm, it has implications both for the integrity of the ingroup and for the
distinctiveness of the ingroup from outgroups.
The first clue that norm violations have intergroup as well as intragroup consequences came from
the discovery by Marques et al. (1988) that ingroup members who transgress important norms are
disliked more than outgroup members who behave in a similar fashion – the so-called ‘black sheep
effect’. One study, conducted in the aftermath of the Heysel football stadium tragedy in 1985 in which
39 Juventus fans died after being attacked by some Liverpool fans, showed this phenomenon clearly.
Belgian participants were asked to imagine that this incident had been caused either by Belgian fans
(ingroup) or German fans (outgroup). Those in the ingroup condition thought that the delinquent
fans were much less likeable than those in the outgroup condition.
If one takes this intergroup perspective on deviance, several interesting implications follow. One
is that not all deviations from the ingroup norm will be regarded equally negatively. In fact, some
deviates, those who are seen to behave or think in a more extreme positive fashion, may actually be
evaluated more favourably than those who stick to the group’s modal position. This is because they
are simultaneously strengthening the prototype of what it means to be a member of that group and
differentiating the ingroup more sharply from an outgroup.
This was shown in a clever experiment by Abrams et al. (2000, Study 2). They presented psychol-
ogy students with some information about a topical social issue, the percentage asylum-seekers who
should be granted refugee status in Britain. Also in the information sheet were arguments for and
against increasing the current numbers being given refugee status, including the views of an associa-
tion of immigration officers who, it seemed, wanted the numbers cut by a third, and the views of other
British psychology students who, it was stated, believed that the current numbers were about right. In
4.8 Figure 3.4 Some deviants are liked more than others.
Pro-norm
Source: Abrams et al. (2000), study 2. Reprinted by
Normative
4.4 Anti-norm permission of the American Psychological Association.
4.0
3.6
3.2
2.8
In-group Out-group
this way, the researchers established a norm for the ingroup (psychology students) that was broadly
pro-asylum-seekers, and a different norm for the outgroup (immigration officials) that was mainly
against asylum-seekers. The student participants were then presented with the views of six members
of the ingroup, or the outgroup (depending on experimental condition). Four of these group members
endorsed normative opinions for their group (no change in numbers for the psychology group, a 30%
reduction for the immigration officers group). However, two members of each group were deviates,
one in a pro-norm direction (being even more enthusiastic about the group’s general view than aver-
age) and one in an anti-norm direction (going against the prevailing group view). This was effected by
having the ingroup pro-norm deviate argue for a 20% increase in the numbers being granted asylum
and the ingroup anti-norm deviate argue for a 20% decrease on the current numbers. The corre-
sponding positions for the outgroup deviates were a 40% decrease (pro-norm) and a 20% decrease
(anti-norm). Notice that the anti-norm deviates in the ingroup and outgroup were both wanting the
same change (20% decrease). How favourably were these six people rated? The results can be seen in
Figure 3.4. Notice, first, how differently the two ingroup deviates are regarded – by nearly 1.5 points
on the 7-point scale used. The ‘black sheep’ phenomenon is also clearly in evidence: the anti-norm
outgroup deviate is seen so much more positively than the ingroup anti-norm deviate, despite the
fact that they both are adopting the same position on asylum-seeking. But one (the ingroup devi-
ate) is weakening the ingroup’s position and lessening its distinctiveness in relation to the outgroup,
while the other (the outgroup deviate) has much less serious implications for the ingroup and can
be ‘admired’ as an outgroup renegade (see also, Abrams et al. 2002; Abrams et al. 2013; Frings et al.
2010; Marques et al. 2001).
Notwithstanding the many studies that have documented the ‘black sheep effect’ (or variants
thereof ), a full understanding of how ingroup (and outgroup) deviates are judged is complicated
by some other social psychological processes at work in intergroup contexts. One such process is
the well-known tendency for group members to employ different standards as to what constitutes a
norm infraction when judging ingroup and outgroup members. One classic study illustrates this well.
Princeton University and Dartmouth College are two prestigious American universities and have
had a long history of rivalry, especially on the (American) football field. One (in)famous game between
these two universities took place in 1951 and was, by all accounts, a particularly brutal affair, resulting
in broken limbs and an unusually high number of fouls committed by both sides. Hastorf and Cantril
(1954) procured a film of the game and showed it to samples of Dartmouth and Princeton students.
These two groups had very different perceptions of who was most guilty of foul play: 86% of Princeton
students thought that Dartmouth had started the rough stuff, while only 36% of Dartmouth students
did; Princeton students ‘saw’ roughly twice as many fouls committed by the Dartmouth players than
by the Princeton players, but Dartmouth students saw an equal number committed by the two teams.3
Of course, this is just one example among dozens of studies that have documented ingroup favour-
ing biases (Brewer 1979; Mullen et al. 1992), but it does call into question whether ingroup rule-
breakers will always be judged more severely than outgroup rule-breakers. Indeed, when it comes to
standards of fairness or justice in social behaviour, group members are often far from being impartial
moral arbiters (Valdesolo and DeSteno 2007).
Such a capacity for moral hypocrisy is not limited to artificial laboratory situations, as Iyer et al.
(2012) showed. They invited participants to judge ingroup norm violators – in one case, unethical
research behaviour by a colleague at the same university; in another, the maltreatment of Iraqi pris-
oners by British troops. Reasoning that in such cases, people might be motivated to protect the repu-
tation of the ingroup, Iyer et al. (2012) expected to find that these deviates’ behaviour would be seen
as less reprehensible by the more highly identified group members, especially when reminded of their
group’s allegedly blameless past history. So it proved. High identifiers – those presumably most con-
cerned about the public image of their group – were more lenient in their judgements of the deviates
than the low identifiers (see also, Doosje et al. 1998; Miron et al. 2010).
In all these instances, ingroup deviates seem to be rather less called to account, especially when
identity issues are at stake (e.g. by more strongly identified group members). Such reactions do not,
at first glance, seem easily reconcilable with the ‘black sheep’ phenomenon which, as we saw, usually
results in harsher judgements being made of ingroup deviates.
A similar inconsistency arises when we consider group members’ responses to critics of their group.
When those critics are ingroup members, they should really be regarded as deviates since they are at
variance with some ingroup norm. Yet, seemingly in contradiction to the ‘black sheep effect’, ingroup
critics are usually tolerated much better than outgroup critics, a phenomenon known as ‘intergroup
sensitivity’ (Hornsey 2005; Hornsey and Imani 2004; Hornsey et al. 2002). This makes some sense.
As we know, people are loathe to ‘wash their dirty linen in public’; it is usually much safer for a group
to constrain questioning of its goals or methods to within the group’s boundaries rather than expose
its weaknesses to wider public scrutiny. Perhaps this is why organisations and governments heap
such opprobrium on whistle-blowers, the case of Edward Snowden who in 2013 leaked the workings
of the U.S. National Security Agency to the world’s media being a recent case in point (https://www.
theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/-sp-edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-interview-transcript).
Incorporating a concept like intergroup sensitivity into our understanding of how social influence
works in groups is a useful corrective to the one-sided emphasis on intragroup homogeneity that
one finds in the original Festinger (1950) and Turner (1991) accounts. Indeed, as Jetten and Hornsey
(2014) have argued, perhaps we need a greater appreciation of deviance and dissent as normal aspects
of group life. In the next chapter we will explore those aspects in more detail.
Before we do so, however, we need to reflect a little further on when internal dissent is tolerated,
and perhaps even encouraged, and when it will be stamped out. One key variable may be the degree
of external threat that the group faces. In circumstances of high threat – for example, when our group
is in conflict with another – there may be a closing of ranks and a decreased tolerance of internal dis-
sent. Many of us remember the febrile atmosphere in the United States in the immediate aftermath
3 In a nice demonstration of scientific impartiality, it is worth noting that these two researcher themselves came from the
two universities concerned (Hastorf (Dartmouth) and Cantril (Princeton)).
of the terrorist attacks in 2001, where the slightest hint of criticism of American foreign policy
led to social ostracism or worse (https://www.aclu.org/other/civil-liberties-after-9-11-aclu-defends-
freedom). It seems that the intergroup sensitivity phenomenon is eliminated in such conflictual situ-
ations (Ariyanto et al. 2010).
Such climates of intergroup threat can cause groups to become more authoritarian. By this, we
do not mean that the personalities of the individual group members suddenly undergo a magical
transformation. Instead, what may happen in intergroup conflict situations is that the group identity
becomes more significant and, with it, changes within the group may occur that resemble the clas-
sic authoritarian syndrome – greater submissiveness to ingroup norms and rule of conduct, more
emphasis on respect for ingroup leaders and heightened intolerance of and punitiveness towards
deviants (Duckitt 1989). Duckitt and Fisher (2003) provided evidence of this in an experiment in
which their participants were asked to imagine that the social and economic outlook of their country
was rather gloomy (high unemployment and crime, political instability), or that it was rather rosy
(economic growth and social harmony), or that little would change. Consistent with the idea that
threat causes groups to become less tolerant, Duckitt and Fisher found that the first group of partici-
pants showed reliably higher levels of Right Wing Authoritarianism (Altemeyer 1996) than the other
two, this despite the fact that members of all three groups must have had roughly equivalent levels of
RWA because of the random assignment to conditions inherent in the experimental design (see also,
Stellmacher and Petzel (2005) for other research on group authoritarianism).
Going to Extremes: Reaching Decisions in Groups

Until about 1960, the conventional wisdom was that a group opinion corresponded roughly to the
average of the opinions of its constituent members. This common-sense view was undoubtedly influ-
enced by the theory and research on conformity processes (in their heyday in the 1950s) which, as
we saw earlier, strongly suggested that group members are liable to converge on some agreed or nor-
mative position when asked to make a collective judgement.
Given this climate of opinion, perhaps it is not surprising that a series of experiments claiming
that just the opposite was the case should have had such an impact on the field of group dynam-
ics. The first of these – probably one of the most famous unpublished experiments in the history of
social psychology – was by Stoner (1961). Stoner asked his participants individually to make some
judgements about a number of hypothetical social dilemmas. Each of these dilemmas involved some-
one having to make a choice between two courses of action, one of which (with the more desirable
outcome) involved a higher degree of risk than the other. One of the dilemmas used was as follows:
‘An electrical engineer may stick with his present job at a modest but adequate salary, or may take a
new job offering considerably more money but no long-term security’. The participants were asked
to judge the lowest acceptable level of risk for them to advise the main character in the scenario to
give the riskier alternative a try. Participants were then randomly formed into groups and asked to
reach a unanimous decision on each of the dilemmas they had considered individually. Stoner found
to his surprise that these group decisions were nearly always riskier than the average of the individ-
ual group member pre-discussion decisions. These results were quickly replicated by Wallach et al.
(1962).
In the several hundred studies which followed these two experiments, three other factors also
became clear. The first was that the so-called ‘shift to risk’ which had been identified should more
properly be called a ‘shift to extremity’. Several experiments found that on some dilemmas groups
regularly made more cautious or conservative choices than individuals (e.g. Fraser et al. 1971; Stoner
1968). In other words, groups seem to shift away from the ‘neutral’ point of the scale towards the
pole which initially favoured by the average of the individual choices. This polarisation phenomenon
(as it is now known) has proved to be remarkably general and robust, having been obtained in a wide
variety of populations (Myers and Lamm 1976). The second conclusion to emerge from the explo-
sion of group decision-making research set off by Stoner was that the size of the group polarisation
shift was correlated with the average individual initial position on the scale (Teger and Pruitt 1967). In
other words, far from being constrained either statistically (by ‘floor’ or ‘ceiling’ effects) or psycholog-
ically (by wishing to appear moderate), the more extreme a group is to begin with, the more extreme
it seems to become. The third important finding was that polarisation effects are by no means limited
to the choice dilemmas devised by Wallach et al. (1962). Moscovici and Zavalloni (1969) asked French
school students to state individually their attitudes towards President de Gaulle and the United States.
They were then formed into groups and the resulting consensually agreed attitudes showed evidence
of polarisation. Beforehand, their attitudes had been favourable towards de Gaulle and negative to
the United States; in the groups they became even more pro-Gaullist and rather more anti-American
(see also, Doise 1969; Stephenson and Brotherton 1975). Polarisation has also been observed in a
variety of other domains including, jury decision-making, gambling decisions, visual judgements in
the Sherif (1936) autokinetic situation, financial allocations in experimental games, and judgements
of physical attractiveness (Luhan et al. 2009; Myers and Lamm 1976; Isenberg 1986).
There is one cautionary qualification that needs to be added, however. This is that almost all the
studies on which these conclusions are based were conducted in laboratory settings with ad hoc
groups in which the decision-making task was a novel one and – even more important – in which the
outcome was almost always hypothetical. The decisions seldom had any real consequences, either
for those making them or for some other party. On those rare occasions when real decision-making
groups have been studied, polarisation has been less evident. Semin and Glendon (1973), for example,
gained access to a job evaluation committee in a medium-sized business. The purpose of this com-
mittee was to decide on the grading of different jobs in the firm, which had direct implications for
the status and pay of those working there. Before the committee met, members individually allocated
points to each of the jobs under consideration. During the committee deliberations, the individual
ratings were made known to the other committee members, and, after discussion, the committee as
a whole decided on the point grading of each job. The procedure was thus almost an exact replica of
the standard laboratory demonstrations of group polarisation. However, unlike groups in the labora-
tory, these real committees showed no polarisation whatsoever in their decisions. After 28 decisions
over a year, the average job evaluation made by the committee was virtually identical to the mean
evaluations of the individual committee members.
An explanation for these discrepancies was suggested by Semin and Glendon (1973). They point
out that what distinguishes most real decision-making bodies from ad hoc laboratory groups is their
relative longevity over time; they have a history and a future while laboratory groups have only a
transient existence. This means that they are much more likely to develop an internal structure (e.g.
designated officers), adopt conventional procedures (e.g. written agendas), and to establish norms
about the decision issues, all of which might inhibit any ‘natural’ polarisation from appearing.
Explanations of Group Polarisation

How are polarisation phenomena best explained? There are currently three main approaches to this
question.
One answer is provided by an extension of Festinger’s (1954) social comparison theory that we
encountered earlier. Two prominent advocates of this approach were Sanders and Baron (1977).
According to them, polarisation occurs in the following way: associated with any issue on which a
group must reach a decision are likely to be a number of social values (e.g. caring for others, being
adventurous, not taking risks with one’s health, and so on). Taken together, these values will result
in an initial social preference towards one decision outcome rather than another. Each individual,
before the group discussion, will probably perceive him/herself as being somewhat further towards
this socially desirable outcome than his/her peers (Codol 1975). Once the group discussion gets
underway – thereby heightening the salience of the relevant social values – some of these individ-
uals discover that this was a misperception because there are others who endorse positions further
towards the socially valued pole than them. The outcome of this social comparison is that they will
then shift further in this direction in order to present themselves in a more favourable light. There
will, of course, be some who find themselves already further towards the socially desirable extreme
than most others in the group but, although conformity pressures may modify their opinion some-
what, they will have less reason to shift than their colleagues who are on the other (‘wrong’) side of the
modal position. The net result is that the collective decision will be slightly more extreme than the
average of individual positions and will come to represent more nearly the majority viewpoint in
the group.
Note that, the key factor is merely people’s knowledge each other’s positions relative to the dominant
social value(s) in question, rather than actually discussing the issue. It follows, then, that group dis-
cussion may not be necessary to produce polarisation, if others’ positions could be revealed in some
other way. This is the rationale behind a number of experiments which have examined the effect of
‘mere knowledge’ on people’s opinions. One of the first of these was by Teger and Pruitt (1967) who
modified the usual paradigm to include a ‘no discussion’ condition, where group members were per-
mitted only to hold up signs indicating their individual pre-discussion positions on each item. Sure
enough, their subsequent decisions became more polarised after receiving this information, although
not as strongly as those who had had the benefit of discussion as well (see also, Myers 1978).
More direct evidence for the importance of social comparison processes has come from studies
which have varied the salience of a social value directly. If it is, indeed, a movement towards a pos-
itively valued pole which underlies polarisation, then one should expect greater shifts as the value
becomes more explicit. This is exactly what Baron and Roper (1976) found. Adapting Sherif ’s (1936)
autokinetic effect paradigm (discussed previously in the context of norm formation), they suggested
to participants that large estimates of movement of the light were indicative of superior intelligence.
This, then, was the relevant social value. Upon hearing the responses of others in the ‘public’ trials
of the experiment, people’s estimates became significantly larger than those who always responded
privately and were thus deprived of social comparison information.
The emphasis in the social comparison explanation is on the self-presentational or self-
enhancement motives which are stimulated by comparisons with others. The focus is very much on
relations among the group members; the actual content of the group discussion is seen as irrelevant
except as it affects these. We now turn to a second approach – the ‘persuasive arguments’ theory, in
which this order of priorities is reversed. According to this view, the main causal factor – and in some
strong versions of the theory, the only causal factor – underlying group polarisation is the exchange
of information and arguments which precedes the collective decision.
Burnstein and Vinokur (1977) have been the main champions of the persuasive arguments the-
ory and have accumulated an impressive array of evidence in its support. They begin by assuming,
reasonably enough, that, on any issue under deliberation, the group members are unlikely to come
up with a precisely equal balance of arguments and evidence for and against each side of the debate.
Usually, there will be a preponderance in one direction, presumably not unrelated to the dom-
inant social values which are thought so critical for the social comparison explanation. Prior to
discussion, each individual may be aware of only some of these arguments, and thus, their initial
position is more moderate than if they knew all of them. However, once the discussion gets under-
way, all this different information is pooled as it comes out into the open; each person becomes
acquainted with more of the arguments supporting the dominant view and perhaps one or two extra
arguments against, although probably not as many. Burnstein and Vinokur (1977) suggest that the
group members then act as rational ‘information processors’ and respond to the additional argu-
ments and evidence supporting their initially preferred view by shifting their opinion further in that
direction.
This idea that group decisions result from the pooling of individual contributions has received con-
siderable support from studies which have either analysed or manipulated the argumentative content
of group discussions. Vinokur and Burnstein (1974), for instance, counted up the number of pro-risk
and pro-caution arguments that were generated over typically ‘risky’ or ‘cautious’ choice dilemma
items. As they expected, the pro-risk arguments outweighed the pro-caution arguments on ‘risky’
items by about 6 : 4, and for ‘cautious’ items, the ratio was reversed. When those arguments were
subsequently rated for persuasiveness by independent judges, the arguments from the larger set on
any item were also found to be more persuasive. Finally, Vinokur and Burnstein (1974) ran an experi-
ment in which participants were simply provided with prototypical arguments produced on different
items, with no opportunity for discussion. The usual shifts occurred (see also, Ebbesen and Bowers
1974; Burnstein and Vinokur 1973).
Some observers of contemporary debates about important political issues (e.g. the US Presidential
election or the UK Referendum on the European Union in 2016) have complained that they often
take place in ‘echo chambers’ of like-minded people, especially when those debates occur on social
media. If true, this might result in a hardening of the extreme positions adopted by rival protagonists
in the debates.
However, in the arena of real-life political attitudes, research findings have not always been so
kind to the persuasive arguments theory. Stimulated by Sunstein’s (2009) warnings about the dan-
gers associated with deliberations within ‘political enclaves’ (like-minded people), Grönlund et al.
(2015) recruited a fairly representative sample of Finnish citizens to take part in a weekend ‘delibera-
tion event’. Half were assigned to groups of like-minded people (either ‘pro’ or ‘con’ immigration); half
were put in groups with a more mixed set of opinions on immigration. They all had to express their
individual attitudes prior to joining these groups, as in a conventional group polarisation experiment.
If Burnstein and Vinokur are right, the ‘con’ enclaves should become even more anti-immigration
after the group discussion and the ‘pro’ enclaves even more favourable to immigration. In both kinds
of groups, there should be a preponderance of arguments in the initially preferred direction. On the
other hand, in the mixed groups, much less polarisation should occur because there the ‘pro’ and ‘con’
arguments will be more equally balanced. In fact, the only groups to conform to the persuasive argu-
ments prediction were the pro-immigration enclaves – they became slightly more pro-immigration
post-discussion. The ‘con’ people showed no evidence of polarisation whether they were in homo-
geneous or mixed groups: both kinds became more favourably disposed to immigration, especially
the mixed groups. This suggests the presence of a wider cultural pro-immigration norm rather than
a simple response to a particular set of political arguments.
Another difficulty for the persuasive arguments approach lies in its assumption that during the
group discussion, new information emerges to bring about the polarisation. In fact, studies of how
group members utilise both the shared and unshared information in the group suggest that this pool-
ing of available arguments rarely happens. Imagine the following situation; four members of a per-
sonnel selection panel meet to discuss the relative merits of three candidates A, B, and C. On various
objective criteria, A is the stronger applicant with (say) eight positive attributes, four neutral, and four
negative; B and C might have 4 positive, 8 neutral, and 4 negative characteristics. Now, if all members
of the panel have access to all this information, there is little doubt that they should choose A for the
job. But suppose not all the information about the candidates is shared, perhaps because the different
panel members have been delegated different tasks during the selection process (e.g. one to review
previous work experience, one to assess communication skills, one to evaluate team participation,
and so on). Now, when they meet as a panel, each person knows some positive and negative things
about the candidates which may not be known by the others. If their discussion is optimal, then all
this unshared information will be revealed, and candidate A will still be chosen. But groups do not
often function in this optimal way. Instead, they tend to concentrate mainly on the information they
have in common and overlook the ‘hidden’ non-shared information.
The above example is taken from an experiment by Stasser and Titus (1985). In one condition, all
information about these hypothetical candidates was shared. However, in a second condition, Stasser
and Titus arranged for each member to have access to only two of candidate A’s positive attributes,
but all his negative attributes. However, the particular positive features known by each member were
unique to that person (i.e. unshared). In a parallel way, all of candidate B’s positive attributes were
shared, but his negative features were spread around the four panellists. For candidate C, both the pos-
itive and negative attributes were unshared (see Table 3.1). Note that the total amount of information
Table 3.1 Distribution of information about three candidates in Stasser and Titus’ (1985) study
Candidates
A B C
Condition +(p) −(n) +(p) −(n) +(p) −(n)
Shared Person 1 8 4 4 4 4 4
Person 2 8 4 4 4 4 4
Person 3 8 4 4 4 4 4
Person 4 8 4 4 4 4 4
Unshared Person 1 2(p1, p2) 4 4 1 (n1) 1 (p1) 1 (n1)
Person 2 2 (p3, p4) 4 4 1 (n2) 1 (p2) 1 (n2)
Person 3 2 (p5, p6) 4 4 1 (n3) 1 (p3) 1 (n3)
Person 4 2 (p7, p8) 4 4 1 (n4) 1 (p4) 1 (n4)
Note: There was also some neutral information about the candidates that did not differ between conditions.
Source: Stasser and Titus (1985), table 3. Derived from American Psychological Association.
Table 3.2 Group decisions may not use all information available in the group
Candidate chosen (%)
Condition A B C
Individual preferences (prior to discussion) Shared 67 17 17

Unshared 25 61 14
Group preferences Shared 83 11 6
Unshared 24 71 5
Source: Stasser and Titus (1985), table 3. Adapted from American Psychological Association.
(positive and negative) about the candidates was identical in the ‘shared’ and ‘unshared’ conditions;
only its distribution amongst the panel members differed. The effects of this one difference were dra-
matic, as can be seen in Table 3.2. Prior to the group discussion, there was a strong preference for
candidate A in the ‘shared’ condition, a preference which was magnified in the final group decision
in that condition. This outcome accurately reflected the objective merits of the candidates. However,
note what happened in the ‘unshared’ condition. Initially, candidate B was preferred, a consequence
of the biased information each panel member had at their disposal. But the group discussion, far from
correcting this misleading impression by revealing all candidate A’s ‘hidden’ talents, actually resulted
in an even stronger preference for the less well qualified candidate B. Subsequent experiments con-
firmed that, indeed, much more of the group’s time is typically spent discussing (and reiterating) the
information they all already possessed than in discovering any new information (Stasser et al. 1989;
Stasser and Stewart 1992; see reviews by Lu et al. 2012; Mesmer-Magnus and DeChurch 2009; Stasser
and Titus 2003).
There are important theoretical and practical implications of this observation that group members
may not spontaneously exchange all the knowledge they possess. It casts some doubt on Burnstein
and Vinokur’s (1973) hypothesis that group polarisation is the outcome of acquiring and processing
new information during group discussion. It also provides a clue as to how groups like selection panels
and other committees can act so as to improve their decision-making. We will discuss this in more
detail in Chapter 5. For the moment, we can simply note that they may be well advised to implement
procedures which work against too early an achievement of consensus. For, as Stasser and others have
shown, such consensus is occasionally attained at the expense of objectivity.
For the persuasive arguments explanation, the actual discussion in the group is more important
than the person who puts forward the argument; the information content – and hence persuasive-
ness – of the arguments expressed is presumed to be a property of the arguments themselves and is
independent of their source. But are we really as receptive to arguments from our opponents as we
are to those from our friends? This brings us to the third of our explanations of group polarisation, an
explanation which invokes social identification with the group as the key process (Wetherell 1987).
Drawing on Turner et al.’s (1987) self-categorisation theory, outlined in Chapter 2, Wetherell argues
that what is happening when a group polarises is that the group members are attempting to con-
form more closely to what they see as the ingroup position. When the situation makes their ingroup
identity more important – for example, when an intergroup relationship comes particularly to the
Mean change
of attitude
(Pro-retention)
5
4
3
2
1 ‘Outgroup’ tape Subjects’
initial
0
Pro-retention Pro-abolition attitude
–1 tape tape (= 20.5)
–2
–3
–4 Midpoint
–5 of scale
–6 (= 15.5)
–7
–8 ‘Ingroup’ tape
(Pro-abolition)
Figure 3.5 Intergroup effects on attitude polarisation. Source: Mackie and Cooper (1984), table 2. Derived from
American Psychological Association.
fore – then the relevant ingroup norms are likely to become more extreme so as to be more clearly
differentiated from the outgroup, and the within-group polarisation will be enhanced.
This was the idea tested by Mackie and Cooper (1984). They found that students’ attitudes towards
the use of standardised tests for university entry could be dramatically altered after hearing a taped
‘ingroup’ arguing for the retention (or abolition) of these tests but were much less affected when
the tape was alleged to be of an outgroup (see Figure 3.5). Notice that initially the students were
mildly in favour of retaining the entrance tests, a tendency which was exaggerated after hearing the
pro-retention ‘ingroup’ tape. But on hearing the pro-abolition ‘ingroup’ tape, their attitudes switched
completely and actually fell below the midpoint of the 31-point scale. The changes after hearing the
same arguments attributed to an ‘outgroup’ were much smaller and were generally in the reverse
direction (see also, Mackie 1986).
Several other studies have confirmed that the psychological presence of an intergroup
relationship – learning that some discussants share an ingroup membership whilst others belong to
an outgroup – nearly always generates polarisation (Abrams et al. 1990; Turner et al. 1989; Van Knip-
penberg and Wilke 1988; but cf. Krizan and Baron (2007) and Reid and Sumiga (1984) for contrasting
results).
Concluding Remarks on Group Polarisation

Let us now summarise these three approaches and assess their competing merits. The social com-
parison explanation is at its strongest in explaining polarisation in domains where there is little
Summary 77
opportunity exchange arguments but where, nevertheless, there is some information available as
to the socially preferred way of behaving and as to how others actually are behaving. Decisions in
blackjack gambling or estimates of autokinetic movement do not seem readily amenable to the very
cognitive information processing approach advocated by the persuasive arguments theorists and yet,
as we have seen, polarisation can be observed as clearly here as with more verbal discussion tasks. On
the other hand, in the latter situations, the persuasive arguments approach convincingly shows that
it is the content of the messages which are exchanged during the group discussion that largely deter-
mines the extent of polarisation. Both the social comparison and persuasive argument approaches
seem most applicable when one initially knows little about one’s fellow group members or where the
decision taken is a novel one. After all, if one knows everybody’s views about an issue and one is well
acquainted with all the relevant arguments, it is hard to see why either process should come into play.
Perhaps that is why polarisation has not been so easy to observe in real-life groups which have been in
existence for some time. The essence of the third approach is that group members have some knowl-
edge of their group’s norms, and then shift towards these as their group membership becomes salient.
It seems difficult to explain the differential polarisation caused by exposure to ‘ingroup’ or ‘outgroup’
arguments in any better way than by such a social identity perspective. Certainly, such findings are
especially difficult to reconcile with the persuasive argument approach since the actual information
content of the messages is always held constant. However, powerful though these intergroup effects
are, it is less easy to imagine how they would come into play in (say) a jury where there is not an
obvious outgroup against which to define the prototypical ingroup norm.
We are left, then, with the theoretically inelegant but nevertheless probably correct conclusion that
all three types of process are present to some degree in most decision-making situations in the real
world. Their relative weights may vary from situation to situation, but it seems unlikely that any one
operates to the complete exclusion of the others.
Summary
1. All groups evolve systems of norms which define the limits of acceptable and unacceptable
behaviours. Norms help the individual to structure and predict his/her environment, especially
in novel or ambiguous situations.
2. Norms also serve social functions. They provide a means by which behaviour in the group can be
regulated. They also facilitate the achievement of group goals and express aspects of the group’s
identity, especially by demarcating the ingroup from other groups.
3. However, norms are not straight-jackets. The degree to which they constrain our behaviour
depends on the centrality of the issue for the group and our status within the group. Norms may
change with changing circumstances, but can also remain stable over many years.
4. To be effective, norms depend on social influence processes. The most easily observed kind of
social influence is when individuals conform to the attitudes and behaviour of the majority. This
can occur even to the extent that individuals are apparently willing to deny the evidence of their
own senses in order to go along with the majority view.
5. The main explanations for this conformity to the majority (by Festinger and others) propose that
three main motivations are at work: the need to depend on others for information about the world
and to test the validity of our own opinions; the achievement of group goals which is facilitated by
a uniformity of purpose; and the need for approval arising out of not wishing to seem different.
6. Pressures towards uniformity are most visible when reactions to deviates in the group are studied.
Deviates attract the most attention from the majority as attempts are made to make them change
their mind.
7. Not all deviates are the same. Ingroup deviates may often be derogated more than outgroup mem-
bers adopting the same position (the ‘black sheep’ effect). On the other hand, in situations of inter-
group conflict, we are usually more tolerant of ingroup critics than outgroup critics (the ‘inter-
group sensitivity’ effect). However, at high levels of intergroup threat, even ingroup dissent will be
squashed as groups become more authoritarian.
8. Decisions and judgements made in groups very often exhibit polarisation: the collective view is
more extreme than the average of individual opinions in the same direction.
9. There are three main current explanations of group polarisation: social comparison theory, per-
suasive arguments theory, and social identity theory. Social comparison theory proposes that
polarisation is caused by group members competing with one another to endorse the socially most
desirable viewpoints. Persuasive arguments theory emphasises the role of information exchange
from new arguments and evidence that comes to light during the discussion. The social identity
approach proposes that polarisation is due to group members conforming to ingroup norms in
contrast to outgroup norms.
Further Reading
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Jetten, J. and Hornsey, M.J. (2014). Deviance and dissent in groups. Annual Review of Social Psychology
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Sherif, M. and Sherif, C.W. (1969). Social Psychology.
Stasser, G. and Titus, W. (2003). Hidden profiles: a brief history. Psychological Inquiry 14: 304–313.
Terry, D.J. and Hogg, M.A. (2001). Attitudes, behaviour and social context: the role of norms and group
membership in social influence processes. In: Social Influence: Direct and Indirect (eds. J.P. Forgas and
K.P. Williams), 253–270. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
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85
Innovation and Change in Groups
In the previous chapter, we examined how and when people come together in groups. They may
influence each other such that group consensus emerges from differing individual opinions and judge-
ments. We saw how people may yield to pressure to conform to the majority and how deviate group
members are rejected or devalued. Yet, the idea that minorities can only conform or be excluded
leaves us with a rather one-sided view of group life. It would have groups always moving towards
a consensus around the majority viewpoint and then simply remaining there since, once everybody
adopts the majority position, what is left to change their minds? In other words, if majority influence
was the whole story, then opinion in groups and even whole societies would remain static. Yet, clearly
this cannot be the case: groups do not simply reproduce majority opinion, but can also innovate and
transform. In this chapter, we will consider two ways in which innovation and change can emerge from
within groups. First, we will examine how it is that a minority can exert influence over the majority.
Second, we explore a particular and very important kind of minority influence, namely leadership.
Minority Influence
It was Moscovici (1976), who first questioned the overwhelming emphasis on the power of majorities
in the study of social influence and who eventually inspired radical changes in the way social influence
is understood. Moscovici began by posing the question that we raised above about how change could
come about in social systems. One immediate answer to this question is that groups change as a
response to new external circumstances. If the situation confronting a group presents a new goal to
achieve or task to perform (perhaps because of an altered intergroup relationship), then one would
expect the group to adapt accordingly, which might result in changes within the group.
Although these reasons for change are undoubtedly important, Moscovici points out several
historical examples of change that cannot easily be explained by them. Take the change in popular
and scientific thinking brought about by Darwin’s (1859) theory of evolution, for instance. Whilst
his revolutionary ideas may not have been unrelated to social and economic changes occurring
in nineteenth century Britain, it is still the case that they were fiercely opposed by the majority
view at the time, which was strongly dominated by traditional biblical views on the origins of
humankind. Darwin himself was hardly a leading or powerful person in Victorian society and, as we
know, his work was initially subjected to ridicule by the establishment (Desmond and Moore 1991).
According to Moscovici, the success of deviant viewpoints similar to the Theory of Natural Selection
86 4 Innovation and Change in Groups
in achieving acceptance owed much to the strategy adopted in their promotion. In particular,
Moscovici believed that it was crucial that the minority proponents were persistent in maintaining
the validity of their theories, even in the face of the most virulent criticism from others. According
to Moscovici, this consistency creates conflict with existing ideas, and it is from conflict that
change can occur. Minority influence is possible, argued Moscovici, because no group is perfectly
homogeneous; it always contains potential divisions. Deviants, if they act in a sufficiently consistent
and convincing manner, make those divisions explicit, and, from the resulting conflict, new norms
may emerge.
That transformation is seldom a smooth or harmonious affair. As we have seen, conflict is at the
heart of how Moscovici believed minorities bring about change and, such are the power disparities
between them and the majority, minorities’ initial influence attempts may attract derision and sup-
pression in equal measure. Mahatma Gandhi, that great minority dissident in colonial India, summed
up the process nicely:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
(cited in Martin and Hewstone (2008, p. 242))
In promoting these ideas, Moscovici was a good advertisement for this own theory. For decades,
social psychologists had written about influence in groups as if it were synonymous with majority
influence. Indeed, such was the pervasiveness of the assumption that influence flows from the major-
ity to the minority that evidence for the reverse appears to have been simply overlooked. For example,
recall from Chapter 3 Schachter et al.’s (1954) study of deviance in which stooge deviates were planted
in groups of schoolboys discussing what kind of model aeroplane they should build. These deviates
generally made themselves unpopular by suggesting that their groups should build a glider rather than
one of the powered models that were preferred by the other boys. Yet, closer inspection of Schachter
et al.’s results indicates that a small but significant number of the groups (9%) were actually persuaded
by the ‘deviate’ and came to prefer the glider, despite their initial opposition to it. Thus, even within
a study apparently showing the coercive power of the majority, there is evidence that deviant group
members are not merely passive recipients of social influence but may be able to bring the majority
around to their point of view.
Against this dominant climate of opinion, Moscovici and a few others started to publish their
‘deviant’ ideas, which they continued to do in a consistent and persuasive fashion over the past
40 years. An important initial task was to demonstrate that minority influence did indeed exist. In
one of the first experiments specifically designed to do this, Moscovici et al. (1969) used a similar
procedure to that used by Asch. Groups of participants were asked to make some perceptual judge-
ments, this time about the colour of some bluish-tinted slides. However, Moscovici et al. turned Asch’s
set up on its head by employing a majority of naı̈ve participants (four in all) and a minority of two
confederates who had been instructed by the experimenter to call out the colour ‘green’ in response
to the slides in a predetermined manner. In one condition, both confederates were consistent with
one another, responding ‘green’ in every trial. In another condition, the confederates were not so
consistent, sometimes calling out ‘blue’ along with the real participants. The primary measure of
influence was how often the real participants also responded ‘green’ to the obviously blue slides. The
results were clear. Around one-third of those in the first experimental condition made at least one
‘green’ response, and over 8% of their responses overall were ‘green’. This compares to the virtually
zero ‘green’ response in the control condition (where there were no confederates), and a negligible 1%
of the other experimental condition where the confederates behaved inconsistently. The figure of 8%
may not be very startling, especially when we compare it to the 36% conformity rate reported by Asch
(1956), but it must be remembered that this was achieved by a deviant minority against a majority
twice its size. From this perspective, and in contrast to the dominant view that majorities are more
powerful than minorities, that there was any influence at all is quite significant. Moreover, there were
indications that the experimental participants’ private thresholds for perceiving green were lowered,
as compared to the control participants.
These findings were confirmed in a subsequent experiment which compared the influence exerted
by minorities and majorities. Using the same colour perception task, Moscovici and Lage (1976)
employed three conditions of minority influence: one was identical to their earlier experiment (i.e.
two confederates always calling out ‘green’); one was a single confederate who was also consistent;
in the third, two confederates were inconsistent with one another. There were also two conditions
of majority influence, similar to those employed by Asch, that is a unanimous or a non-unanimous
majority. Of the minority influence conditions, only the consistent pair of deviates exerted any notice-
able influence. Just over 10% of the responses in this consistent minority condition showed evidence of
conformity (versus 1% in the ‘control’ group). While this was clearly less than the 40% conformity rate
in the unanimous majority condition, it was comparable to the 12% found with the non-unanimous
majority. Moreover, in a subsequent colour discrimination test, those in the consistent minority con-
dition were the only participants to change their blue–green thresholds significantly compared to the
control baseline. So, despite the greater overt compliance found with majority influence, it was the
minority which was actually able to shift people’s internal colour codes.
Thus, minorities seem to exert their strongest effects indirectly – that is, after some delay or on
some dimension of attitude or behaviour that is related to but not necessarily identical to that exhib-
ited by the influence source. As we shall see, the reason for this may be that minorities act as catalysts
for change by provoking cognitive conflict in the majority. It may not be easy or possible to resolve
these conflicts immediately or directly – for example, there may be normative pressures working
against conceding ground to the minority too obviously – and so the change may only be latent or
occur less overtly.
That minority influence may take some time to show its effects was confirmed by Perez et al. (1986).
They presented their Spanish participants with arguments in favour of abortion which was purported
to be either a majority or a minority viewpoint. The participants’ attitudes were then tested immedi-
ately, and again after a delay of three weeks, both on the focal issue of abortion and a related matter,
contraception. The majority had some influence in the initial post-test on both issues, but this disap-
peared (and even appeared to ‘boomerang’ slightly) three weeks later; the ‘minority message’, on the
other hand, whilst being relatively ineffectual immediately, showed clear effects after the temporal
delay on both the abortion and contraception questions. This is reminiscent of the ‘sleeper effect’
which has sometimes been observed in the literature on persuasion (Pratkanis et al. 1988).
Minorities do not always bring about change by a confrontational approach; on occasion, they
may seek to make the majority feel guilty or ashamed in an attempt to win apologies or redress for
historical injustices perpetrated against them (Barkan 2000). Cases in point would be the efforts of
the Australian Aboriginal community to obtain an official apology for the forced abduction of tens
of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families over the first seven decades of the twenti-
eth century, the so-called ‘Stolen Generation’ (e.g. https://www.reconciliation.org.au/national-sorry-
day-an-important-part-of-healing, The National Sorry Day Committee) or the campaigns by victims
of sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests the world over (e.g. Yallop 2010).
Moscovici and Perez (2007) noted some important differences between these two forms of minority
influence. In the first – what they call the ‘active minority’ approach – the goal is to convince the
majority of the error of its ways by employing rhetoric, counter-argumentation and protest against
the status quo. As we have seen, if it is successful, this form of influence usually results in some form
of indirect or latent attitude change. In the second approach, however, the minority uses its status
as a stigmatised group in order to highlight moral contradictions in the majority group’s position. In
so doing, it hopes to provoke the majority group to change how it sees itself and thereby to reform
its traditionally discriminatory behaviour towards the minority. Moscovici and Perez (2007) labelled
this ‘victimised minority’ influence and speculated that it can bring about direct or manifest attitude
change. The first approach aims for conflict with the majority; the second hopes to create conflict
within the majority (Moscovici and Perez 2007, p. 728).
To test this idea, Moscovici and Perez (2007) presented some Spanish participants with a short
report of the history of the persecution of (Roma) gypsies in Europe. This was accompanied by a pho-
tograph of a man with a caption describing him either as a Roma representative waiting for a meeting
with the government (Victim condition) or as a member of a Roma political party about to join a
meeting of his party (Active condition). The report concluded with comments about the importance
of seeking compensation for Roma persecution (Victim) or of mobilising and fighting to achieve radi-
cal social change (Active). To reinforce the two different images of the Roma minority, the report was
accompanied by some verbatim reactions to it, allegedly made by some Roma students. These focused
on historical injustice and oppression (Victim) or the importance of active rebellion (Active). Follow-
ing all this, participants answered some attitude questions tapping their manifest attitudes about the
Roma (e.g. ‘The Gypsies should receive special benefits from the state, in view of the persecution
the have suffered’) and their latent attitudes (e.g. ‘Gypsies are less concerned about their children’s
education than the Gadje (Spanish)’ (reverse item)). The distinction between these two forms of atti-
tude is that the first (manifest) kind assesses an immediate change of heart by the (majority) Spanish
participants – something must be done to improve the Roma’s situation now. The second (latent),
on the other hand, is more subtle in that it assesses a broader change of majority stereotypes about
the Roma rather than any immediate policy change. As expected, the former attitudes were much
more positive in the Victim condition while the latter were more affected by the Active minority
(see Figure 4.1).
Majority–Minority Influence is a Dynamic Process

There seems little doubt, then, that minority influence is a genuine phenomenon. Wood et al. (1994),
in a meta-analysis of over 100 studies, confirmed this statistically showing that, while generally less
influential than majorities (except on indirect or latent measures), minorities are nevertheless still
persuasive when compared to ‘control’ conditions where no influence sources are present (again,
especially on less direct indicators of attitude change). This forces us to accept Moscovici’s contention
that the traditional view of social influence as the exclusive preserve of the majority is incomplete.
Minorities, it seems, are not simply passive recipients of pressure from the group but may be active
agents of change. This leads to a view of social influence as a reciprocal and dynamic process in which
deviate individuals are both targets and sources of persuasion (Crano and Prislin 2006; Martin and
Hewstone 2008).
The dynamic nature of social influence in groups is well documented in a series of studies that have
examined how minorities and majorities react to the changes in their standing as a result of mutual
0.4
0.3
0.2
Manifest Latent
0.1
–0.1
–0.2
–0.3
Active Victim
minority minority
–0.4
Experimental condition
Figure 4.1 The kind of change evoked by minorities can depend on how they are seen by the majority (‘activist’
versus ‘victim’ group). Figure shows different majority attitudes reactions to two kinds of minority. The scores are
standardised. Source: Moscovici and Perez (2007). Reproduced with permission of American Psychological
Association.
influence. It turns out that this is a rather asymmetrical process – majorities seem to mind losing
their majority status much more than minorities appreciate winning people round to their point of
view. One of the first experiments to show this was by Prislin et al. (2000). They created four-person
groups consisting of one real participant and three confederates whose task was to discuss environ-
mental issues, having first filled out a short questionnaire on the topic. The experimenters arranged
for the real participant to be initially in a minority of one, or to be part of a majority of three. During
the discussion, the confederates were instructed either to maintain their position throughout (no
change), or for one of them to change so as to create an evenly divided group (partial change), or for
two of them to change so that the real participant now found him/herself in a majority (if they started
out in the minority) or in a minority (if they were initially in the majority) (complete change). At the
end of the session, participants had to indicate how similar they now felt to the rest of the group,
how attracted they were to it and what their current attitudes on the environment were. The key
point of interest was how people in the ‘no change’ conditions felt compared with those in the
‘complete change’ conditions, those who had lost or acquired a majority position. It turned out that
the changes affected the former group much more than the latter. Look at Figure 4.2, for example,
which shows how similar the real participants felt to others in their group at the end of discussion.
Those who were initially in the majority but saw both of their ‘allies’ desert them dropped nearly two
points, while the initial dissenters who ‘won over’ two members of the group increased by barely half
a point.
Prislin et al. (2000) interpret this asymmetry in terms of a general tendency we have to expe-
rience losses more intensely than gains (Tversky and Kahneman 1981). Since the default position
is that the majority in a group is right (Festinger 1950), losing that consensual validation is
much more threatening than the satisfaction of gaining more support for our deviant point
of view.
1.0
Majority
Minority
0.5
0.0
Similarity
–0.5
–1.0
–1.5
–2.0
No change Partial change Complete change
Figure 4.2 Changes in perceptions of similarity to the group depend on whether one is initially in the majority or
minority. Source: Prislin et al. (2000), figure 2. Reprinted with permission of American Psychological Association.
Although it is now indisputable that minorities can bring about change in the thoughts and actions
of the majority, we need to remind ourselves that they do not always do so; there are limits to what they
can achieve. History tends to concentrate on their success stories – for example, the pro-democracy
movements in Eastern Europe in the last two decades – and often overlooks their failures – for
instance, the inability of activist groups to achieve any change in gun legislation in the United States,
despite the fact that about as many Americans die by firearms as they do in automobile accidents
(Fowler et al. 2015).
There are several reasons why minorities like this may not succeed. One has to do with the amount
of personal involvement the majority has in maintaining its view. In many experimental contexts
where the judgement in question involves colours of slides or opinions on some question of only vague
general interest, it may not ‘cost’ the majority much to concede to the minority. On issues with more
direct personal relevance (such as one’s political convictions) it may be quite another matter. Trost
et al. (1992) certainly found this to be so in an experimental study where their student participants
were presented with a persuasive message, purporting to be from a majority or a minority, arguing for
the introduction of a compulsory new student exam. Half the students were told that this new exam
policy would not come into effect for several years and hence would be unlikely to affect them whilst,
for the remainder, it was perceived to be directly relevant since it would be introduced quite soon.
When the latter message came from a minority it left the students quite unmoved – their attitudes
to the exam did not differ from a ‘control’ (no message) condition. When it was less relevant, their
attitudes did change, and somewhat more so than those exposed to the same message apparently
coming from a majority.
A second reason why some minorities may succeed and others not has to do with the prevailing
climate of opinion in the group or culture concerned, the ‘zeitgeist’ or spirit of the times. Where
there is already the beginning of a groundswell of support for change in society at large, a minority
endorsing that view against a local majority opposed to it may have more success than vice versa.
Several experimental studies bear out this ‘zeitgeist’ effect. Maass et al. (1982), for example, found
that groups of men exposed to a pair of deviates changed their views on one issue (abortion), for
which there was some public support in the United States at the time but not on another issue (the
death penalty), which was a more controversial matter.
Social Categorisation and Minority Influence: Which Group does the Minority Belong to?
Those with minority views in society are not simply ‘people who disagree’ with the majority, they are
often categorised as belonging to some outgroup as well. What effect does it have to categorise the
source of minority influence as belonging to an outgroup or alternatively as emanating from within
the ingroup? In Chapter 3, we discussed this issue in relation to majority influence and concluded
that ingroup status conferred definite advantages for those seeking to influence others. A plausible
explanation for this was provided by Self Categorisation Theory (SCT), which proposes that peo-
ple generally gravitate towards those in their ingroup, especially prototypical ingroup members, but
away from those in outgroups (Turner 1991). The same reasoning should apply to minority influence:
we should take much more seriously, pay more attention to, and hence ultimately be influenced by
minority persons with whom we believe we share category membership than with those we do not.
David and Turner (1996) put this hypothesis to the test, combining the conventional minority versus
majority influence source with their classification as ingroup or outgroup members. The study was set
in the context of environmental debates in Australia over the wisdom of conserving (or harvesting for
timber) rain forest areas. Participants, whose views on the conservation issue had been determined
earlier, listened to a tape-recording supposedly from a pro (or anti) conservationist pressure group
that was described either as moderate (i.e. majority) or extremist (i.e. minority). Their own attitudes
on the forest conservation issue were then elicited, both immediately and after a delay of three to four
weeks. As is apparent from Figure 4.3, only the ‘ingroup messages’ had any positive effect on changing
people’s attitudes in their direction; all outgroup messages had a reverse or polarising effect. The pat-
tern of influence created by the ingroup messages is interesting: majority influence appears stronger
in the short term, but after a few weeks, it is those who heard the minority message who were the
most persuaded. Several other studies have confirmed this powerful effect of categorisation on the
magnitude and direction of social influence (Alvaro and Crano 1997; Clark and Maass 1988a, 1988b;
Martin 1988).
Two Influence Processes or One?

Our aim thus far in this chapter has been to demonstrate the existence of minority influence and
examine the factors which seem to affect its strength and its sphere of application. A notable feature
of several of the studies discussed there was that the nature of this influence often seemed to dif-
fer from that exerted by majorities: it was delayed (latent) or brought about private opinion change
(indirect) rather than public compliance (manifest). This raises the question as to whether the social
psychological processes underlying majority and minority influence are the same or different. The
Movement
towards
source of +2
influence
Majority influence
+1.5
Minority influence
+1
Outgroup sources
+0.5
Immediate Delayed
0
Immediate Delayed
–0.5
Ingroup sources
–1
Movement –1.5
away from
source of
influence –2
Figure 4.3 Immediate and latent influence of ingroup and outgroup majorities and minorities. Source: David and
Turner (1996), adapted from table 1. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley and Sons.
answers to this question turn out to be quite complicated. On the one hand, Moscovici’s (1976) orig-
inal position and that of several of his associates (e.g. Mugny 1982; Nemeth 1986) are clear: there are
qualitative differences between the two forms of influence, both in the factors that give rise to them
and in the effects that they have. In recent years, other ‘dual process’ theories of influence have been
proposed which, although sharing nomenclature with the early models, in fact make some diamet-
rically opposed predictions (e.g. Bohner et al. 1995; De Vries et al. 1996). Then, there are adherents
of ‘single process’ models who try to show that the differences between the two forms of influence
are primarily differences of degree not of kind and that the same fundamental processes are at work
in both (Latané and Wolf 1981; Tanford and Penrod 1984). Let us now engage with this debate and
examine the evidence that bears on it, beginning with the ‘single process’ school of thought.
The clearest statement of this view came from Latané and Wolf (1981). Drawing on Latané’s (1981)
social impact theory, they argued that the primary difference between majority and minority influ-
ence is simply the number of sources: there are more sources of influence in majority influence than
minority influence. The importance of the number of sources stems from the basic proposition of
social impact theory, which is that the impact of any social stimuli increases with their number, but
in a negatively accelerating fashion. That is, the first stimulus has a large impact on a person; adding a
second will increase the impact but by not quite as much as the first; and subsequent stimuli will have
only marginal additional effects. Just as in a completely dark room, the addition of one light source
makes a large difference to the level of illumination. A second light increases the illumination still
further, but the addition of nine more light bulbs does not make the room seem 10 times brighter.
By analogy, in Latané and Wolf ’s (1981) model of social influence, the ‘light bulbs’ are other people
exerting influence on the experimental participant. The magnitude of their influence (or impact),
as measured by the conformity shown, will thus depend on the number of them present. Because
majorities contain more people than minorities, they should exert greater influence.
In support of their theory, Latané and Wolf (1981) re-examined a number of studies that have
looked at the effects of varying the size of the majority on the level of conformity (as we saw in Chapter
3). As predicted by their model, increasing the size of the majority does increase conformity but in a
diminishing fashion (see also a meta-analysis arriving at the same conclusion – Tanford and Penrod
1984).
Crucial to Latané and Wolf ’s model is the idea that social influence – whether emanating from a
minority or a majority – is a unitary process. Support for this was obtained by Wolf (1985). She created
mock juries in which participants thought they were either in a majority of three (against the deviate)
or in a minority of one (against a majority of three). The participants’ legal judgements were clearly
affected in both conditions, but much more strongly in the latter. Since these judgements were always
made in private – and hence should favour the operation of minority influence processes according to
Moscovici – Wolf argued that her findings supported the view that the two forms of influence differ
in degree but not in kind (see also, Clark and Maass 1990, experiment 2).
If, as the single process theorists believe, social influence is primarily controlled by the relative
numbers of emitters and targets of influence, it should be possible to model its effects using computer
simulations programmed with a few simple assumptions about the distribution of opinions in a pop-
ulation and how the holders of those opinions will affect each other (e.g. according to social impact
theory). Nowak et al. (1990) did just this. They set up a hypothetical population of 1600 individu-
als in which the distribution of majority (70%) and minority (30%) opinions was randomised. Then,
through successive iterations of the program according to certain rules – for example, the likelihood
of any one individual unit changing ‘opinion’ depended on the numbers of people with different views
in its vicinity – they showed that one quickly obtains stable configurations of opinion in the popu-
lation which resemble a large consensual majority (usually around 90% of the population) and a few
discrete pockets (or ‘groups’) of minority opinion scattered about. Though this modelling approach
is intriguing, it still struggles to predict when those stable configurations might change. As we noted
earlier, society is seldom static, and any attempt to model social influence needs to be able to specify
the conditions under which societal consensus starts to crumble.
What about those who have advocated the ‘two processes’ perspective? Moscovici, as already noted,
believed that the means by which majorities and minorities come to have their effects are different.
Following Festinger and others, he suggested that majorities primarily elicit public conformity from
individual group members for reasons of social or informational dependence. By contrast, minorities,
he believed, are successful mainly in bringing about private changes in opinion due to the cognitive
conflicts and restructuring which their deviant ideas provoke.
Some of the earliest and clearest experiments documenting this distinction between influence in
the public and private domains were performed by Maass and Clark (1983, 1986). In three exper-
iments, they examined people’s attitude change (towards gay rights) after reading a summary of a
group discussion in which a majority and minority viewpoint could be easily discerned. Whether
these positions were for or against gay rights was systematically varied. The participants then had to
Anti-gay
4.5
Private attitudes
Neutral
4.0
Majority anti/ Majority pro/
minority pro minority anti
Control
(no influence)
3.5
Pro-gay
Public attitudes
Figure 4.4 Public and private change in response to majority and minority influence. Source: Maass and Clark (1983),
experiment 1, adapted from table 1. Reproduced with permission of American Psychological Association.
indicate their own attitudes towards the issue, and for half of them, this was done anonymously and
hence privately; the others believed that their responses would be seen by others taking part in the
session with them. Attitudes in this public condition showed clear evidence of being influenced by
the majority views they had read. When these were anti-gay, their attitude hardened also; when the
majority was pro-gay, so were they. However, those responding privately were influenced mainly by
the minority view (see Figure 4.4).
There are other lines of evidence which indicate that majority and minority influence instigate
different socio-cognitive reactions in the minds of their recipients. Recall that Moscovici believed
that minority influence can be a more potent agent of persuasion because, according to his
model, the cognitive work it instigates results in internalised (‘private’) attitude change rather than
superficial (‘public’) compliance. This is why his theory is often referred to as ‘conversion theory’
(Moscovici 1980).
A few moments of reflection might cause us to question this implication however. Is it really plau-
sible to suppose that participants in a typical social influence experiment, asked to name the colour
of a slide, will think harder or more deeply when they hear that a small minority thinks that ‘blue’ is
‘green’ than if they learn that a vast majority do so? De Vries et al. (1996) argue that it is not. They
analysed several experiments, predominantly concerned with attitude change, and concluded that, in
fact, the opposite is more often true: people generally seem motivated to think more systematically
about an issue when they believe that a substantial number of peers endorse a point of view at variance
with their own than if only a handful of people hold that opinion. Mackie (1987) provided one of the
clearest demonstrations of this. She asked participants to listen to a tape recording that contained two
people offering an equal number of arguments for and against a topical issue. One of these disputants
was alleged to represent a majority point of view, the other was said to be advocating only a minority
opinion. The participants’ own private attitudes on this and a related issue were obtained both imme-
diately after hearing the tape and a week later. The results were clear: the arguments supposedly put
forward by the ‘majority’ resulted in much more evidence of attitude change, both immediately and
after a delay, and on both the focal and a related topic. In contrast, the ‘minority’ viewpoint caused
very little change. Moreover, there was more recall of the ‘majority’ arguments and more evidence
that they were elaborated in a favourable direction than was the case for the ‘minority’ arguments.
Three other experiments provided broadly similar results, forcing Mackie (1987) to the conclusion
that, contrary to Moscovici’s hypothesis, it is the majority which tends to stimulate systematic pro-
cessing in the minds of recipients, while minorities may evoke more superficial or ‘heuristic’ modes
of thought (see Eagly and Chaiken 1993).
Actually, Mackie’s conclusion does not do justice to the complexity of the manifold ways that atti-
tude change can occur as a result of majority and minority influence. To help unravel that complexity,
we are indebted to a comprehensive analysis provided by Martin and Hewstone (2008). They argue
that whether people deal with information coming from majorities or minorities in a deep or super-
ficial way depends on where the context falls on what is called the ‘elaboration continuum’. According
to Petty and Cacioppo (1986), who first coined the term, situations can be ‘low’, ‘intermediate’, or ‘high’
on this continuum. At the ‘low’ end, the issue in question is of little relevance to targets of influence,
they may have little interest or ability to grapple with all the arguments and so not much cognitive
elaboration or processing is expected to occur. At the ‘high’ end, the issue is very relevant, and people
may be very motivated and able to understand it in all its complexity. Naturally, ‘intermediate’ situa-
tions fall between these two extremes. In Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) elaboration likelihood model,
at the ‘high’ end, the focus is on the persuasive messages themselves, and ‘central’ or systematic pro-
cessing of the arguments is expected; at the ‘low’ end, more superficial or ‘peripheral’ processing is
expected, and people may be less influenced by the arguments themselves but by where they came
from or other tangential factors such as the mood they are in. Many advertisers seek to exploit such
peripheral processing by having famous personalities endorse the products they are trying to sell us.
Their hope is that we will be sufficiently impressed by David Beckham’s (say) ‘abs and pecs’ that we
will rush out and buy the underwear he is showing off, irrespective of its actual quality.
What has all this to do with the ability of majorities and minorities in groups to persuade us
to change our mind? Martin and Hewstone (2008) suggest that at the two ends of the elaboration
continuum, the picture is straightforward. At the ‘low’ end, where people do not care very much
about the issue, little cognitive work will get done, and they will simply ‘go with the (majority) flow’
(Festinger 1950). Such change will only be overt compliance with little private conversion. At the
‘high’ relevance end, it should not matter whether the arguments come from a majority or a minority,
they should always be processed equally carefully. Here it is message not the messenger that counts.
It is in the middle – the ‘intermediate’ situations – that things get interesting. Here, source charac-
teristics (e.g. whether it is a majority communicating with us) may have some effect on our public
compliance whilst doing little for deeper change. But here too the minority, by drawing our attention
to the unusual (non-normative) nature of their arguments, may have a chance to bring us around to
their point of view, perhaps not immediately or in public, but eventually and privately. Martin and
Hewstone (2008) believe that most experiments on social influence fall precisely at this ‘intermedi-
ate’ part of the continuum, which is why one can often observe public compliance to majorities but
private conversion by minorities.
If group members are privately convinced by arguments from minorities in their midst, presumably
this means that the attitudes they subsequently form will be stronger and hence more resistant to
counter persuasion and more predictive of behaviour. Martin et al. (2003, 2007) put both of these ideas
to the test. To test the first idea, that attitudes resulting from minority influence are more resistant to
change, they examined British students’ attitudes towards voluntary euthanasia, which were initially
4.5
Disagreement with euthanasia (1–9 scale)
3.5
Majority
Minority
3
2.5
2
Pre-test Post-test 1 Post-test 2
Figure 4.5 Attitude change brought about by minority influence may be more resistant to subsequent persuasion.
Source: Martin et al. (2003), table 2. Reproduced with permission of American Psychological Association.
mildly in favour (Martin et al. 2003). Students read convincing arguments against legalising voluntary
euthanasia and were told that either 82% (majority condition) or 18% (minority condition) supported
these. The participants’ attitudes towards euthanasia were then assessed before being exposed to
some further arguments in favour of legalising euthanasia, but with no accompanying information
about this being a majority or minority view. Their attitudes to euthanasia were then assessed a third
time. As can be seen from Figure 4.5, participants were influenced by the initial message from both the
majority and the minority source, and somewhat more so in the former case. However, the attitudes
resulting from the minority message were more resistant to the second message. Notice how their
attitudes at the third testing point were similar to how they had been at the second, while those in
the majority condition reverted to almost their pre-test level.
If attitude change brought about by minorities is more deep-rooted because it is the result of more
careful processing, then it should also be more closely linked to actual behaviour. Martin et al. (2007)
found support for this in a study of Australian students’ attitudes towards the introduction of vol-
untary (instead of mandatory) students unions. Since most students were in favour of this innova-
tion, Martin et al. (2007) presented their participants with some arguments against it, and, as usual,
these arguments were alleged to be supported by a majority or a minority of other students. The
experimenters then assessed the participants’ attitudes towards voluntary unions and also gave them
an opportunity to send a postcard to the Australian Minister of Education protesting against the
introduction of voluntary student unions. If the participants had really been convinced by the argu-
ments they had read – and remember they would have initially been skeptical – then this was an
acid (behavioural) test of the strength of their conviction. Before undertaking their analysis of this
behavioural measure, Martin and his colleagues first assessed how relevant the issue of students
unions was to each participant. They reasoned that differing effects of minority and majority influence
should only have a differential effect among the people at the ‘intermediate’ point of the elaboration
continuum that we discussed earlier, those for whom the issue was only somewhat relevant. For those
who considered the issue to be highly relevant, the source of the arguments should not matter since
they will be motivated to process them carefully whatever their provenance, so it be proved. For the
latter group of participants, the only thing that predicted whether they posted the protest card or not
was whether their attitude had, in fact, been changed by the arguments. For the moderate relevance
participants, on the other hand, the original source of the arguments was decisive. Many more of
these participants sent the protest card following persuasion by a minority compared to persuasion
by a majority.
If minorities can sometimes provoke deeper or more careful cognitive consideration than majori-
ties, it seems likely that they give rise to different kinds of thinking – the one more creative and
divergent, the other more focused and convergent. Nemeth (1986) has suggested why this might be
so. She pointed out that people’s first reaction on hearing that a majority is adopting a view diamet-
rically different from their own is to experience some anxiety. This follows Festinger’s (1954) original
contention that people’s default position is to accord some validity to consensual opinions and to
feel uncomfortable in the presence of dissent. This heightened arousal, argued Nemeth, is likely to
focus people’s attention more closely on the truth or falsity of what the majority is expressing, to the
exclusion of other possibly relevant issues. It has long been established that increased arousal has
exactly such attention-narrowing effects on a range of tasks (Easterbrook 1959; Zajonc 1965). The
result is a convergent mode of thinking with much cognitive effort being expended on the majority’s
message and little on anything else. Exposure to a minority opinion is quite another matter. Here,
we may feel quite relaxed since our initial comfortable position is that the minority is wrong and
can be safely ignored. However, their persistent and confident espousal of such unpopular opinions,
apparently to no personal benefit, at least causes us to think, if only of other possible alternative view-
points to those the minority is adopting. Our more relaxed state of mind allows a more wide-ranging
cognitive appraisal of the issues at hand, so that we may display more originality in any subsequent
deliberations. Notice that Nemeth is not arguing that either form of influence necessarily has supe-
rior outcomes: in some tasks it is helpful to concentrate more closely on a small range of issues; in
others a modicum of creativity can be beneficial.
Nemeth’s ideas have stimulated much research, most of it broadly supportive of her hypothesis.
One of the earliest experiments was by Nemeth and Wachtler (1983). They elaborated the usual Asch
paradigm in which participants have to compare standard stimuli with others. In this experiment, the
stimuli were a series of embedded figures in which a standard pattern is hidden against a complex
background, and the task was to identify which of six figures matches the standard (there might
be more than one). One of the correct comparison figures was always easy to detect, others were
much harder because they contained more distracting designs, and some of these were incorrect since
they did not contain the standard pattern. As usual, there were confederates primed to give certain
answers: either to respond correctly with both the easy and one of the difficult figures or to respond
correctly with the easy figure but to make an incorrect choice from the difficult set. In half the groups,
there were two confederates and four naı̈ve participants (minority influence); in the remainder, there
were four confederates and two naı̈ve participants (majority influence). Those exposed to majority
influence were more likely to copy the confederates’ responses exactly, whether these were right or
wrong. This is the usual conformity effect. However, when the participants’ novel responses (that
is, answers not mentioned by the confederates) were examined, then it was those in the minority
influence condition who not only generated more new responses overall but also produced a greater
proportion of these which were actually correct, regardless of whether or not the confederates had
given a correct answer too (see Table 4.1).
Subsequent studies have confirmed this apparently stimulating effect of minorities on people’s
divergent thinking. Nemeth and Kwan (1985) found that those exposed to minority influence made
Table 4.1 Minority influence can generate greater creativity
Majority Minority
Correct Wrong Correct Wrong Control
Exact following 1.44 1.94 0.67 0.58

% Novel 1.74 3.82 5.12 4.77 2.78
% Novel + correct 2.47 5.55 9.26 7.02 3.92
Source: Adapted from Nemeth and Wachtler (1983), table 1 with permission of American
more, and more original, colour associations than those exposed to majority influence. De Dreu and
De Vries (1993) found a similar result in the context of people’s attitudes towards immigration: minor-
ity influence respondents generated more associations with the word ‘foreigner’ than those receiving
a ‘majority’ message (see also Erb et al. 1998; Mucchi-Faina et al. 1991; Nemeth et al. 1990).
The power of minorities to stimulate different kinds of (more original) thinking has been observed
outside the laboratory. Van Dyne and Saavedra (1996) studied classroom learning groups tackling a
variety of tasks over a 10-week period. Half of these groups included a student who had been given
special training to express his/her own opinions consistently, persistently, but also flexibly, following
the prescriptions for successful minority influence proposed by Moscovici (1976). Embedded in the
activities that the groups had to perform were two problem-solving tasks that had no single clear-cut
solution. The groups’ attempts to solve these two tasks were rated for originality by two independent
judges. The groups that included that lone dissenter produced more original solutions to the two
ambiguous tasks than the more homogenous groups.
De Dreu and West (2001) focused on work teams in real-life organisations. They asked members
of these teams to assess how much dissent there typically was in team meetings and also how much
they felt able to participate in team decisions. Then, some weeks later, they asked the supervisors
of these teams to rate how innovative each team was in tackling its day-to-day decisions (of course,
supervisors unaware of how the teams had rated themselves on dissent and participation). De Dreu
and West (2001) discovered that the presence of dissent in the work teams was associated with more
innovative decisions, but only for teams that had rated themselves highly on participation (Figure 4.6).
Finally, a fascinating archival analysis of U.S. Supreme Court judges’ decision-making also revealed
a beneficial effect for minority dissent (Gruenfeld 1995). Following Moscovici (1976), Gruenfeld
(1995) speculated that dissent should force majority members eventually to defend their position
through more sophisticated arguments. Gruenfeld analysed the majority and dissenting opinions
expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court over a 37-year period. So as not to bias her analysis, she obtained
both majority and minority opinions from the same judges on different cases. This meant that any
differences between the two types of opinion could not be attributable, for example, to the political
persuasions of the judges expressing them. As expected, she found that when judges found themselves
in a majority on a particular case, they consistently formulated their own opinions in ways that were
more complex than when they were a dissenting voice. Moreover, and consistent with much of the
research we have reviewed in this chapter, opinions of non-unanimous verdicts (i.e. where there was a
dissenter present) were much more complex than those of unanimous verdicts (where there was not).
5
Participation high
4.5
3.5
3
Innovation
2.5
1.5
Participation low
1
0.5
0
Low Minority dissent High
Figure 4.6 Innovation in work teams depends on both minority dissent and amount of participation by team
members. Source: De Dreu and West (2001), figure 1. Reprinted with permission of the American Psychological
Association.
The fact that the presence of some minority dissent in groups seems often to be beneficial for
the quality of these groups’ decisions suggests that it might be advantageous for work teams and
committees to find ways to encourage such dissent and perhaps even institutionalise it in some way.
One technique is always to give space to a ‘devil’s advocate’ before reaching important decisions (see
Chapter 5, where we discuss Groupthink). There is some evidence that groups that formalise such a
procedure into their decision-making do reach superior decisions compared to those which do not
(Schwenk 1990). However, Nemeth et al. (2001) warn that manufacturing dissent artificially in this
way may be counter-productive. The group may end up being even more convinced of the rectitude
of its original decision because that decision has ‘survived the test’ of the devil’s advocacy. Moreover,
because the rest of the group (the majority) know that the devil’s advocate is only rehearsing the
counter-arguments for show and not for real, these counter-arguments may not provoke the cognitive
conflict that a genuine minority dissenter might.
Concluding Comments
What can we say by way of a conclusion to this controversy? Supporters of the ‘single process’ hypoth-
esis have amassed an impressive volume of evidence in support of their contention that the quanti-
tative size of both minority and majority influence – particularly on overt public responses – are pre-
dictable from the same variable: namely, the number of those being influenced relative to the number
doing the influencing. However, the ‘single process’ model is much less compelling when it comes to
explaining the qualitative nature of majority and minority influence effects, particularly the differ-
ence between direct and indirect attitude change, and their consequences for stimulating innovation
in groups. Moreover, the idea that only the size of the source of influence matters is not compatible
with finding different modes of assessing influence (e.g. public or private), or the direction in which
it is exerted (e.g. with or against the ‘zeitgeist’), or the category membership of the influence source
(e.g. ingroup or outgroup), can all radically affect both the magnitude of conformity, its direction
and its cognitive effects. In these cases, the arithmetical ratios of influencers to influenced remain
constant; yet the outcomes are dramatically different. All this leads to the conclusion that whilst the
numerical relationship between the minority and majority is clearly important, a proper understand-
ing of when and how group members are able to influence each other will not be reached without
taking account of several other aspects of the group context also – the importance of the issue at
hand to the group members, including to their group identity; the categorisation of the influence
source as one of ‘us’ or one of ‘them’; and the extent to which the normative climate within the group
is tolerant of or antithetical to dissent.
Leadership
The accumulated evidence discussed so far makes a compelling case that influence in groups does
not always mean conformity to the majority. There are ways in which a majority of members can
come to adopt a previously minority position. Or, to put it differently, the capacity to persuade others
is not necessarily spread evenly among group members. That is, some have greater influence on the
views and judgements of the group as a whole than others. They might be consensually recognised
by others as being influential in this way and personally identifiable as having this role, sometimes
(but not always) having some formal designation: teams have captains, organisations have managers,
and governments have presidents and prime ministers. In short, where there are groups there are
generally leaders. As such, the power of minorities should not seem such a surprising or unusual
thing. Minority influence happens all the time in the form of leadership.
Much effort over the past century has gone into understanding the psychology of leaders in terms
of their personal attributes, traits, and behaviours that make some people leaders and others not (for
a review see Judge et al. 2002). We will return to some of this work later. Yet, to say that someone is a
leader is to say that other people’s goals and actions are influenced by that person. In other words, they
are a leader to the extent that they have followers; the idea of a leader with no followers is nonsensical.
Thus, understanding leadership entails understanding how and why people follow. We approach this
section by asking why people are influenced by particular others. What makes us do what they want?
Why do we follow?
Coercion and Reward

A straightforward answer to the question of why we do what leaders want us to do is that they have
the means by which to make us do things we do not particularly want to do. Most obviously, if not
doing as one is told would lead to being dropped from an important team, losing one’s job, being
fined, or even facing imprisonment, then what further explanation is needed? Similarly, if someone
can promise a reward – with a bribe, bonus, or likelihood of a favour in the future – then again, need
we look further to explain why we follow?
In their influential taxonomy of five kinds of social power, French and Raven (1959) term these
kinds of influence respectively coercive power and reward power (see Table 4.2). Thus, a leader could
bring about change in followers’ behaviour to the extent that she or he is able (or at least is seen to
be able) to penalise or reward them depending on their behaviour. Yet, as French and Raven note,
coercive and reward power are limited in at least two respects. First, their effectiveness depends not
Leadership 101
Table 4.2 Five bases of social power
Type of power Basis
Reward power P’s perception that O is able to grant rewards

Coercive power P’s expectation of punishment for failing to resisting influence
Referent power P’s identification with O (wanting to be like, or to belong to, O)
Expert power P’s belief that O has relevant knowledge or expertise
Legitimate power P feels an obligation to accept O’s influence
O is the agent of power (e.g. a person, group or institution), while P is a person who is influenced
by O.
Source: Based on French and Raven (1959) with permission of American Psychological
Association.
only the leader’s control over the resources needed to reward and punish but also on the ‘observ-
ability’ of the behaviour itself. In other words, it requires surveillance. Promises and threats are next
to useless unless the desired behaviour can actually be observed or checked by the person making
them, which clearly limits their practical use. It is doubtful how much the leader of even a relatively
small organisation can monitor every action of all of its members all of the time. Second, French and
Raven argue that if we do as we are told only to avoid punishment, we will increasingly resent and
dislike the people controlling us so that there is then little chance that we will ever come to follow
them voluntarily, and, if possible, we might try to escape them entirely. An employee who obeys the
boss’s daily demands only because of a perpetual threat of punishment will surely look for another
job at the earliest opportunity and will only stay if there is no other option!
According to French and Raven, reward power is somewhat different in that people do not neces-
sarily resent doing things for a reward in the way that they resent doing them to avoid punishment,
and thus it could lead eventually towards ‘identification’ with the leader, leading to what they call ‘ref-
erent influence’. However, this can only actually happen if the leader’s ability to promise such rewards
is seen as legitimate. Subjectively speaking, a reward is different from a bribe (French and Raven 1959;
Turner 2005). Thus, a male manager of a sales team who incentivises performance through bonuses
and pay rises might be acting entirely in line with his accepted role, and by doing so could even
increase the loyalty of his team. On the other hand, if he implies to female colleagues that they will
be rewarded for engaging in sexual relations with him then this would be an abuse of power that, if
exposed, would undermine rather than consolidate his credibility as a leader. The point of this fairly
obvious (but unfortunately not far-fetched) example is that the consequences of inducements and
threats depend not only on the material resources available but also on the group norms that make
them either part of a cooperative leader–follower relationship or a violation of people’s autonomy.
In this vein, Turner (2005) describes coercion as a type of power involving control over others’
behaviour within a conflictual relationship. While this is likely to involve rewards and punishments,
it is not these themselves that define it as coercive. Rather, it is the fact that the person being con-
trolled sees the relationship as conflictual: that is, as a relationship in which they are being made to
do something they do not want to do by someone with whom they have opposing goals and that they
therefore resent. Coercion of this sort is certainly not what we usually mean when we speak of ‘lead-
ership’, which more often brings to mind something along the lines of Haslam et al.’s (2011) definition
of it as ‘not simply about getting people to do things [but rather] getting them to want to do things’
(p. xix; emphasis in original). Reliance on various kinds of threat and inducements, then, could be
seen not as a form as leadership but as evidence for its failure. As Turner points out, killing one’s
enemies might define success in the context of warfare, but in social influence terms, it represents an
utter failure to persuade them!
Leader–member exchange (LMX) theory is a theory of leadership in which leaders’ ability to selec-
tively reward each individual subordinate is central (e.g. Dansereau et al. 1973). The relationship
between leaders are followers is characterised as a cooperative one in which both parties give and
receive in a way they understand as mutually beneficial and that leads to mutual trust. So, while it
may involve rewards controlled by the leader, it is not a case of coercion. Moreover, subordinates in
this model are understood to be interested not only in rewards in a purely instrumental sense (such
as the size of their salary) but also in being treated fairly. Yet, this still seems rather calculating from
both leaders’ and followers’ sides. Where, one might ask, do inspiration and passion fit into theo-
ries of leadership based on individual followers weighing up only costs and benefits? Where is the
‘magic’ that seems so often to be attributed to notable leaders? For this, we need to turn to theories
of ‘charismatic’ and ‘transformational’ leadership.
Charisma
A number of leadership theories emerging from the late 1970s onwards have been advanced in explicit
contrast to the image of leaders as engaged in basically contractual or transactional relationships with
their followers, as just discussed (Bass 1985; Burns 1978; House 1977). These theories instead portray
the ideal leader as somebody who inspires and energises followers, who challenges existing perspec-
tives and ways of doing things, and who leads her followers to identify with her vision for the future
of the group and to ‘go the extra mile’ in realising it. Such leaders have been termed ‘transforma-
tional’ because of the way in which they inspire people to pursue such higher level motivations as
self-actualisation rather than merely appeal to existing desires and needs (Burns 1978). Central to
this form of leadership is the notion of charisma, usually understood as a special – even magical –
quality that some people possess and that draws followers to them and enables leaders to enthuse
others with a particular message or vision. ‘Transformational’ and ‘charismatic’ leadership are effec-
tively synonymous in the literature and could be seen as akin to the ‘referent power’ of French and
Raven’s model, based as it is on ‘identification’ with the leader. This suggests quite a different kind of
followership: followers are not doing what the leader wants in order to get something else but rather
because they are convinced by the leader’s vision for the group and as such are themselves motivated
to realise it.
One of the more systematic accounts of this kind of leadership is the theory of transactional and
transformational leadership advanced by Bass (1985). According to Bass, transformational leader-
ship – that is, charismatically inspiring and motivating followers, stimulating their creativity whilst
coaching or mentoring them – is distinct but not necessarily opposed to transactional leadership,
which entails rewarding followers for meeting expectations and taking corrective measures when
they do not. Importantly, transactional leadership in this model is a sort of baseline requirement for
any sort of effective leadership rather than something to be disregarded in favour of the transforma-
tional approach. Transactional leadership may be sufficient for keeping these running smoothly in
relatively stable and unchallenging times but is augmented by transformational leadership, especially
in crises or in situations undergoing change (Bass 1990).
Leadership 103
Bass et al. have developed and refined a measurement tool, the Multifactor Leadership Question-
naire (MLQ), to capture this kind of leadership (Avolio et al. 1999). Research on the relative effective-
ness of transformational leadership has overwhelmingly involved administering the MLQ not only
to leaders but also to their peers, supervisors, and subordinates and then examining the statistical
relationships between ratings of leaders on various dimensions of transformational and transactional
leadership and outcomes such as the effectiveness of the team and followers’ satisfaction and moti-
vation. In support of transformational leadership, these studies tend to show that, while both kinds
of leadership are correlated with positive outcomes, it is clearly transformational and charismatic
leadership that emerge as decisive (see Judge and Piccolo 2004, for a review and meta-analysis).
So if charisma – the ability to inspire and energise followers – is so crucial, what actually is this
quality and where does it come from? We can all think of certain public figures who readily seem
to fit the bill. Consider, for example, the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist monk and refugee with effectively
no formal political power but who nonetheless wields significant moral authority well beyond his
immediate religious followers. A former Archbishop of Canterbury describes him as follows:
He’s somebody who speaks in every sense from the belly, from deep inside. He comes across as
comfortable in his skin, who’s not anxiously defending his position, who’s not surrounded by
an elaborate theatre of authority. There’s a kind of forcefulness that’s very evident in his tone,
his words, his attitude, and that has a very energising effect on everybody around.1
The success or failure of candidates in electoral politics is also frequently attributed to their
charisma or lack thereof. Former U.S. President Barack Obama, for example, was often contrasted
favourably to his 2008 opponent John McCain in this regard (Bligh and Kohles 2009; Takala et al.
2013). Similarly, in the United Kingdom, the 2017 General Election saw the opposition Labour party
make remarkable and unexpected gains at the expense of the Conservative government over roughly
seven weeks’ election campaign, reducing the latter’s lead in vote share from an expected 21% to only
2.5%. This shift in public support was partly attributed the charisma of the Labour leader, Jeremy
Corbyn, and the so-called ‘Corbyn-mania’ of enthusiastic support from young voters in particular.
Perhaps even more apparent, though, was Prime Minister Teresa May’s notable lack of charismatic
appeal. Across a number of interviews and debates, Corbyn was praised as approachable, principled,
and comfortable with people from all backgrounds, while May was criticised as cold, insincere and
inflexible, struggling even to deviate from a few increasingly empty soundbites in tightly-managed
press conferences, and living up to the moniker ‘Maybot’ coined by one political sketchwriter (Crace
2017).
Yet, as compelling as ‘charisma’ seems as an explanation for the appeal of particular leaders, cap-
turing the concept in anything other than the vaguest terms seems extremely difficult. Charisma has
sometimes been approached as specific personality attribute – a ‘special something’ – that some of us
have and others lack. This idea has its roots in the so-called ‘Great Man’ theory of leadership, which
takes its name from claim of Scottish commentator Thomas Carlyle that ‘The History of the world is
but the Biography of great men’ (Carlyle 1841, p. 47). Leaders throughout history are all thought to
have traits in common that enabled them to attain their positions of power and allowed them to exert
a controlling influence over their peoples. But, just what personal characteristics could a Vladimir
Putin have in common with a Mother Teresa, or an Angela Merkel with a Nelson Mandela? Perhaps
1 “Divine Power: The Search for the Dalai Lama” BBC Radio 4, broadcast 1 July 2018.
not surprisingly, in the face of this diversity, proponents of the Great Man (or, more properly, ‘Great
Person’) theory have found it hard to be precise. Attempts to link the effectiveness of leaders with
personality traits have had varying degrees of success. Stogdill (1974), reviewing a large number of
empirical investigations of leadership traits, could find few reliable correlates. In general, leaders were
slightly more intelligent, self-confident, dominant, sociable, and achievement-orientated than their
followers. But all these associations were rather inconsistent across different studies (averaging out
to correlations of less than 0.30). A more recent meta-analysis of studies on the ‘big five’ personality
traits indicates a similar pattern (Judge et al. 2002). People in leadership positions were slightly more
extraverted, open to experience and conscientious, but less agreeable, than non-leaders. However,
only extraversion and openness to experience were reliably related to how effective leaders actually
were (as rated by their peers, supervisors, or subordinates). In total, only around 15% of the variation
in leader effectiveness was attributable to personality in this analysis. Extraverted and agreeable lead-
ers are the most likely to be rated as transformational leaders by their subordinates (Judge and Bono
2000). Judge and Bono argue that being expressive and socially engaging, both of which are linked
to extraversion, are facets of charisma. Similarly, they argue that agreeable leaders are better able
to show consideration and concern for their subordinates, making them approachable. Interestingly
then, being disagreeable (e.g. competitive and argumentative) may help somebody attain a leader-
ship position whilst not actually making them effective in that role, and indeed possibly even making
them worse leaders. None of the other big five traits were consistently related to transformational
leadership, and, again, only 16% of the variation in leaders’ ratings as transformational was explained
by personality traits.
Perhaps this difficulty stems from trying to understand leadership as an intrinsic characteristic of
the leader rather than as a feature of the relationship between leaders and their followers. Indeed, the
notion that charisma is a matter of followers’ perceptions rather than leaders’ qualities goes back to
its origins as a concept in the sociology of Max Weber (Marturano and Arsenault 2008). If this is the
case, then it may be fruitless trying to pin charisma down in terms of specific leader characteristics
or even specific aspects of their behaviour such as speaking style, since what is inspiring oratory to
some listeners could easily be heard as empty rhetoric by others. In effect, ‘charisma’ is the way in
which energised followers see their leaders, not a specific attribute of leaders themselves.
Bryan Wilson puts his finger on the problem:
If a man runs naked down the street proclaiming that he alone can save others from impend-
ing doom, and if he immediately wins a following, then he is a charismatic leader: a social
relationship has come into being. If he does not win a following, he is simply a lunatic.
(Wilson (1975) quoted in House et al. 1991, p. 366)
Of course, Wilson’s naked man is only a hypothetical case conjured up to make a theoretical point,
so perhaps we need another example to explore the psychological processes that it highlights. In June
2016, Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon and reality television personality without prior experience
of government, announced his intention to run for President of the United States. Around five months
later he was elected to that position where he remains at the time of writing. The essence of his pitch
to voters was that he would restore his country’s former economic and political dominance in the
world: to ‘make America great again’, as his campaign slogan put it. Throughout the campaign, Trump
became increasingly notorious for his overtly xenophobic comments as well for crude insults directed
at his opponents and critics. Since then, occupying the role of President appears to have increased the
Leadership 105
opportunities for Trump to court controversy by, for example, publically insulting numerous judges,
officials, foreign leaders, and many others via social media. It is clear that Trump is a polarising figure
who violates established norms of language and behaviour for elite politics. To his supporters, he is
very much a ‘saviour’ who will avert his country’s ruin and restore it to former glories. His opponents,
on the other hand, would hardly have been more horrified had it actually been the naked ‘lunatic’ of
Wilson’s example rather than Trump that had been elected president.
The example of Donald Trump highlights how charisma is the product of a certain kind of leader–
follower relationship rather than any specific personal characteristic of leaders themselves. This begs
the question: If one person’s visionary is the next person’s demagogue, then what generates charisma?
How does it come about? We will return to these questions as well as to Donald Trump later in this
chapter, but first let us turn to a tradition of leadership research that looks to what leaders should
actually do in order to be effective, rather than their personal attributes.
Leadership Styles
It is not who you are that is important to leadership success, it is how you behave, or at least so
argued Lippitt and White (1943) in one of the earliest and most influential studies of leadership.
They believed that an important function of the leader was to create a ‘social climate’ in the group
and that the group’s morale and effectiveness would be dependent on the nature of the climate engen-
dered. Accordingly, they set up an experimental situation using young school boys engaged in after
school clubs. The leaders of these clubs were confederates of the researchers, and each was trained
in the adoption of three quite different leadership styles. In the first, the leader acted autocratically,
organising the group’s activities, telling the children what should be done at all times, and generally
remaining rather aloof from the group. In the second, labelled the democratic style, the leader made
a point of discussing all decisions and activities with the group and allowing the children to choose
their own work partners. In general, the leader adopting this style attempted to become a ‘regular
group member’. Finally, there was a laissez-faire style in which the group was left to its own devices
with minimal intervention by the leader. Each leader stayed with his group for seven weeks and for
that period maintained a consistent style of leadership. Then the leaders changed groups (twice), and
at each change, they also changed their behavioural style. This meant that any effects observed in
the groups could be attributed to the leaders’ behaviour rather than to their underlying personali-
ties. And effects there were. The ‘democratic’ leaders were liked more than either of the other two
types. The atmosphere in these groups tended to be friendly, group-centred, and reasonably task-
orientated, while with the ‘autocratic’ leaders, there was more aggression, a greater dependence on
the leader, and a more self-centred orientation. The ‘laissez-faire’ leaders tended to elicit considerable
demands for information and were reasonably well liked, but more of the children’s time was spent in
play rather than work. As far as measurable productivity was concerned, the autocratically led groups
worked the hardest but only so long as their leader was actually present. When, on a pretext, the ‘auto-
cratic’ leader left the room they more or less stopped work altogether. The democratically led groups,
although a little less productive, were scarcely affected by the leader’s absence. In the ‘laissez-faire’
groups, the productivity actually seemed to increase when the leader left the room. These results led
Lippitt and White (1943) to a strong endorsement of the democratic leadership approach, both on
grounds of group autonomy and morale, and for overall effectiveness.
The difference between autocratic and democratic leadership styles has some parallels similar dis-
tinctions made by other researchers. For example Bales (1950) distinguishes between leaders focussed
on directing the task and so-called ‘socio-emotional’ leaders who pay attention to the needs of group
members. Similarly, concern with structure and consideration for others have been identified as two
distinct themes in people’s descriptions of their leaders (e.g. Fleishman 1973; Stogdill 1974). How-
ever, for Stogdill, these are not seen as mutually exclusive styles, and the most effective leaders are
high on both: someone who could organise the group’s activities while remaining responsive to their
views and feelings (Stogdill 1974). A high level of consideration by the leader may also help to offset
too little concern with structure, although the reverse may not be true: one cannot compensate for a
complete absence of consideration by attending to structure.
The distinction between leaders’ concern for task performance and group maintenance appears to
be relevant across cultures, although the specific behaviours associated with these leadership styles
varied considerably. For example Smith et al. find that, in the United States, ‘performance’ supervi-
sors were those who strongly emphasised task activities and maintained a formal relationship with
subordinates whilst ‘maintenance’ supervisors were seen to be participative and consultative and to
be less likely to focus on work issues (Smith et al. 1989). In contrast, in Japan there was a less clear-cut
distinction between the two general styles: ‘Performance’ supervisors were seen to meet socially after
work and also to talk to subordinates about personal difficulties, and ‘maintenance’ leaders were rated
highly on concerns over teaching new job skills, talking about work problems, and speaking about
subordinates in their absence. Thus, effective leadership the world over does seem to combine both
task and socio-emotional elements, but the way in which these are expressed and the relationship
between them are culturally specific.
Interaction of Leader Style and Situation

Fiedler (1965) was one of the first critics of the notion that effective leadership simply consisted in
the right combination of task-centredness and consideration for others. Drawing on data from a vari-
ety of different kinds of groups (e.g. basketball teams, aircraft crews), he observed that there was
no straightforward relationship between the leader’s predominant style and the effectiveness of the
group. Sometimes very task-orientated leaders seemed to be effective; elsewhere, the socio-emotional
leaders did best. Fiedler’s resolution of these contradictory findings was to propose an interaction-
ist model of leadership in which effectiveness was seen as contingent upon the match between the
leader’s style with the kind of situation which he/she faced. In a nutshell, the type of leader attitude
required for effective group performance depends on the degree to which the situation is favourable
or unfavourable to the leader (Fiedler 1965).
Fiedler accepted the basic distinction between task-oriented and socio-emotionally oriented lead-
ership styles and, indeed, developed a measuring instrument in an attempt to quantify the differ-
ence. This scale – called the least preferred co-worker (LPC) scale – simply asks would-be leaders
to think of all the people they have ever known and then describe the one person with whom it has
been most difficult to work. They do this by rating this individual on eighteen bipolar scales (e.g.
pleasant–unpleasant, boring–interesting, friendly–unfriendly, etc.). Leaders who score highly on the
LPC scale (that is those who evaluate their LPCs favourably) are thought to be those who prioritise
positive relationships among group members, while for low scorers (low LPC), the task is primary
and relationships come second.
Having distinguished between two basic leader types, Fiedler then goes on to identify three ele-
ments which he believes determine the ‘favourableness’ of the situation for the leader. The first, and
most important, is the atmosphere of the group, which Fiedler calls leader-member relations. A leader
Leadership 107
who enjoys the confidence, loyalty, and affection of the group will find his/her work easier than one
who does not. Second in importance is task structure: a group with clear instructions for achieving
a well-defined goal is thought to be easier to manage than one whose job is less well formulated and
which has a number of possible outcomes. The obvious contrast here is between a production work
group on a factory assembly line and a design team attempting to discover a new process or product.
In the former case, the components of the job are usually specified in the most minute detail, and
the end product is known in advance. In the latter, by definition, the outcome is uncertain, and often
the means of achieving it are equally ambiguous. Finally, the leader may be invested with more or
less power. Leaders may have many rewards and sanctions at their disposal and be able to exercise
considerable authority or, alternatively, their position may be weak, and they may have little compe-
tence or few means to influence the group members. Suppose, now, every leadership situation can be
defined as ‘high’ or ‘low’ in each of these three factors. This produces eight possible combinations or
degrees of ‘favourableness’, ranging from good leader-member relations, high task structure, and high
position power to the opposite of these three. Because Fiedler assumes leader–member relations to
be most important followed by task structure and power, this suggests the order for the intermediate
degrees of favourableness shown at the foot of Figure 4.7.
Fiedler’s basic hypothesis is that low LPC leaders will be most effective in very favourable or very
unfavourable situations, whilst high LPC leaders will excel in the situations falling in the middle.
Permissive,
considerate,
high LPC
1.00
0.80
Median correlations between leader LPC and
0.60
0.40
group performance
0.20
0.00
–0.20
–0.40
–0.60
–0.80
–1.00
Managing, I II III IV V VI VII VIII

controlling, Octants
low LPC
Figure 4.7 Correlation between leader LPC and group performance across different levels of situation
favourableness. Source: Fiedler (1965). Reprinted with permission from the author and Academic Press Ltd.
The rationale behind this prediction is complex: when leaders are well liked by the group, the task is
straightforward, and their authority is unquestioned, they need waste no time in worrying about the
morale of the group members, and they have the means and the power to be wholly task directive. At
the other extreme, when leaders are disliked by the group, the task is ambiguous and they have little
power, there is little to lose by being autocratic. Attempts to win over the group by a more considerate
approach will probably fail anyway, resulting in lost time and hence lowered effectiveness. In mod-
erately favourable situations, on the other hand, the leader may be able to improve leader–member
relations by adopting a suitably relationship-orientated style. Taken together these three lines of rea-
soning suggest that group performance should correlate positively with leader LPC scores in moder-
ately favourable situations but negatively in either highly favourable or unfavourable situations. This
prediction is represented by the dotted line in Figure 4.7.
How well does this fit with observed correlations from leadership studies? In an early paper,
Fiedler (1965) summarised the findings from a dozen published studies which generated more than
50 separate correlations between LPC and effectiveness. These correlations were allocated to their
appropriate situational classification, and the median correlation for each of the eight situations was
determined. These are shown as the solid line in Figure 4.7, and the fit is apparently quite close. Sub-
sequent reviews and meta-analysis reached broadly similar conclusions other than in octants II and
VII where the correlation was higher than predicted (Fiedler 1978; Schriesheim et al. 1994; Strube and
Garcia 1981).
In spite of supportive evidence like this, Fiedler’s theory has excited considerable controversy over
the years. First, his interpretation of LPC scores assumes a relatively fixed personality characteris-
tic which is consistent across situations and over time. But could leaders not respond flexibly to a
situation rather than stick rigidly to one particular style? Indeed the most effective leaders might be
precisely those most able to behave in either a task or relationship-oriented way depending on the
demands of the situation, yet Fiedler’s framework is unable to capture this (Haslam et al. 2011). The
LPC scores themselves show only modest test–retest reliability (Rice 1978; Rice et al. 1978), and even
if they were stable, it is far from obvious that the way a person rates their least favourite co-worker
accurately captures their leadership style in the way Fiedler claims. Indeed, one study conducted in
the United States found that relationship-oriented managers actually had lower LPC scores than task-
oriented ones, although data from an English student sample was in line with Fiedler’s interpretation
(Hare et al. 1998). In any case, the meaning of this measurement seems far from straightforward and is
further complicated by Fiedler’s strategy of categorising leaders as having high or low LPC and ignor-
ing those in the middle. In fact, according to one study, those with moderate LPC scores generally out-
perform those who are clearly high or low on the scale and their effectiveness is less dependent on the
situation (Kennedy 1982). Perhaps these are precisely the leaders who are most flexible in their style.
A second question about Fiedler’s theory concerns his assumption that the eight different situation
types form an ordered continuum of favourableness, with each octant being equally distant from
the next. This too has been questioned. Singh et al. (1979) asked respondents to rate a number of
situations, which varied systematically along each of Fiedler’s three factors, for their favourableness
to the leader. While each factor was, indeed, an important determinant of perceived favourableness,
the relative importance of the three factors did not match the apparently rather arbitrary ordering set
out in the theory, with position power consistently having a strong influence, despite having being
assumed by Fielder to be the least important factor!
Let us summarise the points made thus far. We have seen that while people may take direction
from a leader because they know they will get something in return, or because they have no choice,
Leadership 109
these instrumental motivations fail to capture the way people can be inspired to take on their leaders’
goals as their own. Scholars have therefore turned to the notion of ‘charisma’, but the actual concept
behind this word remains rather vague and proves extremely difficult to pin down in terms of personal
characteristics, not least because very different leaders can appear charismatic to different people at
different times. While there is some evidence that a purely autocratic style of leadership is usually
not effective and that leaders often need to attend to relationships among group members as well as
the task itself, even rather complex theories of how leadership styles interact with different situations
struggle to capture the rather dynamic way in which leaders and followers relate and respond to
one another. With this in mind, we turn now to another way of approaching the phenomenon of
leadership, which is to consider the leader–follower relationship in terms of a group process.
Leaders as Committed Group Members

One the earliest empirical studies of leadership carried was out by Merei (1949) in a Hungarian
nursery school. Merei observed the behaviour of groups of young children when an older child was
introduced to the group. This child was someone who had earlier shown characteristic leadership
behaviours in the sense of having been an ‘initiator’ rather than a ‘follower’ in his/her own peer group.
Naturally, Merei expected the newcomers to assume a dominant position in these new groups, if for
no other reason than that children are very sensitive to age differences. However, what was of interest
was the manner in which they achieved this leadership role. Would they assert their authority from
the very beginning or would the process be more gradual? Merei concluded that those children who
attempted the former strategy turned out to be unsuccessful leaders who were largely ignored by the
other children. The successful leaders – as judged by how much they were eventually followed by
the younger children – adopted a more cautious approach. To begin with, they tended to follow the
existing games and ‘traditions’ of the group, suggesting only minor variations. It was only after a few
days of this accommodative behaviour that they began to suggest completely new activities or radical
departures from the old routines.
This sequence of first conforming to the group norms and then introducing new ideas is central to
Hollander’s theory of leadership (Hollander 1958; Hollander and Julian 1970). Hollander suggests that
what leaders must do in the early stages of their ‘reign’ is to build up ‘credit’ with the rest of the group.
This ‘credit’ is what gives them the subsequent legitimacy to exert influence over those same group
members and to deviate from existing norms. Hollander terms this ‘idiosyncrasy credit’ because it
may eventually be expended in novel or innovative behaviour by the leader. Essentially, the more
credit one builds up, the more idiosyncratic behaviour will be tolerated by the group. A direct test of
Hollander’s theory was provided by Estrada et al. (1995). They studied some student project groups
longitudinally, obtaining both subjective measures of idiosyncrasy credit and leadership (as nomi-
nated by fellow group members) and objective measures of dominance and performance (as assessed
by independent observers). As predicted, the idiosyncrasy credit accorded to each group member
was reliably and positively correlated with the leadership indices (both subjective and objective) but
negatively correlated with their attendance record (thus supporting the notion of the leader as a ‘good’
group member). Interestingly, these relationships were stronger in high-performing groups than in
those that worked together less effectively. This suggests that the idiosyncrasy credit – leadership link
is a hallmark of successfully led groups.
How does the leader establish a good credit rating with the group? One way, as Merei’s (1949) find-
ings suggest, is to adhere initially to the group norms. Hollander (1960) examined the role of initial
conformity in permitting the leader subsequently to influence the group. Experimental confeder-
ates were introduced into laboratory problem-solving groups. The group had a series of problems to
solve, and over the course of these false feedback from the experimenter established that the confed-
erate was consistently suggesting correct solutions, thus giving him some initial legitimacy. Before
each problem, the group was required to discuss the best procedure for tackling the task. It was in
this discussion phase that the critical variation in the confederate’s behaviour was introduced. Every
so often, he would depart radically from the group consensus view as to the most appropriate pro-
cedure. Depending on experimental condition, this ‘idiosyncratic’ behaviour occurred early in the
sequence of problems, or late. The measure of his influence was the frequency with which the group
followed his suggestions as to the correct solution to the problem. As predicted, when the idiosyn-
cratic behaviour occurred early in the group’s mini-history, there was much less conformity to the
confederate’s suggestions than when it occurred later.
Readers might spot a contradiction here between Hollander’s suggestion and that proposed by
Moscovici in the context of minority influence (discussed previously). For Hollander, initial con-
formity is needed for the later dissenting opinion to be taken seriously, whereas Moscovici recom-
mends consistent non-conformity (Moscovici 1976). Experiments involving ad hoc groups suggest
some support for Hollander’s strategy of first establishing idiosyncrasy credit before dissenting (Bray
et al. 1982). However, Moscovici’s strategy of consistency fared somewhat better when the dissent-
ing minority was comprised of two people rather than one. Perhaps the consistent opinion of two
group members is harder to dismiss than that of an isolated individual. Moreover, real-life attempts
at minority influence might involve people whose ingroup credentials are already established, so they
do not need to earn idiosyncrasy credit in the way that people do in these one-off interactions between
strangers in the laboratory. As we saw previously, whether or not the minority is categorised as part
of the ingroup is critical in determining its influence, which is entirely consistent which Hollander’s
argument that new leaders need to build their standing within the group before they can innovate.
Another source of credit according to Hollander (1982) is the method by which the leaders achieve
their position: were they are elected by the group or simply appointed by an external authority?
Hollander and Julian (1970) found that leaders who thought they had been elected by their group
were more likely to suggest solutions to a task problem that differed from the group’s own solution
than were leaders who thought they had been appointed by an outside expert. The ‘elected’ leaders
believed they were more competent at the task and enjoyed more support from the group and thus,
in Hollander’s terms, had more credit to expend in suggesting controversial solutions. Being elected
by members rather than appointed by an expert might help leaders to be seen as being genuinely
part of the group rather than imposed from outside. More recent work however suggests that under
some circumstances, leaders selected at random may be more effective influence than those selected
through a competitive process that might undermine cohesion and set the leader apart from others
in a way that, paradoxically, undermines their credentials as group members (Haslam et al. 1998).
Leader Prototypicality
The need for new leaders to initially conform to existing group norms can be understood in terms
of the notion of leader prototypicality (Hogg 2001). According to SCT, we conform to group norms
when a social identity is salient (Turner 1991; Turner et al. 1987). However, an existing norm cannot
tell us exactly what to do in every situation. Norms are often implied and general rather than being
comprehensive formal codes for behaviour. Even when a group does have a detailed system of rules
Leadership 111
to guide their behaviour, such as professional codes of practice or religious codes, there often seem
nonetheless to be differences of opinion when it comes to their application in specific cases. Novel
or ambiguous situation present themselves in which it is unclear what a ‘good’ group member should
do. In such instances, people might look to each other in order to try to establish what the normative
response to a situation actually is. But which of our fellow group members should we pay attention to?
Who is the best guide as to what a true group member should do in this situation? According to SCT,
it is those members who are seen as most prototypical of the group, those who possess the attributes
that both define the group and distinguish it from outgroups, who have the biggest influence on other
members.
It can be expected, then, that leaders need to be prototypical members of the groups they want to
lead. Those who are peripheral to the group – perhaps seen as not ‘true’ members – are unlikely to
be looked to by other members for guidance as to what is normative. Conversely, those who seem
to embody all that the group is and what it stands for will be followed by others, as their position is
taken on as a collective vision for the whole group to strive toward. One corollary of this is that there
is no single set of attributes that people look for in a leader, since this will depend on the particular
groups that are involved and social identities that are salient. This was demonstrated by Hains et al.
(1997) who simultaneously varied group salience, specific leader–group prototypicality (how closely
the leader matched his/her particular group’s characteristics), and generic leader–group stereotypi-
cality (how closely the leader matched the general stereotype of ‘a good leader’). In the high group
salience conditions, which are of most interest here, it was clearly specific group prototypicality rather
than general leader stereotypicality which had the most influence on the perceived effectiveness of the
leader. Because prototypicality is not a fixed property – either of the leader or of the group – since it
depends very much on the particular context confronting the group, it is possible that it underlies the
attribute of ‘charisma’ discussed earlier. Perhaps a charismatic leader is someone who the rest of the
group regards as capturing the essence of that group, at least for certain tasks or social encounters.
This would help to explain why different groups of people can make such contrasting judgements
about the charisma of particular leaders. It also explains why successful leaders can so quickly lose
influence with a change of circumstances, as a change in the group or intergroup context also changes
which characteristics best define ‘us’ in contrast to ‘them’.
Earlier in this chapter, we noted that charisma seems to evade explanation because, rather than
being a specific set of personal attributes, it is a quality that perceived by followers who are inspired
in a particular way by a leader (while non-followers could equally be repelled by the same person).
Perhaps leader prototypicality can help us to understand which leaders are seen as charismatic and
by whom. Platow et al. (2006) suggest that it can. Through pilot testing they established that students
at La Trobe University in Melbourne saw themselves as friendly, easy-going, and tolerant, in contrast
to an outgroup (University of Melbourne students), who they saw as high-achieving, intellectual, and
serious. A second pilot test found that students also saw these outgroup traits as more characteristic
of leaders in general. This presented the researchers with an ideal context in which to pit charac-
teristics that are prototypical of the ingroup against more general leader-typical traits, since in this
case the more obvious ‘leader’ traits are actually associated more with the outgroup. Participants in
the main study were presented with a profile of an individual, Chris, who had supposedly applied to
become a student leader, as well as with a letter from this person proposing the introduction of new
billboards to the university at a cost of $3000. The profile served to manipulate Chris’ traits so that he
was either high on ingroup traits and low on outgroup traits (so prototypical of La Trobe students) or
vice versa. The message itself contained a manipulation of ‘rhetorical style’, whereby Chris addressed
4 Figure 4.8 Charisma depends on leader

prototypically and rhetorical style. Source: Based
3.8 on Platow et al. 2006. Reproduced with
permission of John Wiley and Sons.
Charisma
3.6
3.4
3.2
Exchange rhetoric Group-oriented rhetoric
Rhetorical style
Low prototypicality High prototypicality
his audience in a way that either stressed all students working together (group oriented rhetoric) or
in a more individualistic manner that urged the audience to ‘do something for me, so I can do some-
thing for you’ (exchange rhetoric). Participants then rated Chris’ charisma using the MLQ measure
discussed previously. The ratings show when Chris was presented as having traits prototypical of La
Trobe students, participants rated him as charismatic, irrespective of the type of rhetoric used in
the message. When he possessed traits that were less prototypical of the ingroup (but more typical
of leaders in general), he was only seen as charismatic if he addressed his audience in group terms
(Figure 4.8). Thus, it seems that charisma stems from the leader being seen as ‘one of us’ by followers.
This was achieved either by the leader stressing commonality and working together in his message
or by having characteristics that the group saw as typical of themselves and not the outgroup, even
if these very traits were not those usually associated with leadership qualities. Similar studies sug-
gest that prototypicality shapes not only charisma but other key evaluations of leaders such as their
fairness (van Dijke and de Cremer 2008) and trustworthiness (Giessner et al. 2008).
Prototypicality may be what enables leaders to bring about innovation in groups rather than merely
following established group conventions. As Platow et al. show, prototypical leaders are judged in a
way that is effectively more forgiving – in this case being seen as charismatic irrespective of the type
of rhetoric they used. Even so, advancing an agenda at odds with well-established group norms would
undermine a leader’s prototypicality and would probably fail (Haslam et al. 2011). Thus, if the very
basis for their influence is the group membership they embody and share with members, rather than
some personal attribute, this means it is not theirs to do whatever they want with. Any innovative
or transformational vision they have must be seen by followers to be aligned with the group’s basic
commitments and defining features. To achieve this balance between being truly ‘of ’ the group whilst
also transforming, it can require considerable skill and creativity, a point we return to shortly.
Serving Group Interests

Besides being prototypical, leaders can also consolidate their ingroup credentials demonstrating
that they have the interests of the group at heart and have the capacity to deliver what it wants. It has
been argued that leaders need to act fairly in order to maintain support (e.g. Tyler and Caine 1981),
and this seems to be well supported (a point we return to later in this chapter). Favouring themselves
or certain group members over others would undermine the sense that their leadership serves the
group as a whole. But, do we also expect fairness when it comes to dealing with other groups? Not
Leadership 113
7 Leader behaviour
Fair
6 Unfair
Leadership endorsement
1
Interpersonal Low identification High identification
intergroup intergroup
Figure 4.9 New Zealand participants support a leader who allocates fairly between two lifelong New Zealanders
(ingroup), but who discriminates in favour of a lifelong New Zealander over a recent immigrant (outgroup). Source:
Platow et al. (1997), figure 4. Reprinted with permission from John Wiley and Sons.
necessarily, according to a study by Platow et al. (1997). Students in New Zealand were presented with
a scenario in which a hospital CEO allocated time on a kidney dialysis machine between two patients
(referred to as patients A and B) who were in equal need of this scarce resource. By presenting dif-
ferent versions of the scenario to different participants, the fairness of the decision was manipulated:
in a ‘fair’ condition, the CEO allocated equal amounts of time to each patient in line with their equal
need, while in an ‘unfair’ condition one patient was allocated more time on the grounds that they had
paid more in social welfare contributions. When participants read that this allocation was between
two lifelong New Zealanders, they clearly favoured leaders who gave both patients equal time equally
rather than discriminating on the basis of contributions. However, if told that patient A was a lifelong
New Zealander and patient B a recent immigrant, a different pattern emerged. Here, participants who
identified strongly as New Zealanders actually liked the leader more when he or she made the unfair
allocation, disadvantaging the outgroup. Participants with a lower level of national identification
still preferred the fair leader (Figure 4.9). Thus, it seems that fair leaders are not always supported:
sometimes unfairness that disadvantages an outgroup is not only accepted but also preferred.
This raises the possibility that leaders might deliberately behave negatively towards outgroups
in order to consolidate their own standing as guardians of group interests. For example, non-
prototypical leaders pursue a less cooperative strategies in negotiations with outgroups in order
to bolster their ingroup credentials, while prototypical leaders are less constrained by this concern
(Van Kleef et al. 2007).
‘Entrepreneurs’ and ‘Embedders’ of Identity

The argument that leaders’ prototypicality, as well as their commitment to group interests and ability
to deliver them, are central to what Haslam et al. (2011) refer to as a ‘new’ psychology of leadership.
However, in itself, this might imply that leaders are actually rather constrained because they need
to fit a particular existing mold, even if that mold is different for each group and situation. Each
group has its prototype, one might suggest, and so perhaps, at most, all prospective leaders can try
to do it make themselves as similar to that prototype as possible and lead in a way that conforms
to already-existing norms in order for their proposals or vision to be acceptable. This hardly allows
much scope for innovation. Yet, Haslam et al. argue, the task of leadership demands something rather
more creative than just this: leaders actively craft social identities – particularly through language –
in such a way that they can embody its prototype, and their vision embodies its norms and values.
Of course in most cases, leaders do not make up these identities from scratch but build them from
familiar images, ideas, myths, stereotypes, and memories in order to have meaning and value to the
people they are trying to lead. The term ‘entrepreneurs of identity’ refers to leaders who can make
creative rhetorical use of such resources and bring them into a plausible narrative about the group
and establish a relationship with their followers based on a social identity (Reicher and Hopkins 2003;
Reicher and Sani 1998). Meanwhile, they may characterise their opponents as outsiders to the group –
perhaps as representing elite, foreign, or subversive influences.
Haslam et al. (2011) illustrate the notion of entrepreneurs of identity with a variety of histor-
ical examples, such as the way national leaders such as George W. Bush, Nelson Mandela, and
Mohammed Ali Jinnah used clothing in strategic ways at specific moments to achieve prototypi-
cality. An analysis of the current American president (at the time of writing), Donald Trump, pro-
vides another compelling example for our present purposes (Reicher and Haslam 2016). Reicher and
Haslam argue against the prevailing view that Trump’s supporters must simply be too stupid, igno-
rant, or bigoted to understand their hero’s unsuitability for high office. They suggest, instead, that we
need to look at the framework Trump offers them for understanding their place in the world and their
aspirations for the future; how that framework is plausible to them because its key elements make
sense of their experiences; and how, in the context of that, Trump can position himself as the leader
that they need. This framework has several aspects. First, there is the way in which Trump construes
the ingroup, the supporters to whom he directs his message. Similar to most national politicians, he
addresses his supporters in national terms, as ‘ordinary Americans’, but he does this in a particular
way. For Trump, ‘Ordinary Americans’ are those who feel their economic prospects are worsening
through globalisation, and who feel remote from and distrustful of politicians. Second, there is the
outgroup, whose interests are opposed and who are responsible for this decline. This includes other
nations, such as China, that Trump accuses of making their economic gains and gaining power in the
world through dishonest means. Perhaps more importantly though, the outgroup includes the peo-
ple within America who are controlled by these external interests, whether through corruption or
incompetence. In Trump’s rhetoric, it is these people who make up the political and media establish-
ments that had allowed America to be weakened and humiliated. Third comes Trump’s positioning
of himself as the person who can solve these problems. One aspect of this is the way he positions him-
self firmly as part of the ingroup (ordinary Americans) rather than the outgroup (the establishment).
Despite possessing wealth vastly exceeding that of most Americans, he presents his values and inter-
ests as being those of ordinary people rather than an elite minority, and the more his language and
mannerisms appear to deviate from the polished style of most professional politicians, the more this
prototypicality is confirmed in the eyes of his supporters. Similarly, the news media are repeatedly
portrayed as part of an elite outgroup opposed to ingroup interests, and in doing so, Trump ensures
that their attacks on him bolster rather than undermine his claim to be a defender of the ordinary
American interests. Another aspect is the way he touted his claimed hard-headed business acumen
as the solution to America being too easily taken advantage of by other countries and his wealth as
Leadership 115
something that made him independent, in contrast to other politicians who could be ‘bought’ by their
sponsors. Finally, Reicher and Haslam argue that Trump’s campaign itself – and particularly his ral-
lies – were a way of making this particular vision of America a vivid, concrete reality that made his
supporters feel empowered. Indeed, Trump’s speeches consistently stressed the collective power of
his supporters to take back power for themselves. One television campaign ad put it this way:
The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save
our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you
the American people. I’m doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take
back this country for you and we will make America great again.
Reicher and Haslam suggest that even the details of how these rallies were choreographed – from
the way Trump kept his supporters waiting to the way he goaded them to turn and taunt journalists
in the press ‘pen’, was a way of taking his vision of America and making it a concrete reality for his
supporters, giving them a tangible sense of who they were as a movement. Leaders who are able to
perform their version of a social identity in this way through rituals, spectacles, monuments and the
like are termed ‘embedders of identity’ (Haslam et al. 2011). Thus, leaders are both ‘entrepreneurs’,
who craft identities that include themselves and their audience, and ‘embedders’, who make these
identities real to their followers by establishing them in the physical environment.
Authority
At the beginning of this chapter we presented French and Raven’s (1959) taxonomy of five types of
power. We have contrasted forms of power based on incentives, threats, and instrumental exchanges
with those based on a leader’s capacity to enthuse and mobilise followers, the latter form being akin to
‘referent power’ in French and Raven’s scheme. We have also seen that the social identity perspective
brings some important insights into how charisma and influence are generated. However, this still
leaves two forms of power from the taxonomy unaddressed: expert and legitimate power.
The first of these, expert power, stems from our recognition that somebody possesses the required
knowledge or expertise for us to follow their advice or instruction in a particular domain. We do
not need to be particularly inspired by a medical doctor to follow her advice, and nor, as adults, do
we generally need a bribe to take our medicine (at least as adults). It can be enough to simply trust
that the doctor is qualified to give this advice and typically we do not insist on being given the full
medical and pharmacological basis or evidence behind it. According to French and Raven, the last
category, legitimate power, stems from a sense of what we ‘ought to’ or ‘should’ do. In other words,
there is a sense of moral obligation to act in a particular way, which is closely linked to the norms and
expectations of our groups and the society in which we live. One key instance of legitimate power is
the way in which people in certain roles and positions are empowered with the right to instruct or
even demand us to do specific things. For example, people generally accept a police officer’s right to
direct traffic and feel that they ought to obey. Similarly, professional football matches would collapse
into chaos very quickly if players did not, on the whole, accept referee decisions they disagree with. In
everyday English, the word ‘authority’ seems to capture both expert and legitimate power. We speak
of scientific experts for example as being ‘authoritative’ on this or that subject, but also refer to the
police and similar institutions as ‘the authorities’. There is also a psychological similarity between
them in that both involve a kind of willing submission to the judgement of another person in a way
that is usually limited to particular domains.
Of these two, legitimate power is perhaps the most complex and has provoked more investigation
from scholars across the social sciences. According to Tyler and his colleagues, the most crucial fac-
tor underpinning legitimacy is fairness (Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler et al. 2001; Tyler 2005, 2006;
Tyler and Huo 2002). That is, the power of authorities such as the police is accepted as legitimate to
the extent that people see them exercising that power in a fair way. Typically, scholars in this area
have distinguished between two kinds of fairness: procedural fairness and distributive fairness (Tyler
2006). According to Tyler et al., procedural fairness is about the process of what the authorities actu-
ally do, such as making decisions impartially and treating people with respect. Distributive fairness is
about the outcomes and more specifically not favouring some groups over others. Thus, they argue,
procedural and distributive fairness are distinct in people’s judgements of authorities such as the
police, courts, and governments.
This model has informed a significant volume of research, with a common finding being that proce-
dural fairness is more important than distributive fairness (e.g. Sunshine and Tyler 2003; Tyler 2006;
Tyler and Huo 2002). Yet, the empirical basis for making this particular distinction is not strong
(Hauenstein et al. 2001). Analysing people’s perceptions of police fairness in Northern Ireland, we
found no basis for the traditional distinction between procedural and distributive fairness (Pehrson
et al. 2017). If anything, impartial decision-making (usually conceptualised as part of procedural
fairness) belonged more with the ‘distributive fairness’ factor, suggesting that a distinction between
impartiality and respect is better supported than one between process and outcome. In any case,
correlations between respect, impartial decisions, and distributive fairness were all 0.86 or above,
suggesting that distinctions between fair procedures and fair outcomes are not as meaningful to peo-
ple as has often been assumed. This makes intuitive sense: a fair procedure is one that leads to fair
outcomes, while those creating unfair outcomes are unfair procedures.
Regardless of how meaningful the distinction between procedural and distributive fairness really
is, it is clear that judgements of fairness (of any kind) consistently underpin perceptions of legitimacy.
This has also been explained in terms of social identity. For example, it has been argued being treated
fairly by authorities signals to people that they belong to and are respected by the group as a whole,
which supports their identification with the group and cooperation with its authorities (Blader and
Tyler 2009). An alternative mechanism suggested by our Northern Irish study is that treating people
unfairly undermines authorities’ own ability to be seen as part of the group, even if the people towards
who they are unfair still see themselves as very much part of it. Rather than feeling we don’t belong, we
see the authority as not genuinely serving the group and so withdraw our support for them (Pehrson
et al. 2017).
Summary
1. Deviates, especially when they are not completely isolated and when they act in a consistent fash-
ion, can be shown to influence the majority. This is called minority influence. This is most evident
on indirect or latent measures of influence. The categorisation of the source of influence is also
important: ingroup minorities typically bring about more change than outgroup minorities.
2. Social influence is a dynamic process. As minorities influence majorities, the latter decrease in
size (power) and the former increase. This is not a symmetrical process. Majorities feel the pain
of losing their status more than minorities relish the gain of acquiring theirs.
3. Controversy exists as to whether minority and majority influences are two separate processes with
different effects or a single process with effects different only in magnitude. In support of the for-
mer view, different cognitive and attitudinal outcomes are usually obtained in the two domains.
References 117
On the other hand, consistent effects of group size (of both majority and minority) on the magni-
tude of influence support a unitary process. Whilst a rigid demarcation between the two modes
of influence may not be tenable, there are sufficient qualitative differences in antecedents and out-
comes to sustain a theoretical distinction between them.
4. People may ‘follow’ a leader for various reasons, including the compulsion and/or possibility of
material reward. However, in general, leadership refers to a kind of social influence whereby a
leader engages people in such that they are themselves motivated to work towards his or her par-
ticular vision, over and above any reward they might get as a result.
5. ‘Charisma’ describes a quality of leaders that inspires people to follow them. While there is evi-
dence that leaders seen as charismatic are indeed successful, pinning this quality down in terms of
specific personal attributes of leaders has proved difficult. This is highlighted by the fact that the
same person may be charismatic to some people and repellant to others.
6. Research on leadership styles suggests that leaders who listen and attend to subordinates’ needs
and relationships among them are more effective than authoritarian ones. However, there appears
to be no single style that suits every situation, and even more complex theories about the interac-
tion between leadership style and situation struggle to capture the dynamic way in which leaders
and their followers relate to one another.
7. Leadership can be viewed as a group process, whereby an effective leader is somebody seen as a
committed and prototypical group member who can help the group to realise its goals and whose
project is aligned with group norms.
8. Rather than just conforming to an existing group stereotype and established norms, leaders may
actively shape social identities in a way that makes them prototypical and their projects as being
consonant with group norms.
9. Authority is a form of power that depends on the acceptance that certain people can tell us what
to do on account of their expertise or recognised designation to a particular role, without neces-
sarily persuading us. However, the continued legitimacy of such authorities depends heavily on
the fairness with which they treat people.
Further Reading
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. D., and Platow, M. J. (2011). The New Psychology of Leadership: Identity.
Influence and Power.
Martin, R. and Hewstone, M. (2008). Majority versus Minority influence, message processing and
attitude change: The source-context-elaboration model. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology
40: 237–326.
Moscovici, S. (1980). Toward a theory of conversion behaviour. Advances in Experimental Social
Psychology, Vol 13.
Nemeth, C. (2012). Minority influence theory. In: Handbook of theories of social psychology, vol 2
(eds. P.A.M. Van Lange, A.W. Kruglanski and E.T. Higgins), 362–378.
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124
The Effectiveness of Groups
Are ‘two heads better than one’ or do ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’? Do ‘many hands make light
work’ or should you, in order to do something well, do it yourself? These various (and conflicting)
adages reveal our society’s long interest in the question of whether people work harder, think more
clearly, and are more creative and happier in the company of others or on their own. This interest is
hardly surprising in view of the close interdependence between people that is one of the hallmarks
of human existence; today, as they have for millennia, people work together, play together, and make
crucial life-and-death decisions together. It has thus been of no little practical importance to know
how best to organise ourselves to perform these tasks effectively. Reflecting these concerns, group
psychologists have long argued about the respective merits of group and individual performance.
Indeed, the earliest recorded social psychological experiments addressed just these issues. This chap-
ter will examine some of these debates and review the enormous fund of empirical research that they
have generated.
The first part of the chapter concerns some aspects of productivity. In other words, on tasks where
there is some measurable index of performance, how do individuals and groups compare? As we shall
see, there are a number of ways of answering this question and the outcome of the comparison very
much depends on the method chosen. Nevertheless, across a range of tasks one finding seems to
recur: groups often fail to operate as efficiently as one might have predicted from a knowledge of the
attributes of their individual members. Such findings have led some theorists to propose that groups
are inherently unlikely to maximise their full potential. As we will show, although much data support
these contentions, there are grounds for believing that they are unduly pessimistic about the capacity
of groups to surpass the combined potential of their individual members. Sometimes a group may,
indeed, be more than the sum (or other combination) of its parts.
The second part considers the factors which affect the quality of collective decision-making, and
a theory which suggests that such decisions are prone to a detrimental set of symptoms known as
‘group-think’ is examined.
In the third section, we examine the idea that groups are good for us, good for helping us to cope
with the challenges we may encounter in our lives, good for our general well-being, and good for our
physical and mental health. Recent years have seen an extraordinary growth in research on just this
issue, and the majority of it reveals the many benefits that accrue from multiple group memberships
and strong group identifications.
Group Productivity
Does the Presence of Others Help or Hinder Performance?
Whenever we undertake some group task, one fact is inescapable: other people are present and may
have the opportunity to observe and evaluate what we are doing. Thus, the most elementary question
about group productivity is to ask whether the mere presence of others has any effect on performance.
Indeed, it was exactly this question which was the focus of the first ever social psychology experi-
ment (Triplett 1898), and which seemed to preoccupy many other social psychologists in the first
three decades of the twentieth century (e.g. Allport 1924; Dashiell 1930; Moede 1920–21). Triplett’s
study was inspired by his analysis of the record books of the League of American Wheelmen, the
organisation which apparently ran cycling competitions of various kinds in the United States at that
time. Triplett noticed how time trials (in which cyclists raced alone against the clock) seemed invari-
ably to yield slower performances than ‘paced’ events (in which the cyclist is accompanied by a series
of pace-setters) which, in turn, were slightly slower than true competitions (cyclists racing against
each other). Moved to explain these differences, Triplett devised a laboratory task (winding fishing
reels) which could be undertaken alone or in competition with another. He claimed that his results
indicated that participants (mostly 9–12-year-old children) worked faster in competition than alone
(Triplett 1898; see also Moede 1920–21), although subsequent analysis of his data revealed that few,
if any, of the ‘competition’ versus ‘alone’ differences were statistically reliable (Strube 2005).
That pioneering study was followed by many others, most notably by Allport (1924). Allport sought
to remove the competition element and asked people simply to carry out various cognitive tasks on
their own or alongside (but not against) someone else also performing the task. The tasks ranged from
relatively straightforward things like multiplication or vowel cancellation to more complex activities
like thinking up counter-arguments to some philosophical position. Allport found that on simple
tasks, performance was facilitated by the presence of a coactor, whilst on more difficult tasks, it was
impaired. In fact, this observation has stood the test of time, emerging clearly from the results of over
200 subsequent experiments which examined the effects of social presence on various types of task
performance (Bond and Titus 1983). Apparently, the same phenomenon is observable if the other
‘person’ is a computer-simulated virtual presence (Park and Catrambone 2007).
For a long time, the fact that improvements in performance due to the presence of others – or, social
facilitation as it is known – were confined to tasks requiring simple responses and disappeared with
activities that needed more careful or thoughtful action, remained a puzzle. Then Zajonc (1965, 1980)
proposed an ingenious solution. He began by noting that the observed asymmetry between simple
and complex tasks was by no means confined to humans. Bringing together data from a bewilder-
ingly diverse range of species including ants, chickens, cockroaches, fish, fruit flies, monkeys and, of
course, humans, he argued that the simple versus complex task asymmetry had every appearance of
being a universal law of social behaviour. To explain this consistency, Zajonc (1965) proposed that
the presence of another member of the same species always had the effect of increasing an animals
arousal level (or drive), perhaps as an evolutionarily adapted response to prepare the organism for
action (e.g. ‘fight’, ‘flight’, and ‘investigate’). According to classical learning theory (Spence 1956), such
increased drive should increase the likelihood of any well-learned or habitual response, but decrease
the probability of poorly learned or novel responses. Zajonc argued that the behaviour required for
the successful completion of ‘simple’ tasks was of the former type since it usually involved some gross
motor activity or well-rehearsed mental processes. Hence, the drive induced by the presence of others
126 5 The Effectiveness of Groups
should improve performance. On the other hand, ‘complex’ tasks, by definition, involve more com-
plicated sequences of actions or less obvious cognitive strategies, none of which are likely to be well
learned. In this case, then, the socially induced drive inhibits performance.
The scope and simplicity of Zajonc’s (1965) theory proved an attractive combination and much
of the next 20 years was devoted to testing, refining, or reformulating it (e.g. Aiello and Douthitt
2001; Baron 1986; Cottrell 1972; Green and Gange 1977; Guerin 1986; Zajonc 1980). Several difficul-
ties soon emerged. First of all, the predicted effects of the mere presence of another were not always
obtained; other factors were often necessary to observe the classic social facilitation/inhibition effects
(Guerin 1986). For example, social facilitation effects seemed more powerful if the other person
present was not actually visible to the participant, especially when it actually (or implicitly) involved
some evaluation by the observer. This implied that the alleged drive-arousing properties of a conspe-
cific might not be quite as universal as Zajonc had supposed. Second, even if arousal was involved in
social facilitation, its origins seemed to be more complicated than Zajonc had assumed. Some argued
that it was due to a concern with being evaluated by the other person (Cottrell 1972); others suggested
that it stemmed from the animal’s difficulty in trying to monitor a potentially unpredictable conspe-
cific (Guerin and Innes 1982); whilst a third theory proposed that the increased drive was caused by
the distraction inherent in attending both to the task and the ‘other’ (Baron 1986). Third, the avail-
able physiological data were not very consistent with the drive explanation. The usual indicators of
increased arousal (e.g. faster heartbeat, increased galvanic skin resistance) often did not respond pre-
dictably to the presence of another (Bond and Titus 1983).
In addition to these problems, there was a growing sense that a ‘drive’ explanation was a rather
impoverished account of social facilitation effects in humans because it tended to eschew cognitive-
attentional factors and to overlook the social meaning implied by the presence of the other person
(or persons). As a result, subsequent models of social facilitation/inhibition phenomena moved away
from a single biologically based explanation to more specific accounts based on higher-order social
psychological processes like social comparisons and self-expectations (Monteil and Huguet 1999;
Sanna 1992).
Are Two Heads (or Bodies) better than One?

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a French agricultural engineer called Max Ringelmann
conducted a series of experiments designed to investigate the efficiency of various pulling techniques
used in farming (Ringelmann 1913; see Kravitz and Martin 1986). In one of these experiments, he
asked agricultural students to pull on a rope which was connected to a dynamometer to record the
force exerted. The students either pulled alone or in groups of various sizes. What Ringelmann dis-
covered was that although, of course, the more people who pulled the greater the force exerted, that
force did not increase proportionately with the size of the group. Pulling on their own, the students
managed to pull around 85 kg, but when pulling in groups of seven, they did not achieve anything like
seven times that figure. In fact, they exerted a pull of around 450 kg, which is only about five times
their average individual effort. Looked at another way, the groups appeared to be pulling at only 75%
of their full capacity. Somewhere along the line some of the individuals’ combined strength seemed
to have been dissipated.
This simple experiment illustrates a number of the issues that crop up in research on group per-
formance. How, for example should one make the comparisons between individuals and groups? A
straightforward comparison between the performance of individuals on their own and the combined
product of a group of individuals will often yield the wholly unsurprising result that groups do better
than individuals: Ringelmann’s seven-man team pulled 450 kg; on average, an individual could man-
age less than 90 kg. Alternatively, one could hypothetically combine the performances of isolated
individuals in some way (as if they were acting as a group) and compare that pooled performance
with the product of the real interacting group. This is what we did when we stated that Ringelmann’s
groups were only 75% efficient: we computed what seven men ought to have been able to achieve
(595 kg) and compared that to their actual performance (450 kg). This type of comparison between
‘statisticised’ and real groups is one of the most commonly used methods (Lorge et al. 1958; Hill
1982). A third type of comparison is to take, not the whole output from such statisticised groups, but
merely the performance of their best members. For some kinds of tasks, this test yields some interest-
ing results, as we shall see. Finally, one may compute some measure of individual productivity: how
much output per worker per unit time is being generated?
Of all the kinds of tasks on which social psychologists have attempted to assess the relative perfor-
mance of individuals and groups, those which involve some kind of problem-solving have been the
most popular. One of the earliest experiments was by Shaw (1932) who set her participants a number
of reasoning problems to solve. Half worked on the problems individually, and half were allocated at
random to four-person groups. Shaw observed whether or not the individuals and groups were able
to solve the problems and how long they took. Her results from the first three problems are shown
in Table 5.1. Of the proportion of individuals and groups able to solve the problems, the groups were
superior (see the first row in each half of Table 5.1). On two of the problems, three of the five groups
were successful and on the third, two. This compares to three, zero, and two individuals, respectively.
However, the groups took a little longer on the task (‘time taken’ includes both successful and unsuc-
cessful attempts). This difference, when translated into person-minutes, becomes quite substantial.
In other words, if Shaw had been paying her participants by the minute to solve the problems, the
group method of working would have proved much more expensive. But it is worth emphasising again
that, particularly on Problem 2, at least for that extra money she would have obtained some correct
solutions; none of the individuals working on that problem were able to come up with the answer.
Shaw (1932) did not compare her real groups with statisticised aggregates made up from combining
individual performances. This was left to Marquart (1955), using very similar problems to those used
Table 5.1 Problem-solving by individuals and groups
Problem 1 Problem 2 Problem 3
Individuals (n = 21)
Proportion solving 0.14 0.00 0.095
Mean time taken (min) 4.50 9.90 15.50
Productivity (person-minutes) 4.50 9.90 15.50
Groups (n = 5 groups of 4)
Proportion solving 0.60 0.60 0.40
Mean time taken (min) 6.50 16.90 18.30
Productivity (person-minutes) 26.00 67.60 73.20
Source: Shaw (1932), taken from table 1. Reproduced with permission of JSTOR.
by Shaw. As usual, half worked on the puzzles on their own, whilst the other half worked in groups.
Just as Shaw had found, the groups were more likely to solve the problems, although they took a
little longer to do so. However, when Marquart randomly combined the individuals into hypothetical
groups and examined how many of these statisticised groups would have solved the problems (i.e.
how many contained a successful individual), she found no difference between their performance
and that of the real interacting groups (see also, Faust 1959).
Similar comparisons have been made in memory experiments. Perlmutter and de Montmollin
(1952) asked their participants to learn some nonsense syllables and then tested their memory for
these. Half of them did this task as individuals first and then in groups; for the other half, the sequence
was reversed. The straightforward individual versus group comparison revealed that the groups
recalled almost twice as much as the individuals, although, at least on the early trials, they took a
little longer about it. Such results do not seem to be confined to the learning of nonsense syllables.
Yuker (1955) tested people’s memory for items in a short story and found not only that groups were
superior to individuals on average but also that the group recall exceeded the initial recall of the ‘best’
individual in each group (see also, Stephenson et al. 1986).
All the tasks considered so far have been of a convergent type where there has been an objectively
right answer. How do groups fare on more open-ended activities which call for creativity and imagina-
tion? One such task is ‘brainstorming’, an ideas-generating technique often used in business (Osborn
1957). The essence of this technique is that people try to think up as many solutions as possible to the
problem at hand. There should be no attempt at criticism or evaluation of the quality of these ideas.
Intuitively, one might imagine that interacting groups ought to do very well at this kind of thing since
they have a larger pool of original ideas to draw on coupled with the mutual stimulation which group
members should be able to generate. In fact, this turns out to be far from the case. Taylor et al. (1958)
set individuals and groups (of four) to work on three brainstorming problems. While the interacting
groups easily outshone the average individual in the number of ideas generated (by roughly 2 : 1),
when those individuals were randomly formed into statisticised aggregates and the redundant ideas
discarded, these statistical groups did far better than the real groups. On average, they produced
around 68 novel ideas as compared to only 37 for the interacting groups. These findings have been
confirmed in other studies which lead to the somewhat surprising conclusion that brainstorming is
actually most beneficial when carried out initially in private, the interacting group then being used
as a forum for combining and evaluating these individually produced ideas (Lamm and Trommsdorff
1973; Mullen et al. 1991).
Potential and Actual Productivity: Theories of Group Deficit

These findings on group performance present a rather confusing picture. Although groups seem to
be generally superior in the simplest comparisons (i.e. groups versus average individual) when the
performance of ‘best’ individuals or of statisticised groups is examined, the result often seems to go
the other way, the extent of the deficit varying from task to task. One of the most influential attempts
to bring some order to this complexity has been Steiner’s (1972) theory of group productivity.
Steiner begins by proposing that a group’s observed performance on a task will be determined
by three factors: ‘task demands’, the ‘resources’ of the group, and the ‘process’ by which the group
interacts to accomplish the task. To understand what he means by these terms it may be helpful to
use and extend the culinary analogy which he himself suggests. Imagine you are about to embark on
the cooking of an elaborate dish. This is the task confronting you. Likely as not, you will consult a
recipe book and there on the appropriate page you will find a description of the kind and quantity
of ingredients needed, the various procedures required for their combination, and perhaps (if you
are consulting a book guided by a particular culinary or nutritional philosophy) various rules to be
followed in their preparation and cooking. All these constitute the task demands.
Steiner suggests that the various kinds of tasks that groups have to undertake can be usefully clas-
sified according to a number of criteria. At the most basic level they may be divisible or unitary,
depending on whether they can be divided into subtasks each of which may be undertaken by a dif-
ferent person or whether they are holistic tasks whose accomplishment is all or nothing. An example
of a divisible task would be the manufacture of motor cars where, since Henry Ford, the making of
the finished vehicle is broken down into thousands of simple tasks performed on the assembly line.
Another might be a collaborative learning exercise where students are allocated to different tasks with
a view to combining their efforts in some jointly produced project (see, for example Aronson et al.
1978). Examples of unitary tasks would be the reasoning problems in Shaw’s (1932) experiment where
the reasoning problems required some flash of insight for the answer and could not usefully be bro-
ken down into components. The second criterion for classifying tasks is whether they are maximising
or optimising. Does the task goal involve more quantity or speed (maximising), or does it require the
matching to some predetermined standard (optimising)? Ringelmann’s rope-pulling studies involved
a maximising task since the goal was to pull as hard as possible, whereas in Shaw’s (1932) experiment,
the goal was to solve the problem by reaching a specific correct answer (albeit as quickly as possible).
Tasks may be additive (the contributions are simply added together as in brainstorming), disjunctive
(where an either-or decision between different contributions is called for, e.g. reasoning problems),
conjunctive (where everyone must complete the task, e.g. a group of mountaineers attempting a team
conquest of a new peak) or discretionary (where groups can decide as they like how to accomplish
the task).
If task demands constitute the recipe then, to continue the analogy, resources are represented by
the contents of your larder and your pretensions as a cook. As with task demands, resources will vary
from task to task. In a tug-of-war, presumably physical strength is at a premium, whereas in learn-
ing tasks, people’s short-term memory capacities are much more relevant. In a perfect world, the
resources of the group would always be exactly matched to the task demands so that, in fact, the task
can be successfully accomplished. Steiner calls the output that would hypothetically be achieved in
this idealised scenario the potential productivity of the group. In our analogy, it is the glossy photo-
graph in the recipe book which shows you how the dish you are cooking should turn out.
The method of determining potential productivity depends on the nature of the task. Let us con-
sider two simple cases, additive tasks and disjunctive tasks. With additive tasks, as we have seen,
the group members’ contributions are simply aggregated. Thus, the potential productivity of a group
undertaking tasks like these is simply the sum of their maximum individual contributions. In the
Ringelmann study, the potential productivity of the seven-person team was around seven times the
average individual person’s pull capacity.
For disjunctive tasks, the calculation of potential productivity is slightly more complex. Here, the
solution is an all-or-none thing and Steiner suggests that it will be solved simply when one member
of the group finds the answer. Hence, he proposes that the potential productivity for a disjunctive
problem is equivalent to the probability of finding someone in the group who is able to solve it. To
compute this, one needs some idea of the prevalence of such people in the population from which
your group is made up. Let us call that proportion, Pi . From elementary probability theory, it follows
that the proportion of people in the population who cannot solve the problem is 1 − Pi . Let us call that
value, Q. Knowing Q, as Lorge and Solomon (1955) pointed out, it is then possible to calculate the
predicted probability that groups of any given size (n) will be able to solve the problem. Obviously,
the larger the group, the more likely it is that it will contain someone who can solve the problem, and
mathematically this can be expressed as Pg = 1 − Qn . Pg is the expected proportion of groups able to
solve the problem and represents their potential productivity for that task. Let us quickly compute
the potential productivity of Shaw’s (1932) groups working on the first of her three problems. The
proportion of individuals able to solve the problem was 0.14 (see Table 5.1). Hence Q, the proportion
unable to solve the problem, is 0.86. It is then simple to work out that the potential productivity of
her four-person groups is, 1 − (0.86)4 = 0.46 (see Lorge and Solomon 1955).1 For the other tasks, the
potential productivity figures are 0.0 and 0.33.
We now come to the crux of Steiner’s theory. Just as the fruits of your labour in the kitchen almost
always fail to match up to the picture in the recipe book, so Steiner proposes that a group’s actual
productivity (how it actually performs on the task) usually falls short of its potential productivity. This
is, he says, because groups are seldom able to utilise their resources to the full; there are often losses
due to processes within the group which impede the group’s maximum attainment:
Actual Productivity = Potential Productivity minus losses due to faulty process.

(Steiner 1972, p. 9)
Thus, Steiner believes that, though groups can approach potential productivity in their perfor-
mance, they can never actually exceed it.
What kinds of ‘faulty process’ are responsible for this alleged failure of groups to achieve their
potential? Some are straightforward to identify. In a tug-of-war, group members will find it difficult
to synchronise their pulls perfectly and to pull along exactly the same line. Steiner calls this a prob-
lem of coordination and, as we saw from Ringelmann’s results, these do appear to be real enough. It
is likely that many of the drastic losses which occur in brainstorming groups can also be attributed to
coordination problems, particularly those due to the difficulty of having to ‘share the floor’ with one’s
fellow group members. Since people cannot all speak at once – or, at least, not if their ideas are to be
recorded – their production of ideas is somewhat ‘blocked’ by the other members of the group. No
such blocking occurs for those generating their ideas on their own. Diehl and Stroebe (1987) showed
that by systematically controlling the degree to which people could speak freely (e.g. in one condition
participants were only allowed to speak when a light indicated that the floor was ‘free’) they could
reliably alter the productivity of their brainstorming groups; conditions in which there was ‘blocking’,
whether naturally occurring or artificially introduced, yielded productivity figures of less than half
of the ‘unblocked’ conditions. In addition to the practical constraints caused by such blocking, it is
possible that another source of loss of performance in group brainstorming is attributable to inter-
ference with the group members’ individual cognitive processes, especially the operation of working
memory (Nijstad and Stroebe 2006).
Another source of faulty group process may be the social dynamics among the group members.
Staying with the brainstorming example, it is likely that members of the real groups were affected by
social comparison processes (see Chapter 3) and monitored their output so as not to be too far out of
line with the others (Paulus and Dzindolet 1993). Indeed, giving people a higher comparison target
1 Actually, Steiner (1972, p. 20) erroneously computes this figure to be 0.596, and does not mention the values for the other
two tasks. As we shall see, this mistake and omission has important implications for his theory of process loss.
to aim at reliably improves their brainstorming performance (Paulus and Dzindolet 1993; Szymanski
and Harkins 1987).
So far we have only considered examples of ‘process loss’, where the group has fallen short of
what it might have been expected to achieve. However, some of the studies considered earlier indi-
cate that these losses can sometimes be minimal. In Marquart’s (1955) and Faust’s (1959) studies of
problem-solving, for example there was little difference between real and statisticised groups, sug-
gesting that once the correct answer became available in the group, it was instantly recognised by the
others.
Steiner’s (1972) theory mainly emphasises process losses due to problems which the group mem-
bers may have in coordinating their activities or which arise from social influence processes. There
is another source of decrement which he identifies and that concerns motivation; perhaps people
do not try as hard in a group as they do alone. Such a conclusion is suggested by some research by
Ingham et al. (1974) which is one of only two published replications of Ringelmann’s (1913) rope-
pulling study. Having first replicated Ringelmann’s results that groups do not pull as hard as the sum
of their individual constituents, they modified the procedure slightly. Instead of using real groups to
pull on the rope on each trial, they employed one naive participant and a number of confederates.
Unknown to the real participant, who was always in the first position on the rope, the confederates
had been instructed only to pretend to pull on the rope whilst making realistic grunts indicating phys-
ical exertion. In this way, Ingham and colleagues were able to construct ‘pseudo-groups’ of different
sizes. Any decrement in pull from the real participant could only be attributable to motivation losses
since no coordination losses could possibly exist. The results indicated that such a drop in motivation
did indeed seem to occur (see Figure 5.1).
Figure 5.1 Coordination and motivation losses

Real groups in group rope-pulling. Source: Ingham et al.
Pseudo-groups (1974), adapted from figure 2. Reproduced with
permission of American Psychological
Potential productivity
0 Association.
Decrease in average individual pull (%)
Losses due
to motivation
10
Losses due
20 to coordination
30
1 2 3 4 5 6
Size of group
A similar drop in effort on another kind of additive task was observed by Latané et al. (1979). They
asked individuals and groups of different sizes to shout as loudly as they could and recorded the
amount of noise which was produced. In line with Steiner’s theory, they found that actual produc-
tivity did not match potential productivity. Groups of two performed at only 71% of their individual
capacity, while a six-person group could only manage 40% of their potential. Then, borrowing from
Ingham et al. (1974), Latané et al. (1979) created ‘pseudo-groups’ to eliminate coordination losses.
Participants were blindfolded and wore headphones playing constant ‘white noise’ so that they could
neither see nor hear the others who they were alleged to be shouting with. When told they were
shouting with other people, participants still shouted less than when they believed they were on their
own (at 82% capacity for the ‘groups’ of two, 74% for the ‘groups’ of six). These figures are an improve-
ment on the real groups but still fall short of the potential productivity figure, indicating once again a
lack of effort simply as a function of believing that one is doing a task with others (see also, Kerr and
Bruun 1981; Harkins and Petty 1982; Harkins and Szymanski 1989).
Latané et al. (1979) dubbed this slackening of effort in groups ‘social loafing’ and explained it in
terms of Latané’s (1981) social impact theory, described in Chapter 4. They argue that the major
source of influence in group performance experiments is the experimenter’s instructions. When these
are directed solely towards an individual, then they will have maximum impact. With groups, on the
other hand, the theory suggests that the impact of the instructions is ‘divided’ between the group
members with corresponding reductions in output. According to the theory, as group size increases,
so impact decreases, corresponding to some power function. Consistent with this account, most of
the group size effects on productivity do seem to conform to the typical negatively accelerating power
function curve (see Steiner 1972; and Figure 5.1, for example). Thus, like Steiner’s (1972) theory, social
impact theory is essentially a theory of group deficits in performance. It presumes that, though steps
can be taken to reduce social loafing (e.g. by making people’s contributions to the group task more
identifiable, Williams et al. 1981), at the end of the day, individual effort on collective tasks will never
surpass solo efforts.
Social loafing certainly seems to be a pervasive phenomenon, at least on the mundane tasks and
with the ad hoc groups which are commonly used in social psychologists’ laboratories. Karau and
Williams (1993) found 78 studies which had included comparisons of people working alone and
collectively. Of these comparisons, nearly 80% indicated the existence of some loafing, a highly
significant overall effect. Nevertheless, in a careful analysis of the many factors which have been
incorporated into such experiments, Karau and Williams (1993) identified several conditions in
which social loafing is eliminated and some, indeed, which provide hints that an inverse effect can
be observed, what we might call social labouring (i.e. greater effort on group tasks). In Karau and
Williams’ (1993) meta-analysis the two key factors promoting social labouring were the importance
of the task and the significance of the group to its members. When these were high, people seemed to
work harder collectively than alone. Other variables which seemed to reduce loafing, if not actually to
reverse it, were the opportunity for the group to be evaluated and the culture in which the study was
carried out (there was generally less loafing in eastern cultures). These qualifications to the general
social loafing effect are important because they represent a direct challenge to the theories of group
deficit which we have just considered. In effect, they suggest that process losses in groups may not
be inevitable and that Steiner’s (1972) equation linking actual and potential productivity should be
amended to include ‘process gains’ (Hackman and Morris 1975; Shaw 1976). With such a formulation,
if the gains outweigh the losses then the group could exceed its potential performance. In the Section
“Two Heads (or Bodies) really can be better than One: The Benefits of Working in Groups,” we
consider the mounting evidence which now supports the validity of this idea.
Two Heads (or Bodies) really can be better than One: The Benefits of Working in Groups
The decades either side of the beginning of the twentieth century seem to have been particularly
fertile ones for researchers in group productivity. Earlier, we encountered the pioneering studies of
Triplett (1898) and Ringelmann (1913). To these we should add the research of Köhler (1926, 1927,
see also Witte 1989). Köhler had members of a rowing club repeatedly lift heavy weights until they
were exhausted. They did this alone, in pairs, and in groups of three. The groups were composed so
that they were rowers of equal strength, or of unequal strengths (in varying degrees). Köhler observed
that, when the rowers’ strengths were within 60–80% of each other, the group’s output exceeded the
sum of the individuals’ outputs, a significant performance increment; when their strengths were more
disparate or more equal, the groups tended to perform below potential, just as Ringelmann (1913) had
observed a few years earlier. We shall return to a more detailed analysis of Köhler’s research shortly
but, for now, it is worth noting two points. First, this was one of the first empirical demonstrations of
social labouring; and it proved to be not the last. Second, it may be significant that this social labouring
was observed amongst members of a sports team who not only knew each other well but who also
probably had a distinctive and psychologically significant group identity. As we will discover, many
of the other instances of social labouring occur in circumstances when people’s social identities as
group members are engaged.
In contrast, the two theoretical accounts of group productivity which we have considered so far –
Steiner’s (1972) and Latané’s (1981) – both have a rather individualistic conception of human activity
in group settings. For Steiner (1972), the performance of an isolated individual is always used as
the ‘bench-mark’ against which to measure behaviour in the group; although one can combine with
one’s fellow group members in various ways (according to the nature of the task), ultimately these
coworkers are an impedance to the fulfillment of the group’s true potential. Similarly, in Latané’s
(1981) view, the individual seems to be regarded as an ‘effort economiser’, looking to get away with
the minimum exertion consistent with achieving some adequate level of group output.
There is no doubt that for some kinds of group tasks such individualistic analyses are appropriate.
It would be foolish to deny that personal motives and incentives play a part in determining how
people will behave as group members. Nevertheless, such explanations overlook the possibility that
people’s motivation can be socially derived or that groups can provide ‘added value’ by combining
individual contributions in ways that are not predictable from any prior assessment of them in a
social vacuum. There are three lines of evidence which all lead in this direction: (i) research that has
examined different kinds of tasks than those typically used in group performance experiments; (ii)
studies on the effects of working in groups that are psychologically significant for their members; and
(iii) investigations of the effect of different cultural values on individual and collective productivity.
First, we should note that the majority of research which supports the ‘group deficit’ point of view
has employed rather trivial tasks which are unlikely to have been very involving for the participants.
Examples include, clapping, shouting, brainstorming new uses for everyday objects, monitoring TV
screens for the appearance of random visual signals, pumping air with a hand-held rubber bulb, and
rope pulling (Karau and Williams 1993). Moreover, on the few of these tasks was there any scope
for correcting or complementing other people’s contributions because the tasks were usually of an
additive and maximising nature, often requiring a very simple response. Faced with the prospect of
undertaking such activities, perhaps it is not surprising that participants often did not feel greatly
motivated to work any harder collectively than they did on their own. But what might happen with
more complex, and hence more involving, tasks, especially those which seem to call for some integra-
tion of the group members’ contributions? The evidence from several different quarters all suggests
that this has a facilitatory effect on group performance.
Let us begin with two studies we have already discussed: the experiments by Shaw (1932) and Faust
(1959). In Shaw’s experiment, the proportions of groups actually solving the three problems were
0.60, 0.60, and 0.40 (see Table 5.1). As we then saw, the potential group productivity figures for these
same three problems – based on the number of successful individuals – were 0.46, 0.0, and 0.33,
respectively. In other words, on all three problems, the actual proportions exceeded the theoretical
maxima. Lorge and Solomon (1955) calculate that the first and last differences were not significant
but that the second was. Here, then, is one example of groups exceeding their potential productivity
(see also, Brickner et al. (1986); Faust (1959); Harkins and Petty (1982); Laughlin et al. (2006); and
Shaw and Ashton (1976)). In all these experiments, there seems to have been some process in the
group whereby group members have been able to facilitate each other’s performance. Also, in these
experiments, the group task was often cognitively quite challenging, and there was the possibility of
amending, checking, or adding to the partial solutions afforded by others.
People can also be encouraged to surpass their individual efforts if they perceive that their coworker
in the joint task is, for some reason, less able than them to perform effectively. In such cases, peo-
ple may feel they have to compensate for their collaborator in order for the group to do well. Once
again, for such social compensation to occur, it is important that the group members perceive the task
to be sufficiently significant for them to care about the group outcome. Williams and Karau (1991)
showed this with a brainstorming task which, for half the participants, was made out to be an impor-
tant cognitive task which was related to intelligence; the remainder, on the other hand, were led to
believe (somewhat more veridically!) that it was a rather trivial task, and no mention was made of
any association with intelligence. These different perceptions were bolstered by the verbal and non-
verbal behaviour of the experimental assistants running the study. In addition, half the participants
undertook the task with someone (actually a confederate of the experimenter) who professed to being
‘not very good’ or ‘really good’ at brainstorming tasks. In these ways, both task meaningfulness and
partner ability were manipulated. Then, in the usual way, half the participants performed the task
under ‘co-action’ conditions in which the ideas of each person generated were to be separately iden-
tifiable; the rest worked collectively, simply pooling their ideas. The results showed that for those in
the non-meaningful task condition social loafing was the order of the day, regardless of their partner’s
perceived ability, but when the task was made to seem important, those who were teamed up with
a ‘low ability’ person worked significantly harder in the collective task condition than in the mere
coaction condition.
The compensation observed by Williams and Karau (1991) was by the ‘superior’ group member;
he or she worked hard to ‘make up for’ the apparent deficiencies of the partner. However, it is also
possible that some kinds of tasks – particularly those involving physical persistence – the ‘less able’
co-workers may raise their output to the level of the highest performer provided that level is not
too discrepant from their own. Underlying this upward movement of the lower performers could
be a social comparison process (Stroebe et al. 1996). Recall from Chapter 3 that Festinger (1954)
speculated that there are pressures for uniformity in a group – in both opinion and ability – and that
there is also a unidirectional drive upwards in most groups. Thus, lower-ability group members may
be motivated to match the performance of their slightly superior peers, with a resultant increase in
the overall group output. Where group members are too different in ability, or too similar, this upward
matching is less likely to occur.
Let us return to the Köhler experiments with which we started this section. First, we should note
that the social labouring observed by Köhler is clearly a genuine effect since it has been replicated
several times since (e.g. Hertel et al. 2000; Hüffmeier and Hertel 2011; Messé et al. 2002; Osborn et al.
2012; Stroebe et al. 1996; Weber and Hertel 2007). Perhaps the most systematic modern investigation
into the Köhler effect (as it is sometimes known) has been conducted by Hertel et al. (2000; Messé
et al. 2002). They devised a task which was conceptually, if not exactly, equivalent to the one used
by Köhler. Participants had to hold a heavy metal bar just above an electric trip switch for as long as
they could. They did this alone and also with another person (the bar weighed twice as much in the
group [dyadic] task). In either case, as soon as someone could no longer support the weight (either
on their own or as a member of a pair), it dropped onto the trip switch and the trial was over. By
comparing the persistence of the weakest member of the pair when working alone with when she/he
worked with someone else, one obtains a measure of social labouring (or loafing). To heighten group
identification, the participants were initially divided into six-person teams and these teams had to try
to outperform the other teams in persistence (summing the individual and group persistence times
within each team). Across four experiments with various procedural variations, social labouring was
consistently observed: the weaker members of the dyads persisted for anywhere between 10% and
35% longer when performing with a fellow team member than when they did it alone.
Initial attempts to confirm Köhler’s hypothesis that such social labouring would be maximal when
the members of the dyad were somewhat similar in strength were unsuccessful (Hertel et al. 2000).
The weaker participants seemed to benefit from co-working irrespective of the differences between
them and their partner. However, this may have been because they were unaware of their partner’s
strength, unlike Köhler’s rowers who would have been very familiar with each other. When Messé
et al. (2002) took steps to make the members of each dyad aware of how each had performed individ-
ually then, indeed, the maximum social labouring occurred when there was a moderate discrepancy
between their two baseline scores (see Figure 5.2). Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that some labouring
occurred at all levels of partner discrepancy.
Such social compensation has important practical implications for education. It suggests that if
learning tasks are organised into co-operative activities where several students are interdependent
on one another for the achievement of a group goal, then a mix of abilities within that learning group
may not be detrimental for effective performance. This might be particularly useful where students
with learning disabilities are being integrated into mainstream schools, since it will allow them to
participate more fully in the normal classroom activity instead of always being segregated into special
classes. There is some evidence that such group learning techniques can benefit both mainstream
children and those with disabilities (Armstrong et al. 1981).
The second body of evidence which challenges the ‘group deficit’ perspectives on group perfor-
mance comes from research which has examined the effects of making the task group more salient
for its members. Note that the bulk of studies which have found performance losses have employed
groups which were purely ad hoc affairs (in Karau and Williams’ 1993 meta-analysis, only about 5%
of the studies they examined used groups of high importance to their members). Typically, there
is little or no interaction amongst the group members, there is no expectation of any future inter-
action as a group, and often there is no explicit group goal to try to attain. The absence of all
these factors means that there is little possibility that the members of the groups will develop any
180
Conjunctive difference score (CDS)
–180
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
Absolute difference score (ADS)
Figure 5.2 Motivation gains (the Köhler effect) as a function of partner discrepancy. Source: Messé et al. (2002), figure
2. Scores above zero indicate social loafing. Reprinted with permission of the American Psychological Association.
identification with them. In other words, psychologically speaking, most group performance studies
have used physical aggregates rather than meaningful social groups.
Why might this neglect be important? One answer comes from social identity theory (Tajfel and
Turner 1986). As we saw in Chapter 1, social identity theory assumes that a significant part of people’s
self-conceptions – their sense of who they are and what they are worth – derives from their group
memberships. Moreover, the social standing of these groups – how well they seem to be doing – is
reflected in people’s self-evaluations. Since people are thought generally to prefer a positive rather
than a negative view of themselves, this means that they will be motivated to find ways of enhancing
their ingroup’s status. Thus, it should mean that they will work harder on behalf of their ingroup if,
by so doing, they can improve the position of that group relative to others.
The first intimation that this might be so came from an experiment by Harkins and Szymanski
(1989). Using the by-now-familiar brainstorming task, they compared the performance of those who
believed that their individual output would be monitored with those who thought that only the pooled
group output was of interest. Crossed with this manipulation was the presence or absence of some
comparison standard. Half the participants were told that their performance would be compared
against some criterion – either the average of ‘other individuals’ or the average of ‘other groups’ –
whilst for the remainder no comparison was mentioned. The performance of the pooled group who
believed they were to be compared with other groups was particularly interesting. According to social
identity theory, such an explicit intergroup contrast should have heightened their (albeit mild) iden-
tification with their task group and motivate them to work harder for it. So it transpired: the out-
put from these participants was the highest of all the conditions, even slightly (if not significantly)
higher than the condition that social impact theory would have predicted would be most antitheti-
cal to social loafing (i.e. individual scores with an inter-individual comparison) (see also, James and
Greenberg (1989)).
6 Uniform
Social labouring
No uniform
4
Change from individual productivity
–2
Social loafing
–4
–6
Other group present No other group present
Figure 5.3 Mean difference in productivity change as a function of presence of an outgroup and wearing a group
uniform. Source: Worchel et al. (1998), figure 3. Reprinted with permission of the John Wiley and Sons.
Other findings underlining the importance of social identity on performance soon emerged. Per-
haps the clearest came from an experiment by Worchel et al. (1998). In this study, everyone first
worked on an individual task (in this case, making paper chains) which provided a baseline against
which to measure their performance on the same task when they worked as a group. Half the par-
ticipants worked on their group task in the presence of another group which, it was assumed, would
heighten ingroup identification; the remainder worked only with their ingroup. In addition, for half
the participants, the salience of the group identity was heightened by giving the group(s) a name
and having all the members of the ingroup wear the same coloured laboratory coat which, in the
‘outgroup present’ condition, was a different colour from that worn by the outgroup. The remaining
participants simply all wore different coloured coats. The results were clear-cut: people worked con-
sistently harder when there was an outgroup present, and they worked hardest of all when they were
all wearing the same uniform but different from the outgroup (see Figure 5.3). The pattern of results
was particularly intriguing since there was clear evidence of social labouring (i.e. increments over the
individual performance baseline) in a group task where no individual output was monitorable and
where the group members were least identifiable (because they were all wearing the same coloured
coats) (see also, Karau and Hart 1998). This is directly contrary to what social impact theory (and
other individualistic accounts – e.g. Baumeister et al. 2015) would have predicted.
22.2
22
21.8
Performance (s)
First ranked
21.6
Second ranked
21.4 Third ranked
Fourth ranked
21.2
21
Individual Prelims Finals
Task type
Figure 5.4 Swimming in teams improves performance. Source: Osborn et al. (2012), figure 1. Reprinted with
permission of the American Psychological Association.
If a strong group identity is conducive to social labouring effects, then presumably such effects
should be easy to observe among real-life sports teams where the strength of identification will typ-
ically be higher than in your average artificial laboratory group. This certainly seems to be the case.
Archival evidence from sports relay teams consistently finds that the same athletes perform better
in team events than they do in individual contests. Hüffmeier and Hertel (2011) studied the perfor-
mance records of swimmers in the 2008 Olympics. They found that the swimmers generally swam
faster when they were part of a relay team than they did in individual events. This was particularly
so for swimmers in the second, third, and fourth positions in the relay, perhaps because they saw
their contributions to the team’s performance as more indispensable than those in the lead-off posi-
tion. Osborn et al. (2012) observed similar Köhler effects among college swimmers, but especially
among the weaker swimmers in each team: they swam between 0.20 and 0.80 seconds faster in the
relay finals than they had been able to do alone (see Figure 5.4) (see also, Tauer and Harackiewicz’
(2004) experiment with basket-ball players).
The third challenge to the assumption that group work inevitably involves some performance loss
comes from cross-cultural psychology. As Henrich et al. (2010) warn, the fact that the vast majority
of social psychological research findings emanate from studies on Western, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich, and Democratic countries – so called ‘WEIRD’ people – should lead us to be cautious about
assuming that they are universally applicable. This warning is as apt for group performance research
as it is for other fields; in Karau and Williams’ (1993) comprehensive review, only 10% of the data set
involved non-Western participants. This cultural imbalance may be particularly important because it
coincides with a difference in value systems which has crucial implications for comparisons of individ-
ual and group productivity. It is well known that many Eastern cultures place considerable emphasis
on collectivist values (Hofstede 1980; Triandis 1995). People in such collectivist cultures tend to feel
very attached to their various ingroups (e.g. family, workgroup, village), define their aspirations and
achievements in terms of these groups’ outcomes, and hence to adopt a cooperative attitude to other
ingroup members. In contrast, as we know, people in individualist cultures usually wish to preserve at
least some independence from the group, are inclined to pursue their own individual goals, often by
competing with others. The implications of this collectivism–individualism distinction for working
in group settings seem clear: insofar as the group has a well-defined task goal, this is more likely to
be internalised and acted upon by collectivists than individualists, with the result that performance
decrements for the former (due to social loafing) should be the exception rather than the rule.
The evidence certainly seems to point that way. Matsui et al. (1987) asked individual and pairs of
Japanese students to set themselves a performance goal for a simple number cancellation task, in
which participants are asking to cross out a specific digit each time it appears within a long list of
numbers. They then performed the task under conditions in which the best individuals (or pairs)
would be rewarded. The output per person from the pairs was significantly higher than that of the
individuals. Studies which have directly compared individual and group productivity across cultures
have underlined the role of collectivism-individualism in affecting group performance. In two stud-
ies, Earley (1989, 1993), using a more realistic office simulation task, found that managers and trainee
managers in Israel and the People’s Republic of China (two collectivist societies) worked harder in
groups than they did alone; American managers, on the other hand, showed the usual social loaf-
ing effect. In the second of these studies, Earley (1993) included an additional group manipulation:
whether the group with whom the participants believed they were working was from the same region
as them and had many shared interests or was from a different region with whom they had little in
common. This ‘ingroup’–‘outgroup’ manipulation had a marked effect in the two collectivist samples
(China and Israel), with people working reliably less hard in the ‘outgroup’ condition; in the more
individualist American sample, the same manipulation had no effect at all (see Figure 5.5; see also
Erez and Somech (1996)).
30 Task condition:
Individual
Ingroup
Outgroup
25
20
Performance
15
10
0
China Israel United States
[Mean collectivism = 3.6 3.7 2.7 ]
Country of origin
Figure 5.5 Social laboring and loafing in collectivist and individualist societies. Source: Earley (1993, adapted from
table 5). Reproduced with permission of AMR.
In summary, then, as social psychologists have widened the scope of their investigations to include
more complex tasks, or to involve groups with more significance for their members, or to study people
in cultures with a collectivist orientation, it has become apparent that deficits in group performance
and motivation are by no means inevitable. When what we are doing and who we are doing it with
matter enough to us, we will work harder for our groups than we will ever do on our own. As we
have had occasion to observe more than once in this book, social identity processes and the cul-
tural context in which they play out are crucial for a proper understanding of how people behave in
groups.
Group Decision-Making
Most of the tasks with which we have been concerned so far in this chapter have been ones for which
there is some well-defined outcome: performance was measured as the ability to solve some logical
puzzle, correctly recall some material, or produce as large an output as possible. But many tasks which
groups undertake in everyday life are not at all like this. Consider a family deciding where to go on
holiday this year, a group of students trying to choose a topic for a cooperative learning project, or
a jury attempting to reach a verdict in a court case. In all these (and countless other) examples of
collective decision-making, there is no one objectively verifiable answer or unequivocal optimum
performance. Rather, what the groups are faced with is making a choice amongst various options,
each of which may have some subjectively perceived merit. Thus, in studying group judgements of
this kind, the question is not, as it was in the last section, ‘are individuals or groups superior?’, but
the more general problem, ‘what is the relationship between individual opinions and the consensual
view expressed by the group?’ Having once established that relationship, we can then investigate the
social psychological processes that might underlie it.
Modeling Group Decisions: Social Decision Schemes Theory

In several of the comparisons between actual and potential productivity in the Section “Group
Productivity,” we made use of a simple mathematical model to predict the potential productivity
(e.g. assume group can solve a problem if at least one member can; calculate the probability of find-
ing such a person in the group). When actual productivity failed to match this, the presumption was
that some factor had interfered with the operation of this ‘ideal’ model. Usually we are only able to
guess what that factor might be and hence speculate about the actual process by which the group
arrived at its answer. This imprecision, though undesirable, is understandable. Direct observation
of groups at work can be difficult and often produces quite complex data which may be difficult to
interpret. A way round this difficulty has been proposed by Davis and a number of others (Davis
1973; Laughlin 1980; Stasser et al. 1989). Essentially, the method used by these theorists is to con-
duct a number of ‘thought experiments’ in which one imagines all the various ways groups might
approach making a particular decision. These are formulated mathematically as different ‘decision
rule’ models. One then feeds into these models some assumptions about the abilities or dispositions
of people to make the decision. These may be hypothetical or they may be based on some previously
collected data on the distribution of individual abilities or opinions. Through the application of some
quite complex mathematical techniques, one then computes the probable outcomes from the differ-
ent models. These hypothetical outcomes are compared to the actual results from some real sample
Table 5.2 Hypothetical possibilities of group solution under different decision rules
Type of group composition
Y1 Y1 Y1 Y1 Y1 Y1 Y2 Y2 Y2 Y3 Theoretical
probabilities of
Y1 Y1 Y1 Y2 Y2 Y3 Y2 Y2 Y3 Y3
reaching correct
Type of decision rule Y1 Y2 Y3 Y2 Y3 Y3 Y2 Y3 Y3 Y3 solution
Truth wins (TW) + + + + + + − − − − 0.6

Majority rule (M) + + + + + − − − − − 0.5
Unanimous verdict (UV) + + − + − − − − − − 0.3
+: Group solves problem.

−: Group fails to solve problem.
of groups. The decision model which best ‘fits’ the observed pattern of data is then presumed to be
the one which the groups used.
A very simple example will help to illustrate how this modelling paradigm works. The actual models
and techniques used by social decision scheme theorists are actually far more complex than this,
but the basic principles are not too dissimilar. Imagine a three-person group attempting to reach a
decision on a problem with a right/wrong answer. Suppose, for the sake of argument, there are three
types of person in the world: people who are able to solve the problem (Y1 ), people who cannot solve it
but who can recognise the correct solution when they see it (Y2 ), and people who can neither solve it
nor recognise the correct solution (Y3 ). There are, of course, many other types of person imaginable.
What are the various combinations of these three types of person that could occur in a three-person
group? There are ten combinations in all, as shown in the column headings to Table 5.2.
Now think of various ways that the group might come to a decision about the solution of the prob-
lem. Let us take three common rules which operate in groups (again, others are possible): Truth wins
(TW) (i.e. a demonstrably correct solution will always prevail), majority rule (M) (i.e. a majority has
to agree on the solution) and unanimous verdict (UV) (i.e. everyone must agree on the solution).
Then determine whether each of the 10 permutations of group members could or could not solve the
problem under each of the three decision rules which we have supposed might be operating. These
are indicated by a plus or minus sign in Table 5.2. We then have to make some assumptions about
the distribution of our three types of people in the population, and also about the likely composition
of our groups. To keep matters simple, we have assumed for this example that the three types are
equally distributed throughout the population and also that the groups have been randomly formed.
This implies that each of the 10 group compositions will occur equally often. Again, we do not need
to make such (probably rather unrealistic) assumptions, but other hypothetical distributions would
complicate the example undesirably. It is now a simple matter to compute the theoretically predicted
probabilities of reaching a solution under each of the decision rules. (For TW six out of the ten
permutations, solve the problem so the probability is 0.6, and so on.) Notice that at this stage, we
have not actually observed a single live group in action. It is only now that we go out and conduct
the experiment with randomly formed groups of three persons. Suppose we employ 100 groups and
observe that 59 of them are able to solve the problem. This gives us an ‘observed’ probability of solu-
tion of 0.59. The decision rule which produced the hypothetical probability closest to this figure was
TW (=0.6), and so we conclude that this is the group process which governs the solution to this
particular problem.
One of the first attempts to use this modelling approach was by Davis and Restle (1963). They were
interested to discover how groups went about solving logical problems which contained a number
of steps. The two most likely models, they believed, were a hierarchical one in which the most able
members dominate the group and the less competent ones are excluded, and an equalitarian model in
which all members interact more or less equally, whether or not they are contributing effectively. The
results strongly supported the second model: the observed data were very close to those predicted
mathematically by the equalitarian process model, and the observational and sociometric data which
were also collected seemed to support this too. What this experiment seemed to show, therefore, was
that reason and logic do not always prevail in problem-solving groups.
This conclusion is reinforced by a series of modelling experiments by Laughlin (1980). In these
experiments, usually six or more hypothetical decision schemes were tested against the results from
actual problem-solving groups. For the kind of intellectual tasks we have been considering, one deci-
sion scheme consistently seemed to provide the closest fit with the observed data. That is what
Laughlin calls the ‘truth supported wins’ model. In other words, the right answer will prevail in a
group only if at least two members advocate it. In the three-person group of our very simple example
in Table 5.2 this also corresponds to the majority rule model. A single person suggesting the right
answer (TW) is markedly less effective. The only exceptions to this conclusion seem to be for rather
small groups (of two or three people) tackling difficult problems. Here, the TW model seems to apply
rather better (Egerbladh 1981).
However, once one moves away from decision-making tasks where there is a demonstrably cor-
rect answer, then the decision rule which seems to prevail is some kind of majority verdict (Laughlin
1996). For example, Davis et al. (1974) asked individuals and groups to rate the attractiveness of vari-
ous monetary bets in which the probability of winning was varied systematically. Although the groups
were instructed to reach a unanimous decision (and many of the groups believed that this was what
they had actually done), the hypothetical decision scheme which best fitted the actual data was a
majority rule, i.e. the group went along with the bet advocated by most of the group. Majority deci-
sions also seem to characterise other group judgements involving the expression of some collective
attitude and decisions made by juries (e.g. Davis 1992; Davis et al. 1975; Kerr et al. 1975).
The Quality of Decision-Making Process

So far we have said little about the quality of group decisions. This is because if we think simply in
terms of outcomes, we usually do not have any straightforward criteria against which to measure
quality. Who knows whether an appointment committee offered the job to the best candidate or
whether the jury returned the ‘true’ verdict? However, if outcomes are difficult to assess, perhaps it
is possible to evaluate the decision-making process which led to those outcomes. According to one
influential theorist, it is (Janis 1982). Janis analysed a number of American foreign policy decisions
made between 1940 and 1980 and came to the conclusion that where these turned out ‘badly’ for the
decision-makers (i.e. where American interests were damaged), the decision process was marked by
five features. First, the group making the decision was very cohesive. Second, it was also typically insu-
lated from information outside the group. Third, the decision-makers rarely searched systematically
through alternative policy options to appraise their relative merits. Fourth, the group was often under
some stress caused by the need to reach a decision urgently. And last, but by no means least, the group
was nearly always dominated by a very directive leader. These five conditions, Janis believed, generate
strong conformity pressures in a group and it is these ‘concurrence seeking tendencies’ which lead to
defective decision-making, or what Janis called ‘groupthink’.
What are the symptoms of ‘groupthink’? Janis lists several: first, a very cohesive group is likely to
exert pressures on dissenters to conform to the consensus view. Some of this pressure may be implicit,
but often the leader or other members of the group will take it upon themselves to bring the deviates
into line and reject them if they do not do so (see Chapter 3). Arising out of this pressure towards
uniformity is the second ‘groupthink’ symptom: an illusion of unanimity and correctness. As seen in
Chapter 3, other people often provide very powerful sources of reality construction. If they all give the
appearance of total agreement on some issue, then we may be misled to the conclusion that this view
is the only valid one. Such a state of mind is likely to inhibit any creative search for other opinions and
even to lead to a positive rejection of those opinions and a ridiculing of their sources. Since some of
these may emanate from outside the group, a third symptom of ‘groupthink’ is a negative stereotyping
of outgroups. This is particularly likely to occur in political decision-making which is nearly always
conducted in a conflictual intergroup context. As we shall see in Chapter 7, a common consequence
of intergroup conflict is derogation of the outgroup and a glorification of the ingroup.
The picture which Janis (1982) painted, therefore, is of a tightly knit group, isolated from outside
influences, converging rapidly onto a normatively ‘correct’ point of view and thereafter being con-
vinced both of its own rectitude and of the inferiority of all other competing opinions (or groups).
He argued that such a set of symptoms is almost exactly the opposite of what should characterise
good decision-making process (namely, the rational weighing of possible options in the light of all
the available evidence), and hence where they occur one should expect the outcomes to be less than
ideal.
Janis (1982) presented evidence from such American misadventures as the attempted invasion of
Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the bombing of North Vietnam in 1965, and the Watergate scandal
in 1973 which indicates that in each of these events ‘groupthink’ may have occurred amongst key
decision-makers. Nor is it just American governments who seem to be liable to ‘groupthink’. Consider
the following description of decision-making in the British Cabinet during Mrs Thatcher’s period as
prime minister:
It is January 1984. The place is No. 10. The forum is the Cabinet’s Overseas and Defence Com-
mittee. The subject is the possibility of an attempt to normalize relations with Argentina … Sir
Geoffrey Howe is four minutes into the Foreign Office paper on the need to open exploratory
talks with the Alfonsin Government. Mrs. Thatcher cuts in, ‘Geoffrey, I know what you’re going
to recommend. And the answer is “No!.
End of item: nobody argues with the boss”.
(anonymous source quoted in Hennessy 1986, p. 99)
Janis (1982) contrasted various fiascos, which he believed were preceded by ‘groupthink’, with other
events in which he believed the groups engaged in vigilant decision-making. In these instances, appar-
ently, the leader adopted a more neutral role, encouraged the expression of minority viewpoints, and
even appointed independent experts or devil’s advocates whose job was to provide a critical appraisal
of the group’s currently preferred decision. One of the best examples of this, in Janis’ view, was the
Cuban missile crisis of 1962 where President Kennedy and his advisors engaged in some brinkman-
ship diplomacy with the Soviet Union over the siting of missiles in Cuba. This was a particularly
interesting case since it involved the same group of officials which had perpetrated the Bay of Pigs
fiasco a year earlier. But from published accounts of the second crisis it seems that Kennedy took
active steps to avoid the blinkered vision which had led to the earlier disaster.
For his evidence, Janis relied almost exclusively on historical material, usually eye-witness accounts
by participants (see also, Kramer 1998 and Tetlock et al. 1992). What about findings from experi-
mental and field studies of decision-making groups? Flowers (1977) created groups of high and low
cohesiveness with leaders who had been trained to use either a non-directive participative style or
a directive and task-orientated approach. The groups were asked to role-play a committee of school
administrators facing a delicate but urgent personnel problem. An analysis of committee delibera-
tions showed that, contrary to Janis’ hypothesis, the level of cohesiveness had no effect on either the
number of different solutions proposed or the number of facts considered in reaching a decision. The
leadership style, on the other hand, was influential. More solutions were produced and more infor-
mation was considered with the open, non-directive leaders than with the more directive kind (see
also, Fodor and Smith (1982)). In fact, experiments showing deleterious effects for group cohesion
on decision-making quality are quite rare and even then additional factors – for example some threat
to the group’s identity – may need to be present (Turner et al. 1992).
The importance of the leader and the relative unimportance of cohesiveness has been confirmed in
field studies of naturally functioning groups. Vinokur et al. (1985) studied the process and outcome
of National Institute of Health conferences in which a panel of experts and consumers meet to eval-
uate new medical technologies. From the participants of six such conferences, Vinokur et al. (1985)
obtained various measures of the decision-making process, ratings of the chairperson, assessments of
the amount and quality of information exchanged and, lastly, the outcome measure: an evaluation of
the quality of the final policy statements. Consistent with Janis’ theory, the researchers found that one
of the variables most highly correlated with the quality of outcome was that dealing with the facilita-
tive role played by the chairperson in encouraging full participation amongst the experts. However,
contrary to Janis’ theory, cohesiveness was a much less predictive variable and, if anything, was also
positively correlated with the quality of decision (where Janis predicts the reverse). Similarly, Choi and
Kim (1999), when asking employees to recollect a crisis event that their team had faced, found that
group identity factors tended to be negatively related to perceptions of defective decision-making,
while concurrence-seeking was positively related, as Janis would have predicted.
We have dwelt at some length on the potential hazards of collective decision-making. How can
these be avoided? Clearly, the answer is not simply to leave all important decisions to a single indi-
vidual. Leaving aside the ethical and political difficulties in delegating such powers to one person,
there are several practical disadvantages to such a solution. First, as we saw earlier in this chap-
ter, any problem of even moderate complexity is likely to prove more than can be handled by one
person’s cognitive capacity; some division of labor is essential in most important decisions. Allied to
this are the benefits that accrue from the pooling of ideas, information, and experience which, as we
saw earlier, can lend groups an advantage even if they do not always fully exploit it. The combining of
individual ideas may also lead to a cancelling out of idiosyncratic biases and prejudices which, if left
unchecked in any individual decision-maker, must surely be detrimental. Finally, as we showed ear-
lier, there are potential motivational gains from the cohesion and identification provided by a group
which are not available to a lone individual. The question is not, therefore, how can we dispense with
group decision-making, but how can we capitalise on its advantages while minimising its defects?
The key to answering this question lies in devices and procedures which maximise the effective par-
ticipation of all group members to ensure greatest exposure of relevant ideas and information. Three
factors seem to be particularly important. The first, as correctly noted by Janis (1982), concerns the
style adopted by the leader. As we have just noted, there is ample evidence that a leader who is too
directive, who promotes his or her own point of view too forcefully and discourages the expression
of alternative opinion and criticism is liable to be detrimental to effective decision-making. By impli-
cation, therefore, leaders should adopt an approach which is opposite of this. However, two qualifi-
cations should be added. One is that, as we saw, the most appropriate leadership style may depend
somewhat on the situation confronting the group. So, while there may be some generic advantages
associated with a more participative style of leadership, there can be circumstances when a more
directive approach is called for. Secondly, it is important to distinguish between directiveness which
is associated with outcomes (i.e. the leader attempting to achieve his/her particular goal), and that
which is associated with the group process (i.e. ensuring that everyone in the group is able to have
their say). Peterson (1997) showed that these two kinds of directiveness have very different conse-
quences for the quality of the subsequent group decision. After many years of chairing trade union
meetings and university committees, one of us (Rupert) cannot but agree. Sometimes, a firm hand is
needed to deal with one’s more unruly colleagues to ensure that they do not drown out the contribu-
tions of the shyer members of the group.
A second factor relevant to effective group decision-making is the cohesiveness of the group. It
clearly is not the case, as Janis (1982) had surmised, that cohesion leads to poor decision-making.
Indeed, all the evidence suggests that it is either unrelated to decision quality or may even be associ-
ated with better decision process (Courtright 1978; Moorehead and Montanari 1986). And surely this
makes sense: are not group members more likely to feel comfortable about expressing their views if
the group is cohesive than if it is loose-knit and fragmented? If cohesiveness plays any role perhaps
it is, as Steiner (1982) suggested, more in the desire for it than its actual presence. Maybe it is only
when groups are desperately seeking to manufacture unity that they become prey to the concurrence
seeking defects that Janis identified; having once achieved it, the pressure for unanimity will be more
than outweighed by the security it provides to allow criticism and dissent.
Third, and probably most importantly, groups need to find ways to reduce the tendency for non-
shared information to remain hidden. Research following Stasser and Titus’ (1985) discovery of this
pluralistic ignorance phenomenon has provided some helpful pointers. One useful idea is suggested
by Postmes et al. (2001). They speculated that an important characteristic of successful decision-
making groups is that they cultivate norms in which critical thought and comment is encouraged.
In two experiments using the Stasser and Titus (1985) ‘hidden profile’ paradigm (described in Chap-
ter 3), Postmes and his colleagues found that groups in which critical thought was the norm had a
markedly better chance of choosing the objectively better qualified candidate than had groups where
arriving at consensus was the order of the day. In addition to encouraging criticism, it may be useful to
comprise decision-making committees with people with a range of (dissenting) voices. Schulz-Hardt
et al. (2006) found that heterogeneous groups (based on initial preferences) tended to make better
decisions than homogenous groups, so long as at least one of the dissenters was an advocate for the
‘correct’ solution. However, useful though such opinion diversity is for improving decision-making,
it is probably best for committee members not to reveal their initial candidate preferences too early
in the proceedings. This because, when it happens, the discussion tends to get fixated on the relative
merits of the candidates, with the usual biases associated with ‘hidden profiles’, rather than expos-
ing and considering all the relevant information. In four experiments, Mojzisch and Schulz-Hardt
(2010) found clear evidence of the dangers of too premature candidate ranking. Personnel selection
committees be warned.
Another useful technique is to explicitly assign different roles to the various members of the
decision-making group and to ensure that everyone is aware of this division of labour and exper-
tise. Stasser et al. (1995), using a mock homicide investigation in which several critical clues were
distributed amongst the members of the ‘investigation team’, found that when the group members
had been informed of the fact that each of them possessed unique information they were much more
likely to discover the culprit than when they were not so reminded. In fact, such ‘role assigned’ groups
did almost as well as control groups in which members shared all the information.
Groups can be Good for You

Groups frequently get a bad press. Whether it be the pub bore holding forth about some item in
the day’s news or a journalist hurriedly filing copy to explain a particularly lurid instance of group
behaviour, one hears a lot of talk of ‘herd instinct’, ‘mob rule’, or ‘mindless conformity’. Behavioural
scientists are hardly kinder to groups, as we have already had occasion to report in the pages of this
book: when people get together in groups, they are said to be liable to ‘deindividuation’ (Zimbardo
1969), ‘groupthink’ (Janis 1982), or ‘social loafing’ (Latané et al. 1979). Indeed, one commentator went
so far as to suggest, only half in jest, that ‘humans would do better without groups’ (Buys 1978). In
this section, we want to propose a counterweight to this ‘groups are bad for you’ thesis. Drawing on
a large body of evidence, we will show that, in fact, very often people actually do better with groups,
in direct contradiction to Buys’ provocative claim.
Much of the credit for this alternative view must go to Jetten et al. (2012) who have instigated an
impressive body of research examining what they call The social cure (see also, Haslam et al. 2018).
Their general argument is that our group memberships, and especially the accompanying social iden-
tities, are an important resource for protecting us against, or helping us to cope with, the challenges
of everyday life. There are several ways groups can do this: they can be an important source of social
support, both practical and emotional; they may make us feel better about ourselves, more able to
control our own destinies; and they may provide normative climates which can act as a motivational
spur for higher achievement.
We will organise our discussion of the benefits of groups in two sections, the first dealing with
collective sources of resilience in the face of adversity, the second covering the health and well-being
advantages of a greater engagement with groups.
Resilience
When we talk of people being resilient we normally mean their capacity to respond effectively or to
adapt well to some adverse event or ongoing stressful situation (Norris et al. 2008). It is common for
resilience to be thought of in individual terms – someone may be described as a ‘resilient person’,
usually meaning that we believe that they have sufficient internal capabilities to cope with whatever
challenges might come their way (Bonanno 2004). However, in recent years, the concept of resilience
has been broadened to encompass more collective forms (Drury 2012). Collective resilience might
mean the ability of a community as a whole to withstand some external threat (Norris et al. 2008)
or, as we shall use it here, how individuals can derive strength from their identification with a group
(Drury 2012). As we shall see, there is mounting evidence that groups can be important for people in
helping them to confront a wide variety of challenges in their lives.
Picture the scene: 2 million people are packed into an area of less than 90 acres, approximately
equivalent to 70 football pitches. The crowding is so dense that anywhere between four and six people
occupy each square metre of ground. Or another: 50 million people are camping beside a particular
stretch of river in Northern India. It is very hot by day and freezing cold at night. The noise is contin-
uous and intense, averaging around 80 dB (many international health and safety regulations have this
as a maximum permitted level in a work environment). We suspect that many of our readers would
find such situations more than a little intimidating, if not downright oppressive. If asked, they would
probably predict that such gatherings would be rather fractious affairs – too many hot and bothered
people packed too closely together. Yet, the surprising thing is that overcrowding incidents or acci-
dents at these events are the exception rather than the norm, at least according to social psychologists
who have studied them (Alnabulsi and Drury 2014; Tewari et al. 2012).
One reason why people in these massive crowds seem to be able to cope with such unpleasant
circumstances is that they are all there for a particular purpose, and they all share a common iden-
tity. The first example above is a description of the annual Hajj at Mecca, an important pilgrimage
for Muslims to make at least once in their lifetime. The second is the Mela, attended by millions of
Hindus every year. In both cases, the participants’ religious identity is the primary reason for them
being there. Once they are there, another more immediate identity may develop, an identification
with the particular group of pilgrims on that day. Quite probably, it is these identities which pro-
vide the pilgrims with the resilience to cope with situations that most of us would find unbearably
stressful.
Alnabulsi and Drury (2014) arranged for over 1000 Muslims to be interviewed at the 2012 Hajj.
Each respondent was asked questions about their feelings of personal safety (the primary dependent
measure), their identification with Muslims in general and with this particular crowd of Muslims, and
their perceptions of support from their fellow pilgrims. After each interview, the research assistant
estimated the crowd density around the respondent (number of people per square metre). One might
have thought that the latter variable would have been correlated with people’s feelings of safety –
people in more crowded spots might feel less safe. In fact, that correlation was very weak. Much
more powerful predictors of safety were the identification variables, especially the level of identi-
fication with the crowd. It also turned out that this crowd identification affected the link between
crowd density and feelings of safety: for low identifiers, that link was negative – higher density was
associated with feeling less safe – but for high identifiers, the correlation reversed – for them, the
more crowded they were, the safer they felt. One further result shed some light on why identification
seemed to ‘protect’ the pilgrims from the otherwise aversive crowd environment. The link between
crowd identification and feelings of safety was partially mediated (explained) by perceptions of sup-
port from other pilgrims. The more strongly respondents identified, the more support they saw from
others, and the safer they felt.
Identity processes also seem to be at work at the Mela. Khan et al. (2015) conducted a longitudi-
nal study of several hundred Kalparasi pilgrims (those who stay at the Mela for its whole one month
duration). They interviewed the pilgrims a month before the Mela, during it, and a month after, ask-
ing questions about their physical health, their identification as Kalparasis, and their expectations
that other pilgrims would behave towards them in an understanding and supportive manner (what
the researchers called ‘relationality’). Social identification before the Mela predicted levels of self-
assessed health both during and after it, an association which was mediated by relationality, just as
Alnabulsi and Drury (2014) had observed in Mecca. In fact, the whole experience of attending the
Mela seems to have been an uplifting one, notwithstanding the physical privations that it entailed.
3.8 T1 T2
3.6
3.4
Well-being (reported)
3.2
2.8
2.6
2.4
2.2
2
Kalpwasis Controls
Figure 5.6 Well-being of religious pilgrims (Kalwasis) and a Control group (nonattendees) before and after a Mela
festival. Source: Tewari et al. (2012), figure 2. Reprinted with permission of PLoS1.
Tewari et al. (2012) compared the well-being of pilgrims before and after the Mela, with an approxi-
mately matched control group of non-attendees. The well-being of the pilgrims went up whilst there
was little change in the control group (see Figure 5.6).
Participants at these religious gatherings are likely to be people who already feel a sense of commit-
ment to the groups involved, and who willingly undergo the hardships of pilgrimage as a matter of
choice. However, the protective role of social identity also operates in emergency situations, in which
a shared social identity can emerge suddenly among people who previously had little connection to
one another, leading them to support each other to overcome the threat they are facing (Drury et al.
2009a, 2009b; Drury et al. 2015). We will return to consider this kind of situation in more detail in
Chapter 6.
Let us now consider a very different form of collective resilience, the capacity of groups to deal with
alcohol intoxication. It is a commonplace that when we drink (too much) alcohol our decision-making
is impaired. Since much drinking is done socially – in pubs, clubs or around the dinner table – it is
worth asking how group decision-making is affected by the consumption of alcohol. An early attempt
to answer this question was by Sayette et al. (2004). They asked men in groups of three to make a quick
decision involving a small degree of risk: they had to choose whether or not to toss a coin; if they chose
not to, they would be required to spend a further 30 minutes completing some questionnaires; but
if they chose to toss a coin, they might get away with no additional task or they might have to spend
fully 60 minutes on the questionnaire – double or quits, in other words. Prior to this decision, they
had all been given something to drink. Half the groups had drunk a large slug of vodka and cranberry
juice, the remainder had drunk a similarly tasting non-alcoholic drink. The results were clear: only
one of the groups in the latter condition chose the coin-toss option, while two-thirds in the alcohol
condition did so. In other words, alcohol seem to make the groups behave in a riskier fashion, perhaps
as commonsense might have predicted.
But common sense is not always right. Subsequent research directly comparing more involving
decisions made by individuals and groups under the influence of alcohol has painted a very different
picture. Abrams et al. (2006) asked individuals and groups of four to engage in a complex betting
task over a series of trials, either sober or after having consumed enough vodka and orange to bring
them to 0.08% blood alcohol concentration. Unsurprisingly, the intoxicated individuals made riskier
bets as the trials proceeded, but the groups in the alcohol condition did not. Moreover, groups took
longer to make their decisions ‘under the influence’ than they did when sober. A follow-up study
conducted in the more naturalistic settings of bars and a music concert found something similar
(Hopthrow et al. 2014). They asked the participants – half of whom had been drinking, half of whom
had not – to respond to two choice dilemmas similar to those traditionally used in group polarisation
experiments (see Chapter 3). These particular dilemmas involved decisions about driving a car after
drinking, rather topical in the circumstances. They then had to respond to the same dilemmas in
groups of four to six. As usual, group polarisation occurred – everyones decision was moderately
cautious, but the groups were on average more cautious than the individuals. However, the effects of
alcohol were interesting: individual drinkers were inclined to be riskier than individual non-drinkers;
for groups, alcohol had the opposite effect. Put another way, one might say that being in a group
‘protected’ drinkers somewhat from making risky and, in this context, dangerous decisions about
getting behind the wheel of a car.
Groups also seem to provide people with physical and mental stamina. Jones and Jetten (2011)
studied members of Royal Air Force (RAF) winter sports teams at an ice training camp (e.g. bob-
sleigh, luge, and skeleton). They monitored the heart rates of these athletes during and after several
training sessions. Remarkably, the athletes’ recovery rate (post-heart rate–during heart rate) was cor-
related with the number of groups they reported belonging to: the greater the number, the quicker the
recovery. The researchers followed this up with an experimental study of people’s ability to withstand
intense cold. Student participants first thought of one, three, or five groups that were important to
them. They were then asked to put their hand in a bucket of iced-water and keep it there as long as
they could. Those in the ‘five group’ condition lasted fully 44 seconds, more than 20 seconds longer
than those in the ‘one group’ condition (Jones and Jetten 2011; Study 2).
Walton et al. (2012; Study 3) discovered that group memberships, even of a transitory kind, can
increase people’s cognitive persistence also. They first established university students’ baseline level
of interest in mathematics. This allowed the researchers to create ‘high’ and ‘low’ level of interest
groups. Half the students were then randomly assigned to a ‘puzzles group’ and this temporary group
identity was reinforced by giving its members the same colour sticker, contrasting it with another
group (with a different colour sticker), which was said to be focussing on physical coordination tasks.
The remaining participants were designated ‘puzzles persons’, and no mention of any groups was
made. The crucial measure was how long they persisted in trying to solve some insoluble maths
puzzles. Afterwards, they were also asked whether they would like to sign up for some additional
online leisure activities at a later date and, of course, some of these activities involved various puzzles.
For those with an initial interest in maths, putting them in a ‘puzzles group’ ensured that they stub-
bornly persisted at the intractable puzzles for three minutes longer than those who were described as
‘puzzles persons’. For those with less initial interest in maths, group membership had exactly the
opposite effect: they gave up three minutes sooner than the ‘puzzles persons’. It was as if the group
membership had exacerbated their original predilections, encouraging the puzzles geeks (high ini-
tial interest) but discouraging the rest. However, more interesting were the choices of the subsequent
online activities, typically made two days after the experiment. Those in the ‘puzzles group’ were more
likely to opt for puzzle activities than ‘puzzle persons’, irrespective of their baseline level of interest
in maths. Even this most tenuous group membership seemed to possess some motivational power.
Health and Well-being

We have seen, then, that group memberships, whether real or only cognitively evoked, seem to offer
people additional strength to cope with the challenges they may encounter. Although it is not yet clear
what the underlying processes are – a perception of expected or actual support may be one candi-
date – the evidence of these group benefits is now quite convincing. We turn now to another facet
of the ‘groups are good for you’ thesis: the hypothesis that people with multiple group memberships
are happier and healthier than people with few group affiliations.
Of course, it has been known for a long time that people with many social relationships tend to
have better physical and mental health than more solitary individuals (George et al. 1989; House
2001; House et al. 1988; Putnam 2000). The question we address here is whether social relationships
that stem from people’s group memberships confer any additional benefits. We focus first on studies
of general well-being before turning to research which has examined the clinical advantages that may
accrue from groups.
Helliwell and Barrington-Levy (2012) analysed the results of a large representative survey of Cana-
dian citizens in which measures of household income, numbers of relationships with family and
friends and identification with community, province, and country were included. The key outcome
variable was people’s life satisfaction, a widely used measure of well-being. Not surprisingly, house-
hold income was correlated with well-being: better off people were happier. However, more inter-
esting were all the associations between the ‘social’ variables and life satisfaction. The personal
relationships variables accounted for almost as much of the variance in life satisfaction as family
income, and the group identity variables explained more than twice the variance of the income
variable. Having money may make you happy, but having many social connections makes you happier
still.
This finding is not limited to Canadians however. Jetten et al. (2015) conducted parallel studies in
Australia, China, Great Britain, and the USA in which they correlated people’s membership in multi-
ple groups with self-esteem. The social demographics of these samples were as varied as their coun-
tries of origin and included young children, adolescents, university students, older adults (in their
1960s and 1970s) and homeless people. Despite this diversity, the results were remarkably consis-
tent: the more groups people belonged to, the higher their self-esteem. Two of the studies employed
a longitudinal design in which it was observed that earlier multiple group memberships predicted
later self-esteem, but not vice versa. This suggests that it is the belonging to groups that elevates self-
esteem rather than happier people joining more groups. In some of the studies measures of inter-
personal relationships were also included. These measures were usually less consistently related to
self-esteem than the group membership variables (see also, Sani et al. 2012).
Why does belonging to and identifying with several groups (rather than few) make us happier?
One possibility is that groups give us a greater sense of being in control over our lives. This was
the conclusion reached by Greenaway et al. (2015, study 1) when they analysed parts of the World
Values Survey which collects data from 47 countries around the world and includes over 6000 respon-
dents (Inglehart et al. 2004). People’s identifications with their local community, their nation, and the
world were significantly correlated with their subjective well-being. Crucially, though, these identi-
fications were also associated with heightened levels of perceived control which was also linked to
well-being. Formal tests of statistical mediation revealed that control might be partly accounting for
the identification-well-being relationship.
If that is the case, it would help to understand the intriguing results from a small intervention
study in a residential home for elderly people (Knight et al. 2010). The residents had been scheduled
to move from their existing home to a new facility. With the permission of the residents and the care
staff, one floor of the new home was organised rather differently than usual. Residents were involved
in making collective decisions about the décor of their new surroundings (e.g. selection of pictures
and plants); those on another floor served as a control group since they were given no say about their
new environment. Monitoring of the residents’ satisfaction with their surroundings, identification
with fellow residents and staff, and well-being over a four month period revealed that those on the
‘intervention’ floor had more positive outcomes than those on the ‘control’ floor (see also, Langer and
Rodin 1976; Rodin and Langer 1977).
Interestingly, the improved well-being brought about by groups can be obtained merely by thinking
about them, as Kyprianides et al. (in press) showed. These researchers first temporarily put their par-
ticipants in a rather sad mood by asking them to write about some unhappy life event while listening
to some particularly gloomy music. Then they sought to lift this sad mood by getting participants to
write about either three groups they belonged to or three interpersonal relationships they had or three
films they had seen (Control). The results were clear: all three conditions showed an improvement in
mood, but those in the ‘groups’ condition improved most of all, and more than those in the ‘relation-
ships’ condition. Underlying these mood shifts brought about by thinking of groups were increases
in feelings of social connectedness, self-worth, and autonomy.
The benefits of groups are not confined to making people feel better about themselves; there is a
growing body of evidence that group memberships, and all the relationships and interactions asso-
ciated with them, are also clinically useful. Consider, for instance the results from a large (over 3000
respondents) panel survey of people aged 50 years and older (Haslam et al. 2014). This survey assessed
the cognitive functioning of its participants on such measures as immediate and delayed memory, and
verbal fluency. Also included were measures of social contact with family and friends and the num-
ber of group memberships and the amount of involvement with these. Unsurprisingly, age itself was a
strong (and negative) predictor of cognitive functioning, along with several other demographic vari-
ables (e.g. sex, ethnicity, and financial status). But of most interest to us here was the finding that the
degree of group engagement at an earlier time point was associated with better cognitive functioning
four years later. The amount of interpersonal engagement was only a weak and inconsistent predictor
of cognitive ability. Importantly, the typical age-related decline in cognitive functioning was some-
what less marked for those with high levels of group engagement. Using the same data set, Cruwys
et al. (2013) found similar protective effects of group membership in alleviating depression symptoms
in elderly people.
Smaller-scale interventions also show the therapeutic advantages of groups. Reminiscence therapy
is a technique sometimes used with elderly people suffering from dementia. It involves the sharing of
past memories and experiences. Haslam et al. (2010) compared the effectiveness of a six-week group
reminiscence therapy intervention with a more conventional individually based reminiscence ther-
apy (just the patient and the clinician). There was also a control group of patients who participated in
a weekly game of skittles. Only those in the group reminiscence condition showed any improvement
in cognitive functioning by the end of the intervention (Figure 5.7). Interestingly enough, this inter-
vention did not increase patient well-being; that happened only in the control group who enjoyed a
weekly game of skittles.
5 Figure 5.7 Change in cognitive functioning

after a six week intervention (post-intervention–
4
pre-intervention). Source: Haslam et al. (2010),
3 figure 2. Reprinted with permission of the
Difference scores
2 American Psychological Association.

1
0
–1
–2
–3
Group Individual Group
reminiscence reminiscence control
Intervention
Group interventions are not just effective for elderly people. In two intervention studies with vul-
nerable adults or patients participating in a group psychotherapy treatment, initial identification with
the group in question reliably predicted a decline in depression symptoms between one and three
months later (Cruwys et al. 2014). Similarly, stroke patients who belong to many groups prior to the
stroke seem to have higher well-being several months after their stroke, especially if they were able
to maintain those group memberships in the recovery period (Haslam et al. 2008). Finally, in an eval-
uation of a psychosocial treatment programme for civilians suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) due to the civil war in Sierra Leone, we found that the treatment programme was more effec-
tive for those with higher levels of national identification (Mughal et al. 2015).
All in all, then, there is now ample evidence that the groups we belong to are a highly effective
resource that allow us to deal with the challenges we may face in our lives. One provocative conclu-
sion is that countries might do well to invest more resources in health and welfare interventions that
employ group techniques. As Jetten et al. (2009) pointedly observe, such ‘social cures’ may well prove
a much more cost-effective investment in the long run than our continued over-reliance on purely
pharmaceutical treatments.
Summary
1. In studying group performance, the most basic issue concerns whether the mere presence of
another person helps or hinders task performance. The evidence suggests that there is mild facil-
itation of performance for simple tasks but inhibition for more complex tasks. One influential
explanation for this phenomenon in terms of physiological arousal is now less well favoured than
accounts which emphasise cognitive and attentional capacity.
2. The question of the relative superiority of individual or group performance depends entirely on
the mode of comparison. In the simplest contrast – between groups and the average individual –
groups invariably out-perform individuals. However, if the comparison is made with ‘statisticised’
groups – formed by pooling individuals’ performances statistically – then real interacting groups
often, but not invariably, perform less well on a range of tasks.
3. Two influential theories which have tried to explain this apparent deficit are Steiner’s theory of
group productivity and Latané’s social impact theory. In Steiner’s theory, actual productivity is
Further Reading 153
thought never to exceed potential productivity because groups fail to utilise their resources in the
optimal way. In Latané’s theory, the deficits are attributed to a lack of motivation which is thought
to occur in groups.
4. However, there is no doubt that group interaction can also lead to process gains. These seem to
occur for complex or highly involving tasks, or when the group is psychologically important for
its members, or if the prevailing values favour collectivism rather than individualism.
5. Group decision-making is a special form of group performance. A useful method for studying
group decision-making is social decision schemes theory, a modelling approach which attempts
to simulate various possible methods of combining individual contributions to the group decision.
For a number of intellectual tasks it appears that a ‘truth supported wins’ model is the best ‘fit’
with the data. For tasks where there is no demonstrably correct decision, some form of majority
decision rule is more likely.
6. Groups can sometimes make bad decisions by not considering all the relevant information and not
appraising the full range of options available. Janis called this ‘groupthink’ and believed that it is
caused by a cohesive group being led by an over-directive leader. Several historical examples seem
to support his analysis, although more controlled research suggests that only the leadership factor
is crucial. Techniques are available which can aid decision-making by increasing the amount of
unshared information which is made available to the group.
7. Belonging to groups can good for you. Groups can provide people with resilience to cope with
both everyday stresses and more challenging situations such as natural disasters. Multiple group
memberships and identifications are also consistently associated with many well-being and mental
health benefits.
Further Reading
Group Productivity
Kerr, N. and Hertel, G. (2011). The Köhler group motivation gain: how to motivate the ‘weak links’ in a
group. Social and Personality Psychology Compass 5: 43–55.
Stroebe, W. and Diehl, M. (1994). Why groups are less effective than their members: on productivity loss
in idea-generating groups. European Review of Social Psychology 5: 271–303.
Williams, K., Karau, S., and Bourgeois, M. (1993). Working on collective tasks: social loafing and social
compensation. In: Group Motivation (ed. M.A. Hogg and D. Abrams), 130–148. Hemel Hempstead:
Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Group Decision-Making
Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes 1998, 73, Nos. 2–3. (Special Issue on
Groupthink).
Health and Well-being Benefits of Groups

Jetten, J., Haslam, C., and Haslam, S.A. (eds.) (2012). The Social Cure. London: Psychology Press.
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161
The Morality of Groups
The previous chapter posed the question of whether groups are more or less effective than individuals
in making decisions and getting things done. We now turn to another way in which groups frequently
get the kind of ‘bad press’ that previous editions of this book have noted: the idea that groups somehow
exacerbate the particularly negative aspects of human nature. Here then, we consider the notion that
people in groups behave worse than people as individuals, not in terms of efficiency but in terms of
morality. Do groups make us more prone to act in ways that harm others, or less prone to help them?
As we will see, a negative view of groups has often dominated not only the popular imagination but
also social psychological theory. There are traditional perspectives in the discipline that do propose
groups as both enablers of aggression and inhibitors of helping behaviour. This chapter will take a
critical look at these characterisations of groups and consider the more balanced and comprehensive
picture that is now emerging.
Are Groups really more Aggressive than Individuals? Collective Aggression

and Violence
If you have been reading this book from the beginning, it should be clear by now that groups are a
source of norms and values: to the extent that social identities are salient, group norms become a
reference point as to how we should think and act. As such, it is clear that involvement in groups has
likely implications for our sense of appropriate and moral conduct in a given situation, including the
appropriateness of aggression and violence. We can expect the nature of group norms to shape ways
in which people behave aggressively, just as they do with other kinds of behaviour. In this section, we
will consider some of the evidence for how this takes place and the circumstances for violence to be
either inhibited or facilitated by group processes.
However, before we do that, we need to consider an account of groups and aggression that is
markedly different from the kind of perspective we are more sympathetic to in this book: a claim
that groups lead to a loss of self-awareness and self-restraint, leading to uninhibited, impulsive, and
usually antisocial behaviour. Although this account – revolving around the concept of ‘deindividua-
tion’ – has struggled to explain the evidence on group aggression over the decades, it provides the
backdrop for much of the research on the topic and is occasionally invoked in the media to make sense
of events such as riots. In the wake of major rioting in several English cities in 2011, for example, a
sociologist interviewed by the Guardian newspaper attributed the events to rioters’ abandonment of
162 6 The Morality of Groups
personal identity and participation in violence at odds with their usual character (cited in Reicher
and Stott 2011). Later in the year, the entertainer and illusionist Derren Brown centred an episode of
his television show around the concept of deindividuation, in which his studio audience wore masks
and played a series of practical jokes on a ‘victim’, linking this to the recent riots. We will therefore
evaluate its central claims before discussing more contemporary thinking about collective aggression.
Deindividuation
Although there are a number of different models and theories of deindividuation (e.g. Diener 1979;
Festinger et al. 1952; Prentice-Dunn and Rogers 1982; Zimbardo 1969, 2007), the general thrust of
all of them is that groups are a threat to the self-restraint of individuals, and thus – at least poten-
tially – a threat to morality. Zimbardo (1969) goes so far as to present deindividuation as a threat
to the social order and even to civilisation itself. In his account, groups create a number of condi-
tions such as anonymity and physiological arousal that undermine self-restraint and enable antiso-
cial behaviours. He claims that immersion in a group disinhibits us, unleashing ‘libidinous, violent,
and selfish impulses’ (p. 367) and ‘mindless emotional responses’ (p. 305) that override social con-
straints and reason (Zimbardo 2007). The resulting behaviour is understood to be less socially desir-
able, which often – if not always – means more antisocial. This situational loss of individuality in the
group – as Zimbardo sees it – is something we ought to fear.
There is an important historical context, as well as a precedent, to this concept of deindividuation.
The historical context is the social unrest that characterised ethnic relations in the United States dur-
ing the 1960s, the period during which Zimbardo was first formulating his ideas. Numerous American
cities had experienced rioting, most notably in the Watts area of Los Angeles where seven days of riot-
ing in 1965 had caused 34 deaths. Whilst presented as a general account of norm-violating impulsive
behaviours that need not necessarily be antisocial, Zimbardo’s emphasis on the destructive potential
of group behaviour is clearly oriented towards explaining collective violence such as urban riots. The
precedent can be found 70 years previously in the work of Gustave Le Bon (1896), whose popular text
on the psychology of crowds was inspired by secondary accounts of various revolutionary crowds in
nineteenth century France. For Le Bon, the behaviour of crowds is socially, morally, and intellectually
inferior to that of individuals. The psychological transformation that he proposes to take place is very
similar to those outlined in Zimbardo’s model of deindividuation: crowds make people feel powerful
and anonymous with a consequent loss of individual responsibility; crowd behaviour is fickle, irra-
tional, and contagious, the loss of inhibition unleashing a collective unconscious that is inherently
barbaric – ‘the animal within’ – and that spreads through the crowds as others mimic it uncritically.
Both deindividuation theory and Le Bon’s crowd psychology proceed from the same assumption
that individuality is the sole basis for selfhood and that therefore we can only behave rationally as
individuals (Reicher et al. 1995). Thinking and acting as part of a collective, in these accounts, is
tantamount to a loss of self and so behaviour necessarily becomes meaningless and irrational. As we
have seen, this understanding of self is at odds with a social identity perspective on group processes,
in which personal uniqueness and commonality with group members are both potential bases for the
definition of self, so collective behaviour is no less rational or meaningful than individual behaviour.
In other words, what deindividuation theory regards as a loss of identity could alternatively be viewed
as a shift from personal to social identity (Reicher et al. 1995; Postmes and Spears 1998).
When crowd behaviour is viewed as chaotic and meaningless, it is explicitly disconnected from
its broader social context. Thus, when in 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron described a
series of urban riots in England as ‘mindless violence and thuggery’ (Hansard, 11 August 2011, col
1053), he was effectively denying any connection between rioters’ actions on the one hand and longer-
term background of poor relations with the police on the other. The very possibility of understanding
what those actions meant to the people participating in them – as an uprising against the police, for
example – is closed off by portraying crowds as inherently destructive, which supports robust means
of suppression and dismisses the value of addressing the social conditions that lead to rioting (Lewis
et al. 2011; Neville and Reicher 2018; Reicher and Stott 2011). It should be said that Zimbardo (unlike
Le Bon) is concerned as much with state violence as with that of the ‘masses’, giving examples of what
he considers mindless police brutality in the United States during the 1960s. Even so, the portrayal of
both police and crowd violence as the release of aggressive impulses rather than as socially meaningful
rules out of discussion the important questions about why such conflict occurs. Moreover, as we shall
see, it is a portrayal that does not stand up to empirical scrutiny.
Deindividuation theory has been reformulated by researchers who found Zimbardo’s theorising
too vaguely formulated and insufficiently nuanced, mainly by refining their account of what kind
of self-awareness is lost (Diener 1979; Prentice-Dunn and Rogers 1982). These later theories also
depart from the emphasis on instinctual aggression in Zimbardo’s earlier account by proposing that
deindividuated people are over-responsive to environmental cues because they are less self-aware and
less able to control themselves. Still, the emphasis remains the same in that deindividuation theorists
all argue that groups cause a loss of self-control leading to an increased likelihood of antisocial acts.
Experimental Evidence concerning Groups and Antisocial Behaviour

A principal way in which groups are claimed to cause deindividuation is by making people anonymous
(e.g. Diener 1977). The assumption is that one can be ‘lost in the crowd’, such that people feel less
individually identifiable when part of a group. Thus, tests of deindividuation theory often involve
manipulations of anonymity. Zimbardo (1969) describes a series of what are now often regarded
as classic studies purporting to demonstrate the link between anonymity and antisocial behaviour.
These include a field experiment in which two cars were left abandoned, one in The Bronx, New
York City and the other in Palo Alto, CA. While the former was promptly vandalised and stripped
of its parts, the latter was left intact for several days. Zimbardo explains this difference in terms of
the ‘anonymity’ of big city life, although his observations provide little evidence that deindividuation
or anonymity were actually involved. Most of the damage was done during daylight with vandals –
individuals as well as families and small groups – chatting to passers-by. Zimbardo and his students
then relocated the second, intact, car to the Stanford University campus and proceeded to vandalise
it with a sledgehammer with the aim of inspiring others to do likewise. This succeeded. A large group
of Stanford students took it in turns to wield the sledgehammer and cheered each other on. Given
that that many of these students were presumably well known to one another and were aware of
being filmed, and that the incident took place during broad daylight, one might question whether
anonymity or, instead, indifference to social evaluation is the plausible cause.
Zimbardo (1969) also describes a laboratory experiment in which groups of female students were
instructed to deliver what they believed were painful electric shocks to another participant. In some
conditions these participants were made anonymous by being asked to wear a large, shapeless coat
and a hood over the head with holes cut out for their eyes and mouth. In other conditions, they
were given large name tags to reinforce their individuality. The results at first seemed supportive of
the theory: the mean duration of ‘shock’ administered was nearly twice as long in the deindividuated
condition as it was in the individuated one. However, in a subsequent experiment, using a very similar
procedure with Belgian soldiers, the exact opposite result was obtained: those in the anonymous
conditions delivered consistently shorter length ‘shocks’ than those who were identifiable. In order
to reconcile these findings, Zimbardo suggested that the soldiers’ uniforms meant that they were
already deindividuated before the experiment began. The effect of donning the coats and hoods for
the deindividuation condition of the experiment was, he argued, to reindividuate them (Zimbardo
1969, p. 276)!
Besides the apparent contradiction between studies, there is a further reason to question whether
anonymity per se explains the increased aggression of the hooded students. The hoods used in
Zimbardo’s experiment, while not perfectly resembling the headgear of the White supremacist Ku
Klux Klan, were similar enough that they were hardly neutral. Perhaps, then, the willingness to inflict
pain related to the aggressive norms evoked in the situation by the appearance and meaning of the
outfits rather than aggression being a general outcome of anonymity. This possibility was explored
by Johnson and Downing (1979). Similar to Zimbardo, they had participants wear special clothing
and deliver apparent electric shocks, but the nature of this clothing was systematically manipulated:
in half the conditions, the costume consisted of a robe resembling a Ku Klux Klan outfit, a point
remarked on by the experimenter. In the remaining conditions, the participants were asked to wear
an equally anonymous looking robe but one that was alleged to have been a nurse’s gown borrowed
from a hospital recovery room, the rationale being that dressing as a nurse would evoke prosocial
meanings rather than aggressive ones. The experimenters also manipulated the extent to which the
participants felt individually identifiable by attaching their names to their costumes and making their
responses individually identifiable to others, whereas in the ‘deindividuation’ condition the button
presses could not be attributed to any individual participant but only to the group as a whole. Among
participants wearing the nurse’s uniform, it was actually those in the identifiable condition who deliv-
ered the higher shock levels, while for those in the Ku Klux Klan outfits, the manipulation made no
difference (Figure 6.1). It seems that having participants respond as indistinguishable group mem-
bers does not necessarily make their behaviour more aggressive and may actually make it less so. For
Johnson and Downing, this is because deindividuation does not lead to the uninhibited expression
of aggressive impulses (as Zimbardo’s early formulation would have it), but rather to a heightened
responsiveness to external cues in line with later formulations of deindividuation described previ-
ously (Diener 1979; Prentice-Dunn and Rogers 1982).
An alternative interpretation, however, is that making participants indistinguishable in the group
leads to a more salient identity as a group member and that the resulting behaviour reflects group
norms. In other words, deemphasising individuality leads to behaviour that is guided by particular
group norms, rather than being out of control (as deindividuation theory would have it). The distinc-
tion is important because it means that people have not only simply lost the ability to regulate their
own behaviour but rather have also shifted the criterion for assessing the appropriateness of the act
from an individual standard to a shared group standard. Reicher (1984a) investigated this in a labo-
ratory experiment by highlighting group norms about the morality of vivisection among groups of
student participants (whereby arts students are more opposed to vivisection than science students)
and then measuring their own attitudes under different conditions of anonymity and group salience.
He first placed the students into either an individual or group salience context (arts versus science
students) by manipulating the lab seating arrangements and the way the study was introduced as
either a study of individuals or of group members. Independently of the group salience manipulation,
Reicher made also participants in some sessions anonymous by dressing them in baggy clothes and
1.5
0.5
0
Shock level
Individuated Deindividuated
–0.5
–1
–1.5
–2
Ku Klux Klan outfit Nurse outfit
Figure 6.1 Anonymity does not always increase aggression. Mean shock levels were selected by participants in
‘individuated’ and ‘deindividuated’ conditions, depending on the type of costume worn (Ku Klux Klan versus Nurse).
Positive values indicated choices to make slight (+1), moderate (+2), or high increases to the baseline shock levels.
Negative values indicated corresponding choices to reduce shock levels. Source: Based on Johnson and Downing
(1979), table 1.
hoods, which in the group-salient conditions were colour-coded according to group membership. In
other sessions, they remained identifiable. After watching a video that served to reinforce the group
norms about vivisection, participants reported their own attitudes about the topic. Reicher found
that the science students conformed to the group norm of supporting vivisection only when they
were anonymous and when they were responding as group members rather than as individuals. In
fact, in the individualised condition, anonymity actually shifted their responses away from the group
norm (i.e. towards an anti-vivisection position). Although these effects were not observed among the
arts students, the finding suggests that the effects of anonymity depend on whether it occurs in such
a way as to isolate people as individuals, or whether it enhances the salience of a group identity. In
the latter case, he argues, the effect is increased conformity to group norms and not disinhibition as
deindividuation theory would have it (Figure 6.2).
In line with this, a meta-analysis of 60 deindividuation studies found that the deindividuation
manipulations actually lead to behaviour that is in line with the particular social norms relevant to
the situation, whether those norms be prosocial or antisocial (Postmes and Spears 1998). Suppos-
edly deindividuated individuals, then, are actually behaving in a way that conforms to local social
norms, rather than being released from social constraints and behaving in an uninhibited way. There
is no general sense in which groups make people either more prone to aggressive impulses or indis-
criminately responsive to situational cues. This insight is the basis for an alternative viewpoint, which
Figure 6.2 Anonymity increases conformity to

norms only when group identity is salient.
6 Deindividuated conditions (wearing baggy overalls
Salient identity and masks) increase science students’ support for
Support for vivisection
5 Group vivisection when group identity is salient, but

decrease it when individual identity is salient.
Individual Source: Reicher (1984a). Reproduced with
4 permission of John Wiley and Sons.
Deindividuated Individuated
Condition
argues that group phenomena previously attributed to a deindividuation state can be better accounted
for in terms of social identity and group norms (Postmes and Spears 1998; Reicher et al. 1995). Theo-
ries adopting this social identity perspective use the term ‘depersonalisation’ to refer to the shift from
personal to social identity (see Chapter 1). It is important to distinguish this from ‘deindividuation’,
referring to a loss of identity, awareness, and control. The terms may sound similar, but the processes
being described are very different.
The Stanford Prison Experiment

The state of deindividuation has also been invoked to interpret the Stanford Prison Experiment
(SPE), in which a simulated prison environment was constructed in a university basement, with
ordinary students invited to play the roles of guards and prisoners for six days until the study was
terminated prematurely (Haney et al. 1973; Zimbardo 2007). The study is extremely well known,
and numerous accounts of it exist in various forms including a dedicated website, documentaries,
and even a feature film, with the most detailed description of the six days’ occurrences published as
part of a book by Zimbardo 37 years after the study (Zimbardo 2007). We will consider the key fea-
tures of the study here with a view to assessing the value of ‘deindividuation’ in accounting for what
took place.
The SPE was planned with the intention of examining the extent to which extreme – particu-
larly harmful – behaviours were a product of the situational forces people face rather than reflec-
tive of their personalities. To this end, Zimbardo et al. sought to recruit participants who were as
ordinary as possible and then place them into an environment that resembled a real prison: ‘Pris-
oners’ were physically confined and made to feel powerless, while ‘guards’ enjoyed relative comfort
and the ability to exercise their power arbitrarily over prisoners. Of the potential student partici-
pants responding to a newspaper advertisement, only those deemed to be ‘stable … most mature
and least involved in anti-social behaviour’ were selected and randomly assigned to the role of
either guard or prisoner (Haney et al. 1973, p. 74). Those appointed as guards were first briefed
by Zimbardo, who himself played the role of prison superintendent and remained actively involved
in running the ‘prison’ throughout the study. Zimbardo explained to his guards that the purpose
of the prison was to examine how the prisoners would respond to their loss of freedom and that
their job was to help create a realistic oppressive prison atmosphere, albeit without actual physical
abuse:
We can create a notion of arbitrariness that totally controls their lives, which are totally con-
trolled by us, by the system, by you, me, Jaffe [the Prison Wardon] … They will be able to do
nothing and say nothing that we don’t permit.
(Zimbardo 2007, p. 53)
Guards were also provided with khaki uniforms, whistles, night-sticks, and reflective sunglasses
(the latter intended to induce a level of anonymity and hence deindividuation). Meanwhile, the
researchers gained the collaboration of the local police department, who carried out realistic mock
arrests at the homes of the participants and, after detaining them at the police station, delivered them
blindfolded to Zimbardo’s mock prison. There, they were stripped, de-loused, assigned a prisoner
number by which they were to be identified for the rest of the study, and dressed in humiliating white
smocks with no underwear and a chain around the ankle.
After a settling in period during which both guards and prisoners were somewhat uncomfortable
with their new roles, the prisoners mounted a rebellion on the second day, removing their identifica-
tion numbers, barricading cell doors with their beds, and demanding improved conditions. Eventu-
ally the guards were able reassert control, and thus began the best known phase of the study during
which some guards – though, importantly, not the majority – employed increasingly harsh measures
to degrade the prisoners and to undermine solidarity between them. These included solitary con-
finement, taunts, being forced to wash toilets with bare hands or to defecate in buckets that were
then left in the cells, being made to do press-ups with a guard’s foot on their backs, and humiliating
sexualised games. As the abusiveness of this behaviour escalated, and as the emotional distress of
prisoners became more extreme, the researchers were persuaded to terminate the study.
Zimbardo certainly succeeded in producing a vivid demonstration of how abusive behaviour can
emerge from apparently ordinary people given an appropriately toxic environment. In his various
accounts of the study, he proposes a number of different social psychological processes and features
of the situation that made it powerful, and to account for the reactions of both guards and prisoners.
Long considered one of social psychology’s most important ‘classic studies’, the SPE received renewed
attention some 30 years later following the revelation of American soldiers’ brutal treatment of Iraqi
detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. These abuses included torture, violence, and sexual abuse
and attracted worldwide attention and condemnation after the emergence of ‘trophy photos’ that
showed soldiers humiliating naked prisoners. Zimbardo drew a direct parallel between the SPE and
the events at Abu Ghraib. He even acted as a witness for the defence at the trial of one of the soldiers
involved, arguing that the abuses were a product of the situation in which the soldiers were placed
by higher authorities and that their culpability was therefore diminished. The SPE has also provoked
a number of notable critiques on ethical, methodological, and theoretical grounds (Banyard 2007;
Haslam and Reicher 2012; Reicher and Haslam 2006; Turner 2006). Here, though, we are specifically
concerned with the notion of deindividuation and whether or not it is a plausible mechanism for the
behaviour of the abusive guards. That is, did this behaviour really reflect a loss of accountability and
self-evaluation among the guards, leading to the unconstrained release of aggressive impulses, and
the overpowering of reason by emotion in the absence of social constraints?
It is quite clear that group processes were involved in creating the conditions for the guards’
behaviour; the question is, what processes? The effects of the group seem to have been more a matter
of giving a certain meaning to the situation and establishing a shared goal, rather than of diminishing
guards’ self-control. As is apparent from the guards’ briefing quoted previously, Zimbardo effectively
recruited the guards into his research team, for whom the creation of an oppressive environment
was essential to the aims the study (Banuazizi and Movahedi 1975; Haslam and Reicher 2012). It
may therefore help to understand guards’ actions by thinking of them as research assistants (RAs)
rather than as participants, since that is surely how they themselves saw their role. Indeed, Zimbardo
notes that he was initially interested in the behaviour of prisoners under conditions of powerlessness,
rather than guards (Zimbardo 2007). To that end, the oppressiveness of the prison was an essential
feature of the study’s design rather than merely an outcome the assigned roles. While Zimbardo may
not have dictated the precise means of oppression, the methods invented by the guards were clearly
directed towards ensuring the success of the study by maintaining the prisoners’ sense of powerless-
ness. Meanwhile Zimbardo, in his role as superintendent and leader of the guards, lent support for
the abuses by not actively discouraging them, thus making them normative within the group. Indeed,
an archival audio recording recently made available as part of the online Zimbardo archive at Stanford
University indicates how Zimbardo’s warden, Jaffe, tried to persuade one reluctant guard to get ‘more
involved’ in oppressing the prisoners (Haslam et al. in press; Haslam and Reicher 2018; Le Texier
2018). The behaviour can plausibly be seen as the purposeful and socially approved actions of com-
mitted research assistants rather than some sort of uncontrolled outpouring of aggressive impulses.
It is interesting to note that Zimbardo (2007) employs a utilitarian rationale in addressing the crit-
icism that the SPE was unethical. While not fully justifying the study, he seeks to mitigate the view
that it was wholly unethical by pointing to some of its positive social and educational outcomes, as
well the fact that prisoners had given informed consent to being harassed and having their privacy
invaded. If, several decades later, the lead researcher can balance the prisoners’ distress against ben-
efits of the study, is it not likely that the guards in the study did likewise? None of this is to deny that
their actions were harmful or that they were situationally produced, but rather to question the extent
to which they were irrational or impulsive.
The SPE and its conclusions were revisited by Reicher and Haslam in 2002, when they conducted
their own ‘prison study’ in collaboration with the BBC, who filmed the study for broadcast as a televi-
sion documentary. Findings from this ‘BBC Prison Study’ were subsequently published in a series of
scientific articles (e.g. Haslam and Reicher 2006, 2007). Similar to the SPE, the BBC study was set in
a mock prison in which participants were randomly assigned roles as guards and prisoners and were
given corresponding uniforms, as well as markedly unequal qualities of living standards and food.
Unlike the SPE, however, the guards were simply asked to ensure the smooth running of the prison
without any instruction that their job was to specifically to oppress the prisoners or make them feel
powerless. Both prisoners and guards were initially uneasy about their roles and did not fall natu-
rally into them (as indeed was the case initially in the SPE). However, the prisoners soon formed a
cohesive group in opposition to the prison regime and the blatant inequalities that this entailed and
began hatching plans to seize control of the prison for themselves. The guards, on account of their
discomfort with their role, failed to work effectively and were weak in the face of the prisoners’ insub-
ordination. This eventually led to the prisoners being able to demand the setting up of an egalitarian
commune, which eventually collapsed as some of the participants sought to institute a more tyran-
nical prisoner-guard system. The full unfolding of events in this study touch on many of the topics in
this book (we direct interested readers to Reicher and Haslam 2006, as the authors’ BBC Prison Study
website for a detailed narrative). However, it is clear is that participants did not just accept the roles
they were given, and mere assignment to the role of guard within a prison-like environment was not
sufficient to produce abusive behaviour. Similarly, where oppressive behaviour did emerge (or at least
threatened to, had the study not been terminated by the researchers), this appeared to be because the
collectivistic commune system had collapsed, and its members did not feel sufficiently empowered
to resist the imposition of a harsher more authoritarian alternative.
How Group Norms shape the Nature of Crowd Violence

We have seen that, according to some versions of deindividuation theory, people become hyperre-
sponsive to external cues when in groups, such that they are unable to regulate their behaviour in line
with their usual standards (Diener 1979; Prentice-Dunn and Rogers 1982). However, there is an alter-
native model which argues that collective behaviour reflects group norms. This is the Social Identity
Model of Deindividuation Effects, sometimes known by its acronym, SIDE (Reicher et al. 1995). We
have already mentioned the meta-analysis by Postmes and Spears (1998), which suggests that norms
are a better explanation of experimental findings on deindividuation. However, if the aim is to under-
stand collective forms of aggression such as rioting, perhaps the most important test of these theories
is how well they can account for real patterns of behaviour in such events. As we will explain, here
too it appears that the way people actually behave in riots is not at all consistent with the view that
they are out of control or overresponsive to environmental cues in any general sense.
The first problem for the deindividuation account of riots seems almost too obvious to consider,
but it is worth pointing out because it highlights an important issue. If crowds are responding indis-
criminately to situational cues, why then do the police not get drawn in to the same behaviours as
the rioters (Milgram and Toch 1969)? While Zimbardo notes that groups of police officers are just
as susceptible to deindividuation as anybody else, and can act brutally as a result, it is clear that riot
police do not act in the same way as rioters: if they are violent, their violence has different forms and
targets.
The second problem relates to the selectivity in the way that crowd members influence each other.
If crowd behaviour was truly deindividuated in the sense of being mindlessly led by the environment,
then any behaviour would be equally likely to be imitated by others such that it becomes widespread.
This is similar to the notion of ‘contagion’ in earlier theories of crowd behaviour (Le Bon 1896), which
claim that people become so fickle and undiscriminating that any emotions or behaviours, so long as
they are conspicuous enough to be noticed, can spread rapidly through the crowd.
The failure of this ‘contagion’ view to account for real crowd behaviour was examined by Reicher
(1984b) in his study of a significant riot that took place in the St Pauls area of Bristol, England, in the
spring of 1980. The riot was prompted by perceived police incivilities during a raid on a local café
and involved several hours of coordinated hostile action by hundreds of St Pauls residents against the
police, such as pelting them with bricks and setting fire to police cars. The police (approximately 60
officers) were eventually driven out of the St Pauls area completely. Clearly, this was a case of truly
collective and coordinated violence, such that the level of force directed against the police would not
have been possible by individual actions alone. Yet, it also took place spontaneously without formal
leadership or planning. There must therefore have been some form of social influence operating that
enabled individual behaviours to be quickly adopted by others and become shared. Yet, this ‘conta-
gion’ had clear limits in that some behaviours generalised to the whole crowd while others did not.
Individuals and vehicles that were unrelated to the police were generally unharmed, despite the fact
that busses, private cars, and shoppers continued to pass through the area throughout the riot. When
occasionally they were hit (accidentally or otherwise), this was met with widespread disapproval by
the crowd and did not spread any further. On the other hand, to take one example, an old man smash-
ing police car headlights was rewarded with loud cheers as others in the crowd followed his lead by
hurling missiles at the police. In other words, some individual behaviours spontaneously became
widespread actions by the crowd, while others were reprimanded and did not spread further. The
notion that behaviour is contagious in a general sense, or that crowd behaviour indicates an undis-
criminating responsiveness to situational cues, is therefore inadequate. We need to account for the
way collective aggression, even when spontaneous, is selective.
For Reicher, the key to this patterned and limited nature of crowd violence lies in the social identities
of the participants and the norms associated with those identities. In this case, the rioters viewed
themselves as representatives of the community of St Pauls, an identity that was built partly on a
shared experience of oppression at the hands of the police and wider society. Behaviours deemed to
be expressive of this identity such as hurling bricks at police cars were influential, whereas those that
contradicted it, such as damaging busses or local shops, were not. Far from being meaningless or out
of control, the behaviour of crowds directly corresponds to the very particular meanings of the social
identities involved.
Of course, riots can cause significant damage, injuries, and deaths. The issue is not whether or
not group situations can enable substantial levels of violence, but rather how and why this happens,
and what form it takes. To outsiders, an aggressive crowd is often extremely threatening and can
appear to be out of control, as if on some kind of irrational rampage. To participants, though, the
very same events have significant social meaning and are frequently characterised by camaraderie
and jubilation (Gilroy 1992; Fogelson 1970; Reicher 1984b; Reicher and Stott 2011). Fogelson (1968)
carried out extensive analysis of the large-scale and very violent urban riots that took place in the
United States during the 1960s:
[V]iewed at a distance, the riots seem unrestrained and indiscriminate – which is what
observers probably mean by meaningless; and the mob is overwhelming, the confusion com-
plete. But from up close, where individuals are visible and patterns discernible, the opposite
appears to be so … restraint and selectivity – or, considered together, rationality – are cer-
tainly among the most crucial features of the riots. And it is in these features that the meaning
of these disorders is to be found.
(p. 37)
Indeed, Reicher (1984b, 2001) makes the point that looking closely at crowd behaviour is an
extremely good way to understand how groups understand themselves and their social world. Because
strength in numbers can temporarily overturn the usual power relationships, it may only be in the
crowd that some groups can fully manifest their grievances and view of how the world should be.
From this perspective, far from undermining people’s identity, crowds can enable groups to affirm
their identities in a way that is often not possible for isolated individuals. Whether this takes the
form of violence or nonviolence, or destructive or constructive behaviour, it is meaningful from the
perspectives of the participants’ understanding of the world and their relationships within it.
A final point can be made here with regard to the idea within the deindividuation perspective that
group aggression comes about through the situational suspension of self-awareness, conscience, and
shame (e.g. Zimbardo 1969, 2007). To the extent that people are temporarily led to do things that
violate important social norms that usually matter to them, we would expect them to look back on
these events with a sense of profound embarrassment, much as one might retrospectively feel about
having behaved inappropriately in front of others whilst drunk. It is difficult to assess how often this
is the case, but some accounts from rioters suggest quite a different experience. As one participant
in the 2011 London riots put it: ‘I felt alive … it will always be the best day of my life’ (Guardian, 5
December 2011; Lewis et al. 2011). Or, for a participant in St Paul’s riot: ‘We feel great, we feel confident
it was a victory and we were worthy of the victory’ (quoted in Reicher 1984b). What we see, then, is
the enabling of identity-congruent behaviour that participants feel proud of, rather than a temporary
loss of control leading to norm violation.
Identity Transformation and Emergence of Conflict in Crowds

The crowd events considered previously illustrate how even violent crowd behaviour, which might
appear chaotic and meaningless to outsiders, is in fact meaningfully related to the social identities
of the groups involved. In turn, these identities are often embedded in relatively long-term social
structures and relationships. In the example previously discussed, the St Pauls residents’ antipathy
towards the police did not appear out of nowhere on the day of the riot. Rather, the riot created the
opportunity for their preexisting antipathy to be enacted more powerfully than was usually the case.
However, besides expressing established social identities, crowd events can also change and even
create new ones. This has been illustrated through both studies of how conflict escalates through
police–crowd interactions and studies of helping during emergencies. Here we consider just the first
of these and will return to the second later in the chapter.
Violent confrontation, such as between police and crowds, can emerge from crowd events that are
initially nonviolent, such as peaceful protest marches. According to the Elaborated Social Identity
Model of the crowd (ESIM; Reicher 1996), this can be understood by looking at the unfolding dynam-
ics between groups (one of which is often the police). Studies of the emergence of conflict between the
police on the one hand and protestors or football supporters on the other suggest a fairly consistent
pattern as to how this happens (e.g. Reicher et al. 1995; Stott and Drury 2000; Stott et al. 2001, 2007,
2016). First, in each case the crowds were heterogeneous, consisting of several subgroups. Political
marches, for example, may include groupings that from the outset seek confrontation with police
alongside a majority who do not. Similarly, crowds of football supporters may include people who
actively seek violence but who are in a very small minority in comparison to those who do not. In
both cases, the confrontational minority are initially seen by the rest of the crowd as being ‘hang-
ers on’, on the periphery of the group, and as not sharing the same aims or principles as the crowd
as a whole. This means that their ability to create widespread disorder is very limited. Second, the
police, seeing the entire crowd as a potential threat, act against them as though they were an undif-
ferentiated mass. This may be in response to some isolated hostile actions from within the crowd or
because they seek to control the crowd’s movements to circumvent certain perceived risks. For exam-
ple, containment or ‘kettling’ involves holding a crowd within a small area using cordons, sometimes
for many hours, and thus curtails the freedom of everyone present whether or not they present a
risk. Either way, indiscriminate actions such as this are widely seen as illegitimate by the people on
the receiving end, and they have the effect of changing the way crowd members categorise themselves
and the police in more oppositional terms: they come to view themselves as a unified group and the
police as a hostile outgroup. Third, this new categorisation of the crowd as unified and opposed to
the police changes the way those antagonistic members of the crowd are viewed. Previously they
were marginal; now, they are central and gain influence because their antagonism is in line with the
crowd’s new relationship to the police. Fourth, this influence means that, at best, people do not help
the police to prevent disorder, and at worst, violence becomes normative such that previously nonvi-
olent members of the crowd engage in it as hostility towards the police becomes seen as legitimate.
In short then, ESIM describes how conflict emerges as an initially differentiated crowd is treated as
a unitary hostile mass, which changes the way crowd members categorise themselves and makes the
formerly marginal antagonistic members more influential.
Online Aggression
It has become a truism that much of our everyday communication now takes place via the internet
in various ways: email, social media, blogs, etc. Recent years have seen increasing concern about the
supposed negative nature of such communication, as compared to direct face-to-face conversations.
The general discourteousness often associated with online discussion, as well as online bullying and
intimidation even leading to suicide, is rarely far from the headlines and social commentary. The fact
that celebrities are often targets on online abuse – much of it not only offensive but also threatening
and often misogynistic – raises the profile of the problem and adds to calls to create specific crimi-
nal offences and to force social media companies such as Facebook to take stronger action against it.
Given that online communication can offer new possibilities for almost total anonymity while inter-
acting with others, it is unsurprising that the concept of ‘deindividuation’ has resurfaced in recent
years as an explanation for online aggression (e.g. Lowry et al. 2016). However, whilst the classic work
of Zimbardo, Diener, and others is often invoked to explain the apparent link between anonymity and
abuse, by both academics and journalists, attempts to actually demonstrate that link are empirically
less common.
One exception is a study of web forums that examines whether people who post comments anony-
mously use more abusive language than those using a real name or account linked to social media
(Moore et al. 2012). Over 5000 forum posts were sampled from formspring.me, a well-known forum
website. These posts were categorised as ‘attacks’ if they targeted a victim with insults or threats. The
authors found 84% of the aggressive posts to have been made anonymously, compared to only 60%
of ‘neutral’ posts. This does indicate some relationship between anonymity and online aggression
(see Cho and Acquisti 2013, for a similar finding with comments on news websites). However, to put
this into perspective, aggressive posts were relatively rare overall: in fact, only 9% of all anonymous
posts were coded as aggressive. Thus, aggression is far from being the most typical consequence
of communicating anonymously online. Moreover, the existence of a link between anonymity and
aggression does not necessarily indicate deindividuation to be the mechanism. Recall that deindivid-
uation is supposed to involve a loss of control as a result of a diminished self-awareness. The fact that
most aggressive posts were anonymous, but that most anonymous posts were not aggressive, sug-
gests instead that people strategically choose anonymity when they plan to be threatening or abusive.
If that is the case, it has little to do with disinhibition and more to do with the wish to avoid getting
caught (Wright 2013).
More compelling evidence for the role of anonymity comes from studies in which participants
communicate with one another via computer in a laboratory setting, with various forms of visibility
manipulated experimentally. Lapidot-Lefler and Barak (2012), for example, asked pairs of partici-
pants to discuss a so-called ‘life-saving drug dilemma’, which involved arguing over which of them
should receive a drug that would save the life of somebody close to them. One can see how the nature
of such a discussion could quite easily resemble the sorts of emotive topics that tend to provoke
uncivil exchanges on online forums, although the ethical case for using such a task to prompt abusive
exchanges in the laboratory is less clear. In any case, the authors found that providing participants
with the opportunity for eye contact via webcam reduced the level of hostility in the interactions.
Rendering them anonymous by using an alias rather than a name had the opposite effect. This does
indicate a causal link between anonymity and aggression, though again it does not necessarily demon-
strate loss of awareness or control to be the mechanism.
Based on the SIDE (see above; Reicher et al. 1995), we can expect the anonymity of computer-
mediated communication to increase the salience of social identities because of the absence of indi-
vidualising cues (Lea et al. 2001; Postmes et al. 2002). This being the case, anonymous people may be
more aggressive, but only to the extent that the relevant group norms support aggression. Conversely,
if group norms are prosocial, then online anonymity could make people more prosocial. Thus, if
anonymity online could encourage people to engage in threatening or insulting ways of communicat-
ing, then this would be because they understand it to be normative to do so within some situationally
relevant group. However, in many online contexts, it may be ambiguous as to exactly what groups are
relevant and what the norms are because we know too little about who the other people are, includ-
ing their group memberships or values. In these settings, norms have to be inferred from how others
behave. To examine this, Zimmerman and Ybarra (2016) manipulated the anonymity of participants
before asking them to leave blog-style comment about their experience of a word-unscrambling game
in which they had frustratingly been let down by their online interaction partners. Anonymous par-
ticipants were responsive to the quality of comments left before them. If these prior ‘model’ com-
ments were aggressive (e.g. ‘It really bothers me that I didn’t get the reward just because I was paired
with two idiots’), then their own comments were correspondingly more aggressive in tone than if the
model comments were neutral. In contrast, identifiable participants were much less affected by the
prior comments (Figure 6.3). Postmes et al. (2001) similarly report that anonymous participants may
respond more prosocially when primed with prosocial norms, while identifiable participants are less
responsive to the norm. This supports the view that the anonymity of online communication does
2.5
Level of verbal aggression
1.5
0.5
0
Anonymous Not anonymous
Aggressive Neutral
Figure 6.3 Effects of online anonymity depend on implicit norms. Levels of verbal aggression present in blog posts by
participants who were either anonymous or not and who saw prior posts that were either aggressive or neutral.
Source: Based on Zimmerman and Ybarra (2016) with permission of American Psychological Association.
not make people less responsive to social norms but could actually make them more so (Spears and
Lea 1994; Spears et al. 2002).
Groups and Helping Behaviour

The Bystander Effect and its Limits
On 27 March 1964, an article appeared in the New York Times describing the circumstances
surrounding the murder of a 28-year-old women, Kitty Genovese, two weeks earlier. The article
reported – incorrectly as it turns out – that the attack was witnessed by 38 people, none of whom
had intervened even by calling the police. In fact, only three named witnesses are known to have seen
the attacker and victim together, none of whom would necessarily have realised that a murder was
to take place. Moreover, the police were called but failed to respond (Manning et al. 2007). However,
these facts did not prevent the enduring urban myth that 38 apathetic witnesses watched the murder
unfold from their apartment windows, tapping as it did into popular fears about moral and social
breakdown associated with urbanisation (Levine 2012; Manning et al. 2007).
The impact of this myth on social psychology has been considerable, and it is well known to many
psychology students as the inspiration for a major line of research on bystander intervention in emer-
gencies. In what is now considered among the core ‘classic studies’ of social psychology, Darley and
Latané (1968) confronted naive participants with an apparent medical emergency in which a fellow
participant (an actor instructed by the experimenters) experiences a seizure. The situation was bril-
liantly devised such that participants were isolated in testing cubicles for a task in which they were
led to believe that they were communicating with others via an intercom system. They could not
actually see the other people around them, which meant that the experimenters could manipulate
the number of other people that participants believed to be present: that is, whether they thought
that they were alone in hearing the emergency or whether they believed they were with either one or
four other observers. In this and many other similar experiments, it was found that the mere presence
of bystanders made it less likely that any given individual would intervene (Darley and Latané 1968;
Latane and Nida 1981). The effect is especially striking given its counterintuitive implication that if
you need help in an emergency, you are more likely to get it if there are fewer people present.
The bystander effect has been explained in terms of a multistage model of intervention, whereby
in order to intervene a person must first: (i) notice the emergency; (ii) interpret it as an emergency;
(iii) take responsibility for being the one to act; and (iv) decide that a certain response is appropriate
(Latané and Darley 1970). The argument is that the presence of others can interrupt this sequence at
any of several points. One is less likely to notice an emergency in a busy environment and less likely to
interpret it as an emergency if everybody else seems unbothered. The presence of others, it is argued,
also leads to a so-called ‘diffusion of responsibility’ whereby the responsibility for helping is shared
across a number of people, so that each person feels less individual responsibility and assumes that
there are other people who can intervene instead. Taken together, these points imply a general set of
processes that characterise individuals as generally more responsible and more helpful than groups.
To the extent that this is taken to imply that groups are toxic to the otherwise responsible and proso-
cial behaviour of individuals, this line of thinking therefore has much in common with the notion of
deindividuation that we discussed in Section “Identity Transformation and Emergence of Conflict in
Crowds”: all that is good about human conduct resides within the moral integrity of individuals, and
the primary effect of groups is to corrupt this and drag us to a baser, more dangerous level (Manning
et al. 2007). However, despite the general replicability and robustness of the standard bystander effect
(Latane and Nida 1981), a number of important exceptions have emerged that challenge its generality
and the implication that groups undermine helping.
First, the bystander effect does not seem to occur in emergencies involving violence. For example,
men in groups were more likely than individual men to help the victim of a simulated (but realis-
tic) rape in a secluded university carpark (Harari et al. 1985). Participants in a laboratory study were
more likely to assist the victim of sexual harassment and potential assault when in the presence of
bystanders (Fischer et al. 2006). Researchers examining real CCTV footage of ‘aggressive incidents’
(that is, altercations with the potential to escalate into violence) in city centre drinking spaces found
that the presence of more people made actual violence less likely (Levine et al. 2011). A larger number
of bystanders appear to have been associated with more attempts by third parties to de-escalate the
situation, such as by holding aggressors back, standing between them, and so forth. There is, there-
fore, good reason to conclude that, at least in situations of actual or potential violence, the presence
of numerous bystanders is no bad thing at all.
A second issue is that one may question whether the unresponsive bystanders in the classic studies
really constitute groups at all. After all, these studies typically involve participants who are told that
others are present but do not actually see or interact with them, nor have any familiarity with them.
When a familiarisation stage is included to acquaint participants with one another and create a level
of cohesiveness among the bystanders, the effect is reversed so that people are more likely to help as
the number of people present is increased (Rutkowski et al. 1983). Similarly, participants were asked
to imagine that they are witnessing a violent attack report being less likely to intervene if they are
with five strangers rather than alone (the standard bystander effect) but more likely if they are with
a group of friends (Levine and Crowther 2008). It therefore seems that cohesive groups, rather than
mere collections of anonymous strangers, may be potentially more helpful in emergencies than the
standard bystander effect would suggest.
A further way in which the social relationships among bystanders and victims may be important,
beyond just the number of people present in an emergency, concerns the shared category member-
ships among them. For example, does it matter whether the other bystanders are ingroup members
or not, or which specific groups are involved? Some further studies by Levine and Crowther (2008)
suggest that it does. They created a situation in which participants watched video footage of a violent
attack by a man on a woman, presented as if recorded by CCTV, and then made judgements about
what they would do if they were to witness such an attack. In line with other studies of bystander
behaviour, the participants were either alone or in groups, but unlike in other studies, the gender
composition of the groups was systematically varied. In some conditions, participants were in single-
sex groups of three, whereas in other conditions, the groups were of mixed gender. The levels of
helping in each condition are shown in Figure 6.4 and are not straightforward. Female participants
were more likely to help when in the presence of other women (‘group’ condition) than when alone.
However, when placed as the only woman in the situation alongside two men (‘minority’ condition),
they were less likely to help than when alone. In other words, women’s helping behaviour was inhib-
ited by the presence of men but enhanced by the presence of other women. On the other hand, men
were least likely to help when part of a single-sex group, whereas the presence of two women sub-
stantially increased their likelihood of helping. At the supposed end of the main experiment, a female
student entered the room to request help with her own separate experiment and was berated by
the experimenter for interrupting. The frequency of subsequent offers for help by participants on
their way out of the laboratory replicated exactly the pattern observed previously: the presence of
Female participants
Alone
Group
Minority
Male participants
0 20 40 60 80 100
Proportion of participants offering help (%)
Figure 6.4 Bystander effects depend on the gender composition of the group. Effects of male and female bystanders
on the frequency of helping a female confederate. Source: Levine and Crowther (2008). Reproduced with permission
of American Psychological Association.
women increased both male and female participants’ levels of helping, whereas the presence of men
reduced it.
Clearly, these findings suggest a level of complexity beyond the classic bystander effect. Levine and
Crowther argue for essentially two kinds of group process that account for their findings. First, the
presence of ingroup members raises the salience of the social identity and then, with that, the obli-
gation to offer help to other ingroup members. This accounts for the higher level of help offered by
female participants to a female recipient when in the company of other women, but it does not explain
the male participants’ behaviour or the fact that women’s helping was undermined by the presence
of men. In order to explain this, the researchers argue that gender roles are at work: when men have
a female audience, they are more inclined to enact a stereotypical masculine gender role by offer-
ing help to a woman in need. Conversely, for individual women in the company of men, the same
expected gender role may lead to an expectation that they should be more passive and rely on the
men to take the initiative; hence the lower rates of helping among women in the minority condition.
These interpretations correspond to two kinds of group processes implicated in helping behaviour:
the first concerning the solidarity and support that people more readily show towards ingroup mem-
bers, and the second concerning the impact of particular norms and social roles associated with group
memberships. The remainder of this chapter will explore both of these aspects more deeply.
Solidarity within the Group

We saw in Chapters 1 and 2 that a fundamental process arising from the salience of a social iden-
tity is that perceptions of ourselves and others shift towards emphasising the similarity and inter-
changeability of ingroup members and de-emphasising the differences. A behavioural corollary of
this is that there is an enhanced level of cooperation and support among people when they see each
other in terms of a shared group membership. That is, if commonalities among group members are
foregrounded, then so are group interests such that the needs of fellow ingroup members are less
distinguishable from one’s own personal needs. Helping ingroup members would then become an
extension of helping oneself. Indeed, the mutual support the group members offer each other may be
a basic feature of cohesion, part of what enables groups to actually function as groups in the world.
Early work on the increased levels of help that people offer to ingroup members compared to out-
group members focused largely on ethnic relations in the United States, and particularly, the question
of whether White Americans helped other White people more readily than they did Black people.
Gaertner and Bickman (1971) devised an effective field research method for assessing this question,
termed the ‘wrong number technique’. Unsuspecting participants, selected randomly from the Brook-
lyn telephone directory, received an early-evening call from a research confederate posing as a driver
who needed assistance with his broken-down car. Through the scripted conversation, it became
apparent that the caller had dialled a wrong number while trying to reach his regular garage and had
just used up his last change for the payphone. He would request, then plead, the participant to call the
garage on his behalf to pass on his location, giving willing helpers the phone number to do so (in fact
the telephone number of the experimenters’ assistant). In order to lead participants to believe that the
stranded driver was White or Black, the confederate would adopt the particular dialect and speech
patterns associated either with ‘southern Negros’ or with White New Yorkers at the time. In this way,
it was possible to establish that the caller’s ethnicity affected whether or not he was helped: white
participants called the garage somewhat more frequently for the ‘White’ caller than for the ‘Black’
one (Figure 6.5). This is consistent with the suggestion that shared group membership is a basis for
100
80
60
Percentage helping
40
20
0
White participant Black participant
White victim Black victim
Figure 6.5 Helping depends on intergroup relationships. The White ‘stranded motorist’ receives more help from
White strangers than the Black one. If the participant who receives the call is Black, then there is no statistically
significant preference for either the White or Black motorist. Source: Gaertner and Bickman (1971). Reproduced with
permission of American Psychological Association.
mutual help and support (see also Levine et al. 2002). Yet, as the graph highlights, this pattern was
not mirrored in the behaviour of Black participants who showed only a slight and statistically non-
significant preference for the white caller. The latter finding highlights the possibility that preferences
for one’s ingroup are often not universal and that in some cases, oppressed groups may actually show
preferences for the higher status outgroup. This is a point that we will return to in depth in Chapter 8.
When we consider the tendency to offer help to members of the ingroup, we need to keep in mind
that viewing a certain person as either ingroup or outgroup is not inevitable but depends on the par-
ticular categories and boundaries that are salient at any point in time (see Chapter 1). So, a Black per-
son is only categorised as outgroup by a White person to the extent that ‘race’ is the main category that
they are using to comprehend the situation. What if the person needing help is of a different ethnicity
but shares some other group membership with us, making them fellow ingroup members? This is the
possibility explored in a further field experiment in which White or Black interviewers approached
White people at a college football game to ask for help with a survey (Nier et al. 2001). These inter-
viewers would wear attire indicating their university affiliation, such that they would either share or
not share this identity with the people they approached. When university affiliation was shared, the
Black interviewers were actually helped more frequently than the White ones. The high salience of
university affiliation in that competitive context seems to have displaced any disadvantage that might
otherwise been faced by the Black interviewers. Indeed, the authors suggest, being a minority in terms
of their ethnicity while part of the university ingroup might have led to them being treated as ‘new’
group members as thus given even more support than the ethnic ingroup (Nier et al. 2001). The key
point is that whether somebody is seen as ingroup or outgroup, and hence, whether ingroup solidar-
ity extends to them or not, will depend on the particular kind of categorisation given importance by
the situation.
Levine et al. (2005) provide an experimental demonstration of how the contextual salience of social
categories affects helping. They posted advertisements for fans of English Premier League football
teams to take part in a study, purportedly about football teams and their fans. However, of those
responding, only fans of one team – Manchester United – were actually invited to the laboratory to
take part in the experiment. This involved completing a questionnare that asked them to write down
what they really liked about being a Manchester United fan, thus making that particular fan identity
salient. They were told that for a second part of the study they would need to cross the campus to
watch a video at a second location. On the way, on a secluded part of the route, they would encounter a
confederate posing as a jogger who would trip and fall, grasping his ankle in agony. In order to manip-
ulate ingroup or outgroup status, the confederate wore (i) a Manchester United shirt, (ii) a Liverpool
shirt (a rival team), or (iii) an unbranded red football shirt. As one might expect, when dressed as a fel-
low Manchester United fan, the confederate received more help than in either of the other conditions
(Figure 6.6; experiment 1). However, the most interesting finding comes from a second experiment,
which repeated the procedure with one small variation: rather than the questionnaire asking about
being a Manchester United fan, it asked about being a ‘fan of the beautiful game’. In other words, a
more inclusive identity, encompassing fans of all teams, was made salient. When faced with the same
situation, help was now extended to the Liverpool fan just as much as the Manchester United fan,
and it was only the jogger in the unbranded shirt that was helped less (Figure 6.6; experiment 2). We
see therefore that the very same situation can provide a different pattern of helping behaviour when
the salience of a broader ingroup leads to a correspondingly broader scope of ingroup solidarity.
How might the ingroup inclusiveness and solidarity operate in the real world? One way is through
appeals that might be deployed to mobilise a whole group to support someone. For example, under
Experiment 1 (Manchester United identity salient)

14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
Manchester United Liverpool shirt Plain shirt
shirt
No help Help
Experiment 2 (Football fan identity salient)

9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Manchester United Liverpool shirt Plain shirt
shirt
Figure 6.6 Help for a fan in need depends on which group identity is salient. Manchester United fans’ frequency of
helping a stranger wearing Manchester United, Liverpool, or plain shirt. Source: Levine et al. (2005). Reproduced with
permission of SAGE Publications.
Nazi occupation of Bulgaria in the early 1940s, large-scale resistance to the deportation of Jews meant
that Bulgaria was the only Nazi-occupied country in which the policy of deportation largely failed.
This resistance presents a striking example of bystander intervention on a large scale, which led
Reicher et al. (2006) to examine letters and other documents produced at the time to investigate how
some Bulgarians had successfully persuaded their co-nationals to actively resist the deportations and
thus protect the Jews in their country. In these materials, Bulgarians were called on to act on the
grounds that, first, they shared their national identity with the Jewish population. That is, Jews were
to be viewed as no less Bulgarian than the non-Jewish population, and thus deserving of Bulgarians’
solidarity.
To take a more contemporary example, anti-immigrant sentiment is currently a significant factor
driving political life in numerous countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, which
is home to both of the authors. Public debate on the matter usually revolves around questions of
whether ‘they’, immigrants, benefit ‘us’ or harm ‘us’ in economically, socially, or in some other way.
Yet, framed this way, such questions always privilege one way of categorising the people involved –
as ‘immigrants’, ‘migrants’ and ‘foreigners’. These are almost inevitably outgroup categories from the
perspective of the majority population. Yet, all ‘immigrants’ could equally well be categorised in other
ways by the people who know them: as fellow colleagues, neighbours, parents, and so on, all of which
would render them as ingroup members. In other words, the very emphasis on one way of cate-
gorising a situation often has implications for the extent of solidarity between people (Reicher and
Hopkins 2001). Ryan et al. (2017) illustrates this powerfully in her analysis of a campaign to pre-
vent the deportation by the UK government of Florence Mhango, a Malawian asylum seeker, and
her 10-year-old daughter Precious, who had lived in the UK since she was four. She finds that the
campaigns consistently stressed Florence and Precious’s ingroup status, for example, by emphasising
their belongingness and integration into their adopted city of Glasgow, the fact that Precious was a
typical Glasgow schoolgirl in terms of her interests, personality, and accent, and that Florence was
a typical mother with precisely the same feelings towards her daughter as any other mother. Even
the name of the campaign stressed the clear ingroup status of its subjects: ‘Florence and Precious
Belong to Glasgow’. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the campaign attracted strong local support,
highlighting that the scope of ingroup solidarity very much depends on the particular categories that
are made salient. In a similar vein, we have also found that English adolescents are more likely to
act in support of asylum seekers to the extent that they view Englishness in an inclusive way that
can potentially include immigrants (Pehrson et al. 2009; see also Pehrson, Vignoles and Brown 2009;
Wakefield et al. 2011).
In the first part of this chapter, we discussed how the interactions between groups in crowd sit-
uations (such as between protestors and police) can produce changes in the way crowd members
categorise themselves. Members of a fragmented crowd can come to perceive themselves in a more
unified way as a result of indiscriminate police action against them, for example. In a similar way, we
might expect individuals experiencing shared danger in an emergency to think and act as a cohesive
groups rather than as the isolated individuals that they were before the emergency. Given what we
have discussed about ingroup solidarity, such an emergent common identity would be a potential
basis for helping among strangers in such emergency situations. Drury has led much of the research
documenting the extraordinary power of these spontaneously formed groups to provide their mem-
bers with the resilience they need (Drury et al. 2009a, 2009b, 2015). Much of this research has involved
interviews with survivors of such disasters as those in the Hillsborough and Bradford football stadi-
ums in 1984 and 1985, the terrorist bombings in the London public transport system in 2005, and
the ferry sinkings in Greece and South Africa in 1988 and 1991 (Drury et al. 2009a, 2009b). Survivors
of such situations overwhelmingly report a spontaneous sense of solidarity and commonality arising
from the fact that everyone faced a shared threat. Many of the respondents went on to record how
this solidarity led to innumerable acts of civility, kindness, and practical assistance. As one survivor
of the 2005 terrorist attacks in London put it:
One of the things that struck me about this experience is that one minute you are standing
around with strangers and the next minute they become the closest and most important people
in your life. That feeling was quite extraordinary.
(quoted in Drury et al. 2009b, p. 68)
Such accounts seem very far from the common myth that people are susceptible to ‘mass panic’
when facing danger in groups, acting selfishly and chaotically. Rather, the shared social identity that
emerges from a common threat to life seems literally to be a life saver, enabling coordination and
solidarity that helps everybody to get to safety more effectively (see Chapter 5).
A series of virtual reality experiments simulating an emergency evacuation from an underground

railway station lends further support to this process (Drury et al. 2009c). Participants were immersed
into an interactive 3-D environment in which their task was to evacuate the station as quickly as
possible, along the way facing delays due to the density of the crowd. The unfolding simulation pre-
sented participants with opportunities to help apparently injured people, delaying one’s own escape.
They could also choose to act selfishly by pushing others aside. Using this simulation, Drury and col-
leagues confirmed that highlighting a shared threat of death increased the level of common identity
with others in the situation, which in turn led to more helping and less selfish behaviour. Again then,
it seems that facing a common threat can increase solidarity among people, who might otherwise be
indifferent strangers and can facilitate a coordinated exit from danger.
So far, we have seen that the shared identity that emerges among people caught in an emergency or
disaster leads to solidarity and practical support between them. One reason for this is that, as we have
seen, we are more prone to help people with who we see as ingroup. The experience of common fate
created by an emergency situation helps to generate a shared social identity – ‘we’ who are all in the
same boat (see Chapter 2). In turn, this leads people to act together to try to overcome the challenges
facing them and to offer – and expect to receive – help from those around them, now fellow ingroup
members. However, there is a further reason, which is that in order to assist, we may need to coordi-
nate efforts with other people, and this very coordination is helped by having a common identity. In
other words, social identity facilitates helping in two ways: (i) creating the bond of solidarity between
giver and recipient of help and (ii) enabling groups of helpers to work effectively together to assist
others. Both of these processes were observed in the aftermath of the massive earthquake affecting
central Chile in 2010 (Drury et al. 2016). A sample of over 1300 residents of the affected area were
interviewed roughly two and a half years after the disaster and were asked about their exposure to
the earthquake as well as experiences of helping others in its aftermath. The findings are illustrated in
Figure 6.7. Individuals who were most directly affected by the earthquake experienced a greater sense
of common fate with the people around them, which led to more identification with others who were
affected. This identification, in turn, facilitated emotionally supporting other survivors and, because
Identification Emotionally
Disaster
Common fate with others supporting
exposure
affected others
Participating
Expecting
in
support from
coordinated
others
support
Figure 6.7 Common fate in disasters can generate new social identities. Shared experience of disaster leading to
identification and solidarity in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Chile. Source: Based on Drury et al. (2016) with
permission of American Psychological Association.
of a heightened expectation that others would lend support, more participation in coordinated group
efforts to assist survivors such as by managing supplies and searching for survivors. Once again, we
see the life-saving potential of the common identity that can emerge from a shared experience of an
emergency situation.
Helping the Outgroup

In general, then, shared ingroup membership confers an obligation to lend support when it is needed.
People are more helpful to others when they see them as ingroup members. This does not mean
that outgroups are always helped less, but simply that one needs some reason to help the outgroup,
whereas for ingroup members, the group membership itself is sufficient (Reicher and Haslam 2009).
So, what would be a good reason to help an outgroup member? Of course, few real situations are
purely intergroup in nature because people can see themselves and the victim in a variety of ways
simultaneously: as members of different groups, as individuals, or simply as human beings. In most
cases, an act of giving probably involves a mixture of these understandings and therefore a variety
of factors come into play (Zagefka and James 2015). For example, when it comes to donations for
disaster victims, it seems that people make judgements about the deservingness of the victims and
give accordingly. Victims of natural disasters are seen as less blameworthy than victims of human-
caused disasters such as wars, and thus receive more help, as do victims who are perceived to be
proactive rather than passively waiting for help (Zagefka et al. 2011). In this section, we will consider
three reasons for helping outgroups that stem specifically from the intergroup nature of the situation:
helping to protecting one’s image or reputation, helping because the norms of your group demand it,
and helping to maintain a relationship of dependency with the outgroup.
The enhanced obligation to show solidarity with ingroup members presents a dilemma: being sup-
portive of your group may be a positively valued thing, but so is being fair and nonpartisan. What if
one person’s loyalty and solidarity is another’s nepotism or discrimination? Certainly, in most con-
texts, overtly ignoring somebody in need just because they are not part of your group is not something
that makes us feel good about ourselves, let alone something we expect to receive praise for. This
being the case, people might extend their help to outgroup members if not doing so can too easily be
put down to favouritism. If, on the other hand, the situation is ambiguous or complicated enough to
provide rationalisations for not helping – rationalisations that have nothing to do with group mem-
bership – then people can avoid helping the outgroup without concern that their behaviour will be
interpreted as discrimination.
The classic bystander effect provides a useful way to examine outgroup helping under conditions
of differing levels of ambiguity. As we have seen, the presence of others in an emergency can some-
times make people feel less responsibility to intervene. When alone, failing to help in an emergency
is difficult to justify, but when there are other bystanders, one might assume that somebody else will
do it. In the same way, not helping an outgroup member in need when you are the sole person who
could do so reflects an indifference to their need that will typically be socially unacceptable. On the
other hand, when there are other potential helpers, failure to help can be put down to the availability
of other helpers, rather than one’s prejudice against the outgroup. In line with this, Gaertner et al.
(1982) found that White American participants were just as quick to help a Black person as they were
a White person, but only when they were the sole witnesses to the accident (in which a victim was
heard screaming as a stack of chairs fell on them). In the presence of two other bystanders, racial
discrimination emerged whereby participants were slower to help the Black victim than the White
victim. A similar pattern emerges from a meta-analysis showing that White people preferentially help
other Whites rather than Blacks only under conditions that make non-helping easier to justify: when
helping is riskier or more effortful, when the need for help is more ambiguous, and when the situa-
tion is less of an emergency (Saucier et al. 2005). In other words, if help would be easy to give and is
clearly needed, it is difficult for a White person to avoid helping a Black person whilst simultaneously
maintaining their image as non-racist.
Besides helping in order not to appear racist, one might also help in order to present one’s group
in a positive light, perhaps to disconfirm a stereotype that they are selfish or stingy. For example,
within the United Kingdom, there is an established stereotype among the English that Scottish peo-
ple are particularly tight-fisted and reluctant to part with their money. For their part, Scottish people
are aware of the stereotype, reject it, and are quite understandably irked when reminded of it. In
an experiment conducted by Hopkins et al. (2007), Scottish participants who were reminded of this
‘meanness’ stereotype more readily offered help to a third party (a charity helping victims of violence
in Wales) compared to a control condition. It appears, then, that helping outgroups can be a way of
demonstrating to others that their negative impression of your group is wrong. This received fur-
ther confirmation from studies in which Dutch participants offered various kinds of help to Belgian
visitors as a result of being concerned that the latter viewed them as being ‘cold’ and ‘selfish’ (van
Leeuwen and Tauber 2012). Helping an outgroup can also serve to demonstrate that one’s own group
is competent (van Leeuwen and Tauber 2011).
Just as we might want to avoid outsiders thinking that our group is selfish or partisan, we may
also try to act fairly because we see this as a valued characteristic within our own groups. In other
words, helping others – including outgroups – might be supported by group norms of fairness and
benevolence. For instance, in the previously discussed case of opposition to deportation of Jews from
Bulgaria, arguments frequently invoked national norms of justice such that failing to help the Jews
would be a betrayal of what it meant to be a true Bulgarian (Reicher et al. 2006). Even the intergroup
discrimination evident in the minimal group paradigm (a form of preferential ingroup helping dis-
cussed in detail in Chapter 2) is attenuated by ingroup norms of fairness (Jetten et al. 1996).
Helping other groups, then, serves the purpose of communicating something about us: it says that
we are generous and kind and have the ability to help. However, the act of helping also communicates
something about the other party, the recipient of help, because their need for help might imply that
they are less able, inferior, and thus dependent on us. Helping also says something about the status
relationship between us and them because high status groups are more generally in a position to
help their subordinates than the reverse. These points form the basis for Nadler’s (2002) model of
intergroup helping as a form of power relations, which asserts that helping between groups generally
involves some inequality that places one group in a position to help and the other in need of help.
This being the case, a possible motive for high status groups to help outgroups is to emphasise and
perhaps extend their domination over them.
This is particularly the case with so-called ‘dependency oriented’ help, whereby the helper pro-
vides a full solution that solves the recipient’s problem for them. This is contrasted with ‘autonomy
oriented’ help, which enables them to do it for themselves (Nadler 1998, 2002). Imagine, for exam-
ple, that a female student working on some exercises in a mathematics class is ‘helped’ by one of her
male classmates, who passes her a complete set of the correct answers to the questions. Such help,
especially when unasked for (often termed ‘assumptive’ help) clearly conveys the helper’s assumption
that the other party is weak or incompetent. As a way of undermining them it can therefore be far
from altruistic and is not necessarily welcome. Halabi et al. (2011) investigated how Arab Israeli high
6.5
5.5
4.5
4
Arab Jewish Arab Jewish Arab Jewish
RA RA RA RA RA RA
Self esteem as Arabs Positive feelings Self-worth
No help Help
Figure 6.8 Intergroup helping can be detrimental for the recipient’s well-being. Arab students’ ratings of their
self-esteem as Arabs, positive feelings and self-worth after either receiving or not receiving assumptive help from a
research assistant. Source: Adapted from Halabi et al. (2011) with permission of John Wiley and Sons.
school students – a low status minority within Israeli society – would react to assumptive help in the
form of a RA offering them the correct answers during a difficult test. Receiving assumptive help from
an ingroup Arab RA increased their sense of self-worth and self-esteem as Arabs and made them feel
more positive, whereas receiving it from an outgroup Jewish RA undermined it and made them feel
worse (Figure 6.8). Further studies confirm that low status groups find dependency-oriented helping
threatening because it affirms their low status and incompetence, and they respond by derogating the
high status group, particularly when the hierarchy is seen as unstable (Nadler and Halabi 2006).
The effects of assumptive help may be particularly significant in relations between men and women
because women are stereotypically viewed as being less competent and therefore dependent on men.
Wakefield et al. (2012) investigated this by creating a scenario in which female participants were asked
to attempt a series of computer-based problems. These were so difficult as to be virtually unsolvable
but were presented along with an option to seek help in the form of hints from an off-campus research
team. However, the task was soon interrupted by the experimenter receiving a call to her mobile
phone, apparently from her plumber, ‘Joe’. Through the scripted telephone conversation, it transpired
that Joe had moved some of her furniture without asking. On ending the phone call, the experimenter
attributed Joe’s assumptive help either to his sexist assumption that women are incapable of doing
things for themselves, or to his impatience. Those participants who had been reminded of the sexist
dependency stereotype were less willing to seek help than those in the control (impatience) condition,
and to the extent that they did seek help they experienced lower mood. Thus, women may avoid
seeking help – even when needed – if there is a risk that this might be seen as confirmation of the
stereotype that women are dependent.
Summary
1. The notion of ‘deindividuation’ takes a broadly pessimistic view of the role of groups in human
relations. There are a number of variations and refinements of the concept, but all portray groups
Further Reading 185
as a potential threat to self-awareness and self-restraint. According to some accounts, ‘deindivid-

uated’ people act on aggressive impulses, while in other accounts, they react automatically to cues
in the environment.
2. Studies on deindividuation often involve making people feel anonymous in laboratory settings
because anonymity is presumed to be an important mechanism linking immersion in groups to
antisocial behaviour. However, accumulated evidence does not support the view that anonymity
in groups leads particularly to aggression. Rather, it is more plausible that group norms become
more important, and these norms may be either prosocial or antisocial, depending on the groups
involved.
3. Zimbardo’s SPE is one of the best known studies in psychology. The abusive behaviour by partic-
ipants assigned to the role of guards in a mock prison has sometimes been cited as evidence for
deindividuation. However, the group context and observed behaviours are inconsistent with the
view that participants’ behaviour was uninhibited or impulsive. Rather, their actions were in line
with explicit expectations Zimbardo had created for them as research assistants whose job was to
create an oppressive environment in which to study the reactions of prisoners.
4. Studies of riots have concluded that, even when crowds are violent or aggressive, this is not because
people are acting on impulse. Rather, their actions follow distinct patters that reflect group norms.
That is, patterns of violence or destructiveness in riots are not random or meaningless, but sys-
tematically reflect how groups view themselves and the relationships with other groups such as
the police.
5. The ‘bystander effect’ is a phenomenon whereby helping behaviour is undermined by the presence
of others: the more potential helpers are present in an emergency, the less likely any one of them is
to offer help. However, this classic effect has a number of important caveats: in emergencies involv-
ing violence, or where the bystanders form a cohesive group, the presence of more bystanders can
facilitate helping. The group memberships of bystanders can also make particular identities more
salient, which can both increase and decrease helping.
6. In general, people are more willing to help others to the extent that they share a social iden-
tity with the person in need. However, the inclusiveness of social identities is not fixed. Groups
can be defined in both inclusive and exclusive ways, and this affects patterns of help and
solidarity.
7. In emergencies such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks, the shared experience of threat can
spontaneously create a shared identity that binds strangers together, leading to coordinated efforts
to help one another and get out of danger. The notion of ‘mass panic’ whereby masses of people
become irrational and selfish under threat appears to be a myth.
8. People also help those they see as outgroups but often for reasons that ultimately serve ingroup
interests. For example, helping outgroup members may serve to make one’s ingroup look more
generous or more competent. It may also serve to preserve a relationship of dependency that pro-
tects the high status position of the ingroup.
Further Reading
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Stürmer, S. and Snyder, M. (eds.) (2010). The Psychology of Prosocial Behavior: Group Processes,
Intergroup Relations, and Helping. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Zimbardo, P.G. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil.
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191
Conflict and Inequality
We began this book with the observation that groups get a bad press. So many of the least desirable of
human behaviour, from dangerously deluded decision-making to ‘mob’ violence to abusive treatment
of prisoners, are frequently attributed to the nefarious influence of group pressures on otherwise
decent and rational individuals. We have tried to balance this overwhelmingly negative picture by
demonstrating how groups are part and parcel of our everyday lives, for better as well as for worse.
But, perhaps we have not yet confronted the most obvious way in which, one might suggest, groups
are bad for us. Consider the following:
1. During the three decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland known as the ‘Troubles’, over
3000 people were killed, both by paramilitary groups and by state security forces. This is how one
former paramilitary described the murder of a 17-year-old student to a BBC journalist many years
later:
I went out with a group of other volunteers from the UFF1 and we picked up a Catholic and
we took him away and we executed him.
Murdered him.
Yes.
A Catholic?
Yes.
Any Catholic?
Yes.
Why was he selected?
He was selected for no other reason than he was a Catholic.
(quoted in Taylor 1999, p. 177)
2. In India, Dalits (people who are excluded from the traditional caste system and historically
regarded as ‘Untouchable’) continue to face widespread violence such as rape and being beaten,
crushed, or burned to death. Such attacks often take place as reprisals for Dalits’ assertion of their
rights to land, education, and other basic rights.
1 The Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFFs) is a Loyalist paramilitary group that, during the Troubles, considered itself at war
against Irish Republicanism.
192 7 Conflict and Inequality
3. The Global Gender Gap report, published by the World Economic Forum, measures the extent
of gender equality in economic, educational, health, and political domains around the world. The
latest report at the time of writing showed an average gap of 32% in these outcomes for women and
girls compared to men and boys. The gender gap was starkest in economic and political domains
(41% and 77%, respectively). No country had attained full gender equality, with even the most
gender-equal countries (mainly in Northern Europe, as well as Rwanda) having an overall gender
gap of around 12–20%.
Each of these examples involves human beings being harmed because they belong to one group
rather than another. Not just this, but the perpetrators of such acts are people who most likely see
themselves as representatives of the groups they themselves belong to. This short but depressing list
could have been much longer, and group-based conflict, violence, and oppression show no sign of
diminishing. While there are numerous differences between every one of these cases, each with its
own history and various causes, the role of groups in each of them is undeniable. How could we doubt
the destructive and oppressive nature of groups when presented with such overwhelming evidence
day in, day out? It is time for us to consider these issues directly. We start by considering the conse-
quences of structural relationships between groups for the way their members think, feel, and behave
towards each other. Intergroup relationships are often complex, involving a combination of coopera-
tion and exploitation. In the second part of the chapter, we focus on unequal relations between groups
and the ways in which dominant groups secure the acquiescence of those they dominate.
Intergroup Relations and Real Group Interests

The Development of an Intergroup Perspective
The origins of intergroup relations as a significant research topic with social psychology can be traced
to the 1950s and to two seminal books in particular: Adorno et al. (1950) The Authoritarian Personal-
ity, and Allport’s (1954) The Nature of Prejudice. Both were written in the United States (although the
former had its intellectual roots in Germany) and were shaped significantly by the post-war climate.
This included the horror and revulsion at (then recent) Nazi holocaust in Europe, which had revealed
the extraordinary depths to which racist ideologies could take human behaviour, along with a con-
cern with the existence of anti-Semitism in the United States and where this could potentially lead.
It also included the legally enforced discrimination against African–Americans, controversy over
racial desegregation, and profoundly derogatory beliefs held by many white Americans towards their
Black compatriots. The authors of these important works saw a rational, scientific understanding of
‘prejudice’ (that is, negative beliefs and feelings towards a group and its members; see Brown (2010)),
as crucial to a future world in which all would be treated on the basis of their common humanity.
In the early years of empirical research on prejudice, psychologists were mainly interested in iden-
tifying personality types that were thought to be more prone to antipathy towards outgroups. For
example, being a rigid thinker, as well having an ambivalent combination of fear and idealisation
of one’s parents, were among the characteristics thought to make up the character of a ‘bigot’ (e.g.
Adorno et al. 1950; Allport 1954; Rokeach 1948). Regardless of the particular attributes of the preju-
diced personality, the idea was that prejudiced individuals are flawed in some way, through some lim-
itation in their thinking style and/or some psychological vulnerability rooted in dysfunctional family
relationships. Scholars worked to define and measure these various prejudiced personality types and
observe how they correlated with prejudice, and this broad agenda is still present, if less dominant,
in contemporary prejudice research (see Brown 2010, Chapter 2, for a fuller discussion).
However, it was clear from the beginning – stressed explicitly by Allport – that prejudice could
only be understood by considering a wide range of factors operating at different levels, from basic
processes of human cognition up to culture, economics and the structure of society. On the one hand,
at a given time and place, individuals who dislike one outgroup very often dislike other outgroups as
well. Individuals who devalue gay people are likelier than others to reject foreigners and Muslims,
have derogatory views about homeless people, and hold sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic attitudes to
boot (Zick et al. 2008; Zick and Kuepper 2008). This pattern suggests that there is something about
those individuals themselves that attracts them to such a wide range of prejudices. However, on the
other hand, the notion of a prejudiced personality is less useful if we want to understand why particu-
lar groups are devalued at particular times and places. For example, it stretches plausibility to explain
the marked rise of anti-Muslim attitudes in North America and Europe since 2001, or conversely the
positive transformation in attitudes towards same-sex relationships, in terms of a notable change in
personality types over time. Similarly, can it be that different levels of prejudice in different places are
explained by the personalities of the people living there?
This was a question taken up directly by Pettigrew (1958) in an important study on ethnic attitudes
in the United States and South Africa. Pettigrew found that anti-Black attitudes were much stronger
in South Africa and the south of the United States compared to northern states, perhaps unsurpris-
ingly. However, there was no difference in those populations’ ‘authoritarian personality’ scores (as
measured using the scale by Adorno et al.), even though this personality variable did correlate with
prejudice within the northern American sample. In other words, personality could explain why indi-
viduals were more prejudiced than others within the same context, but not why some contexts were
more prejudiced than others. Billig (1978) makes a further interesting point: if a certain bigoted atti-
tude is so marginal within a society as to even be bizarre from the point of view of the mainstream
(such as being a Holocaust denier in Western Europe), it would be unsurprising if the people drawn
to those ideas had a rather distinctive personality type. However, to the extent that a prejudice is
widespread and consensual – in other words, as it becomes even more relevant as a social problem –
then personality becomes increasingly irrelevant as an explanation (see Brown 2010, Chapter 2, for
further discussion of this point).
There are two key assumptions underpinning the concept of a ‘prejudiced personality’, at least in
its early formulations, that are worth highlighting. First, is the idea that feeling negatively towards
a social group is fundamentally mistaken and irrational. Since everyone is a unique individual, it
assumed that people who dislike or even want to harm an entire category of people must be ‘deluded’
or even ‘disturbed’. The second assumption is that what goes on in our heads creates division and
conflict in the world – that inner conflict spawns outer conflict. From this perspective, it makes sense
to try and understand hostilities between groups by looking at the minds of individuals so that we
can find out what causes this distorted and maladaptive way of viewing others.
Both of these assumptions were dramatically challenged by three famous field experiments carried
out in the late 1940s and early 1950s by Muzafer Sherif, which have come to be known as the ‘sum-
mer camp’ studies (Sherif et al. 1955, 1961; Sherif and Sherif 1953). We will consider the details and
findings of Sherif ’s studies shortly, but let us first examine the key ideas that inspired them. Sherif
strongly rejected the idea that groups are less real than individuals. For him, groups have a material
reality. We often depend on the cooperation of other people in order to achieve our goals, and it is this
interdependence that leads us to form the structures, roles, and norms that make groups a reality (see
Chapter 2). From this point of view, it is entirely normal and rational for people to see the world in
terms of groups, because that is how things actually are. In fact, ignoring the reality of groups could
itself be delusional. Imagine, for example trying to play football whilst treating each player on the
pitch as a unique individual rather than as a member of one team or another. We do not have to look
for a flawed personality or faulty thinking style to understand why people often relate to each other
as members of group rather than as individuals. It simply reflects the situations they are in and the
goals they are trying to achieve.
Second, interdependence exists between groups as well as within them. Whether a group achieves
its goals or not often depends not only on its own members but also on the actions of another group
or groups. Consider, for example two groups of people working in a restaurant: chefs and waiting
staff. Neither group alone can get the correct orders to the customers without the cooperation of
the other. They need to work in combination, and the efforts of one group without the other would
be useless. In Sherif ’s terms, this is a relationship of positive interdependence. That is, both groups
work towards a common goal and the success of one depends on the success of another. On the
other hand, there are situations in which the success of one group depends on the failure of another,
such as when two rival political parties contest an election. If one party wins, the other loses. Sherif
called this kind of relationship negative interdependence. His central argument was that positive and
negative interdependence between groups give rise to positive or negative feelings and behaviours
among the individuals involved. When members of another group are in direct competition with
ours for resources, he suggests, warm and positive feelings towards them would actually hinder our
own group’s chances of success. Thus, hostility towards them is more functional in such situations.
Note that this completely reverses the logic of the personality approach. Far from being an irra-
tional response stemming from deep-seated frustrations or inflexible thinking, treating others as
group members accurately reflects reality and can be instrumental to the achievement of our goals.
It is not a problem with our minds that causes conflict. Rather, it is structures of negative interdepen-
dence between groups that make people feel antipathy towards other groups. From this point of view,
we can never hope to understand intergroup conflict by studying only individual psychology, ignor-
ing the way people are positioned within groups, which themselves exist in relation to other groups.
To do so would be studying group phenomena at the wrong level of analysis, a fallacy often termed
reductionism (recall our discussion of Asch’s critique of Floyd Allport’s individualism in Chapter 1).
Sherif ’s contribution was a determined critique of such reductionism. His emphasis on the reality of
groups and the relations between them led his theory to be termed Realistic Group Conflict Theory
(RGCT) (LeVine and Campbell 1972).
The Summer Camp Studies

Although the three field experiments making up the ‘summer camp’ studies differed slightly from
one another, they are similar enough in conception and outcome for us to be able to consider them
together. They were longitudinal (lasting some three weeks) and were designed to show systematic
changes in behaviour as a result of changing intergroup relations. The full design included three
stages: group formation, intergroup conflict, and conflict reduction. To effect this design, Sherif and
his colleagues arranged for the experiments to be conducted in the context of a boy’s summer camp.
In fact, as far as those participating in the experiments were concerned, that is exactly what it was
since all the activities were exactly the kinds of things which went on in American summer camps in
the 1950s (and probably still do!). The difference was, of course, that, unknown to the boys, the adults
running the camp were all trained researchers making careful observations of all that went on. The
boys themselves – all white, middle-class, and aged around 12 years – had been carefully screened
before being invited to the camp, and only those who seemed to be psychologically well adjusted
and from stable homes were accepted. In addition, none of the boys knew each other before coming
to the camp. Although this was a highly select and unrepresentative sample, it did ensure that any
behaviour they subsequently exhibited could not be attributed to a prior history of social deprivation
or behavioural problems, or to pre-existing personal relationships between the boys.
In the first stage of the experiments, the large group of 22–24 boys was split up into the two exper-
imental groups of the study. Care was taken to match these two groups as carefully as possible. In
the first two experiments, in addition to matching on various physical and psychological characteris-
tics, it was also arranged to have the majority of each boy’s best friends in the outgroup. In the third
experiment, the boys never actually met each other before the groups were formed and initially were
camped some distance from each other, unaware of the other group’s presence. For some days, the
children engaged in various activities in these groups without, however, having much to do with the
other group. Very quickly, the groups developed an internal structure and evolved minicultures of
their own with their own group symbols and names (such as ‘Eagles’ and ‘Rattlers’), and norms of
appropriate behaviour (such as ‘toughness’).
Although the other group did not figure much in their thinking, it is interesting to note that in
the first two experiments, the observers did record some instances of comparisons between the
groups and in these comparisons ‘the edge was given to one’s own group’ (Sherif 1966, p. 80). In
the third study, where the groups did not know of each other’s existence at this stage, signs such as
the discovery of paper cups at a hideout, or hearing tourists on a nearby walking trail, were imme-
diately interpreted as ‘intruders’. On being informed of the presence of the other group, several boys
spontaneously suggested to the camp authorities that the other group be challenged to some sport-
ing contest, one boy referring to the other group in pejorative terms. As we shall see, it is signif-
icant that this occurred before the intergroup conflict phase of the experiment had actually been
introduced.
The second stage then began. It was announced to the boys that a series of intergroup contests
would take place (e.g. softball, tug-of-war). The overall winner of these contests would receive a
cup and each member of this successful group would be given a gleaming new penknife, while the
losers would receive nothing. In this way, an objective conflict of interest was introduced between the
groups. In technical terms, they had moved from being independent of one another to being nega-
tively interdependent – what one group gained, the other lost. With the advent of this conflict stage,
the boys’ behaviour changed dramatically. Whereas in the first stage the two groups had coexisted
more or less peaceably, they were now transformed into two hostile factions, never losing an opportu-
nity to deride the outgroup (insults included ‘stinkers’, ‘sissies’, and ‘dirty bums’). The groups engaged
in a range of hostile behaviours such as messing up the other group’s dormitory, burning their flag,
and, in some instances, physically attacking its members.
Changes took place within the groups too. They invariably became more cohesive and the leader-
ship structure sometimes changed, with a more aggressive boy assuming dominance (recall our dis-
cussion in Chapter 4 on the relationship between intergroup context and the group prototype, which
a leader needs to embody in order to be influential). Indeed, this cohesion and leadership structure
was evident in the way they coordinated the various hostile actions against the other group. When
asked to nominate their best friends, over 90% of the children in both groups chose people in their
own group. This was all the more remarkable when it is remembered that, in the first two studies at
least, every boy’s best friends had been placed in the other group. In one instance, boys who had been
friends before the formation of the groups came to physical blows in the second stage when negative
interdependence was introduced. How fragile those initial interpersonal relationships proved to be
in the face of the changing intergroup relationship.
Having so easily generated such fierce competition between the boys, the researchers attempted to
reduce the conflict by creating positive interdependence between the groups in the third stage. That
is, they introduced goals which both groups desired but which were unattainable by one group by its
own efforts alone (Sherif 1966). One such superordinate goal was engineered by arranging for the
camp truck to break down some miles from camp. Since it was nearly lunchtime, the children had a
clear common interest in getting the truck started to return them to camp. However, the truck was
too heavy to be push-started by one group on its own. Only by both groups pulling on the tug-of-war
rope attached to the front bumper (the same rope which they had used in contest just days earlier)
could the truck be moved. After a number of scenarios like this, a marked change was observed in
the boys’ behaviour. There was much less hostility, fewer insults, and more friendships between boys
in previously competing groups. On the last evening of the camp, the groups took turns to perform
songs for one another and requested the staff whether they could return home together on the same
bus, cheering in celebration when this was allowed. On a refreshment stop on the way home, the
Rattlers made a joint decision to use their prize money from an earlier competition to buy drinks for
the Eagles as well as for themselves, while some Eagles reciprocated by using their own money to buy
sandwiches for the Rattlers.
Lessons from the Summer Camps

So what do we learn from the summer camp studies? First and foremost, they are a powerful demon-
stration of the limits of reductionism. They show that we have to look at the way groups are positioned
interdependently in a structure, rather than at individual minds in isolation, if we are to understand
how members of one group feel and act towards another. The summer camp studies rank among the
most impressive of social psychology’s classic studies, with Sherif ’s imaginative manipulation of group
goals producing powerful manifestations of both antagonism and solidarity among the boys (Billig
1976; Platow and Hunter 2012). Negative interdependence led to hostility, insults, and fighting, while
positive interdependence led to friendliness, camaraderie, and cooperation across the group divide.
These changes in the boys’ behaviour were too widespread and too rapid to be attributable to any
enduring personality disposition.
Of course, the role of real group interests does not imply that perceptions of outgroups are always
accurate. Sherif would not claim, for instance that the Rattlers’ characterisation of the Eagles as
‘stinkers’ and ‘dirty bums’ is an impartial observation of the Eagle’s lack of personal hygiene. The
point is that where there is distortion or exaggeration, this does not come from an individual misper-
ception but relates meaningfully to the intergroup context within which it occurs. Moreover, these
were not the idiosyncratic views of individuals, but stereotypes that were shared among fellow group
members. Indeed, sharing a view of the outgroup and of the appropriate action towards them made
it possible for the boys to act together. It meant that they could confront the outgroup, knowing that
their fellow ingroup members would back them up. Thus, the solidarity and cohesion within groups
is as important a feature of conflict as the antipathy between them.
We can also see that the boys were passionate in their commitment to groups. The fact that RGCT
is about the instrumental value of groups as people ‘rationally’ pursuing their goals does not mean
that intergroup behaviour is cold and calculated. Sherif was not saying that we use groups to get what
we want without really caring about them. On the contrary, it is clear from his detailed reports that
the boys cared very deeply about the fate of their groups under competitive conditions and showed
strong emotional reactions to what was going on. Similarly, under cooperative conditions in the third
stage, the boys seemed to genuinely like the other group, enjoying their company and making personal
sacrifices in order to be nice to them. It does not seem that they were cynically using them to achieve
their own goals. While Sherif did not use the concept of social identity explicitly (this was developed
some years later by other researchers), his studies nonetheless attest to its importance by showing
how passionately involved people can be in the fate of their groups and how this commitment helps
them achieve their goals.
Another illustration of the role of social identity in the summer camp studies is that, even before
any negative interdependence was introduced, there were definite signs that the two groups viewed
themselves in opposition to one another, expressed negative attitudes and sought to engage them
in competition. While the most intense hostility started when material competition was introduced,
the boys seemed keen to establish their superiority over the outgroup even in the absence of neg-
atively interdependent goals. While this is difficult to explain in terms of realistic competition in a
narrow sense, it is in line with the view that social identity is always relational, involving differen-
tiation and comparison between ingroup and outgroups. We have already discussed evidence sug-
gesting that negative interdependence is not actually necessary for ingroup favouritism to emerge
(Chapter 2).
Finally, we need to take care not to interpret the studies too pessimistically. The most dramatic and
memorable aspect of the experiment is the strong hostility manifested by the boys under conditions
of negative interdependence, and this has led some readers to conclude that the RGCT views conflict
as inherent to intergroup relations (e.g. Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007). Nothing could be further
from the truth. Sherif ’s work highlights the variability of intergroup attitudes – both positive and
negative – as a function of material conditions. Intergroup hostility arises from negative interdepen-
dence rather than being an inherent feature of groups or of human nature. Thus, it is important to
bear in mind the transformation from the outright hostility of the second stage to the cross-group
friendship and camaraderie in the third.
Extending the Realistic Conflict Approach

‘Real World’ Evidence
Studies of ethnic and occupational groups have also confirmed the link between ethnocentric atti-
tudes and functional relations between groups. Brewer and Campbell (1976), for example, conducted
an ethnographic survey of 30 tribal groups in East Africa. Respondents from these different groups
rated their own and other groups on a number of indices. A total of 27 of these groups gave higher
ratings to themselves than to any other group. The degree of this ingroup bias in relation to particular
outgroups was related to their proximity: nearby outgroups seemed to be derogated somewhat more
than more distant groups. This correlation is consistent with Sherif ’s realistic conflict approach since
it would be expected that neighbouring groups would be more likely to become involved in disputes
over grazing land, access to water, and other scarce resources. Brown et al. (1986) studied work-
group relations in a large factory. As is often the case, when they asked workers to judge their own
and other groups’ contributions to the running of the organisation, they almost invariably favoured
the ingroup. However, not all outgroups were devalued equally. The workers were also asked to char-
acterise each intergroup relationship on a harmony–conflict dimension (‘two teams pulling together’
vs. ‘two groups on opposite sides working against each other’). This index of conflict was strongly
correlated with the amount of bias shown against each outgroup: those outgroups with whom a con-
flictual relationship was perceived were thought to contribute less to the organisation than those who
were seen to be working with the ingroup. Members of political parties devalue members of other
parties to the extent that they see their goals as conflicting (Kelly 1988). Violent conflict in, for exam-
ple, Northern Ireland and Israel-Palestine also highlight how apparent absolute conflicts of interest
(whereby one group can only gain at the expense of the other) drive derogatory beliefs and hostile
feelings and perceptions of the other group (e.g. Bar-Tal 2007).
Stereotypes and Intergroup Relations

In the summer camp studies, one of the ways in which the antipathy between groups manifested was
the increasingly derogatory stereotypes the groups held about each other. A similar shift can be seen
in American students’ stereotypes of German and Japanese people between 1941 and 1945 (Seago
1947). Bear in mind that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor took place in December 1941, and that
within a few days of this the United States were at war with both Japan and Germany. Figure 7.1 shows
the dramatic drop in the favourability of stereotypes towards German and Japanese people between
1941 and 1942, while the American (ingroup) stereotype remains high.
The German stereotype is more positive than the Japanese one throughout the war, perhaps
because Americans tended to direct their antipathy specifically towards the Nazis rather than Ger-
mans as a whole (Seago 1947). In the case of Japan, however, it was the national group as a whole that
was demonised. Notice how ‘Negros’ were viewed just as unfavourably as Japanese people during
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2 Americans
0 Germans
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
–0.2 Japanese
–0.4 Negros
–0.6
–0.8
–1
–1.2
Figure 7.1 American students’ stereotypes of Americans, Germans, Japanese, and ‘Negros’ from 1941 to 1945.
Note: ‘Negro’ is an archaic and offensive term, we report it here as it is the term presented to participants in Seago’s
study. Source: Based on Seago (1947) with permission of Taylor & Francis.
Favorability of Sandirian
traits
No competition
Competition
Support for Sandirian

immigration
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
Figure 7.2 Ratings of traits of ‘Sandirians’ (a fictitious immigrant group) and support for Sandirian immigration
depending on whether they are competitive in the jobs market or not. Note: Both differences between competition
and no competition conditions are statistically significant at p < 0.05. Source: Esses et al. (1998). Reproduced with
this period, and distinctly worse than German people.2 Given that Japan and Germany were foreign
countries at war with the United States, while ‘Negros’ were fellow Americans who were contribut-
ing towards the war effort, this might seem surprising. However, a closer look reveals that while the
Japanese were seen as ‘treacherous’, ‘sly’, and ‘cruel’, the ‘Negro’ stereotype consisted of traits such as
‘lazy’, ‘happy-go-lucky’, and ‘ignorant’. Both of these sets of stereotypes are negative, but the Japanese
(a formidable military enemy) seems to be viewed as competent and dangerous, while ‘Negros’ (a low
status minority group) are seen as inferior and useless. These observations suggest that if we want
to understand the role of stereotypes in intergroup relations, it can be misleading to look only at
whether the traits themselves are positive or negative. Only by examining the particular content of a
stereotype as a whole can we consider what it implies about the relationship between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
A further illustration of this point is that ostensibly positive traits can take on a negative meaning in
settings of intergroup competition. While one might assume that being ambitious, intelligent, hard-
working, family-oriented, and spiritual are generally positive qualities, these very traits may be viewed
negatively if they are possessed by a competitive immigrant group (Esses et al. 1998). Esses et al. pre-
sented Canadian participants with fake newspaper articles describing a fictitious immigrant group,
‘the Sandirians’, who were said to possess all the ostensibly positive traits mentioned above. One
version of the article, read by participants in a ‘competition’ condition, also explained that Sandirians
were successful in the scarce Canadian job market. Those in the ‘no competition’ condition read a
version of the article that did not mention jobs at all. While participants in both conditions agreed
equally that Sandirians possessed the traits mentioned in the article, those in competition condition
rated the traits less favourably than did participants in the no competition condition and were also less
supportive of Sandirian immigration to Canada (Figure 7.2). Their written comments illustrate their
2 Curiously, the ‘Negro’ stereotype also appears to become more negative once the US enters the war (1941). There is no
obvious explanation for this shift from the realistic group conflict perspective we are considering here.
reinterpretation of the traits as negative, saying, for example ‘Since they are family-oriented, very
spiritual and religious, hard-working, there is no time for fun. I think they are like robots. Robots
aren’t fun. I wouldn’t want a robot for a neighbour’ (quoted in Esses et al. 1998, p. 711). It seems that
intergroup competition can change even the meaning of a trait like ‘hard working’ from positive to
negative.
Given that the content of stereotypes is more textured and nuanced than simply collections of
positive or negative traits, we might ask whether they be studied systematically at all. Is there any point
trying to understand how certain stereotypes come about in certain situations rather than others?
Or, given such complexity, perhaps we should stick to describing stereotypes in all their richness by
examining literature, film, and other media in which they appear. Alternatively, maybe the particular
content of stereotypes evades systematic study, and we should instead focus on understanding the
general mechanisms underlying the way stereotypes are activated in our minds, how they affect our
judgements of others and whether the stereotype an individual holds about a group can change with
experience (for a review of research examining such questions see Brown 2010).
For Tajfel (1981), the most promising place to start in understanding the content of stereotypes is
to consider their functions, which are both individual and social. He set out three social functions of
stereotypes: (i) explaining large-scale social events, (ii) justifying actions against outgroups, and (iii)
differentiating between groups. The justification function is of particular interest to us here. Con-
sider the wartime stereotype of Japanese people that we described above. Viewing Japanese people as
treacherous, sly, and cruel would have served to justify the American actions against them during the
Second World War, including the internment of Japanese Americans. On the other hand, the treat-
ment of African-Americans was different, entailing economic and political domination over them
rather than warfare. The stereotype of the lazy, happy-go-lucky, and ignorant Negro was therefore
better suited to justifying white American supremacy over them because it implied that they are back-
ward and inept, needing to be cared for by their superiors. The fact that stereotypes have social func-
tions for the ingroup has two important implications for the way we study them. First, it means that
we must consider social structural relationships between groups and not just the individual cogni-
tive processes involved. Second, in order to fulfill these functions, stereotypes must be shared among
group members. It is when the stereotype is shared among ingroup members that they can attack or
oppress the outgroup in a coordinated and hence effective manner (Haslam et al. 2002; Tajfel 1981).
These observations highlight the prevalence of different stereotype content depending on the rela-
tionship between the ingroup and a given outgroup, and this includes not only competition or coop-
eration but also differences in status. Fiske et al. (2002, 2007) elaborate on this systematically in their
Stereotype Content Model. They show that stereotypes about different groups vary along two basic
dimensions: competence and warmth (Table 7.1). In line with Sherif ’s RGCT and Tajfel’s outline
of social functions of stereotypes, they suggest that stereotypes develop according to the particular
socio-structural relations between groups. Regarding the warmth dimension, the stereotype content
model concurs with the view of Sherif, that outgroups who compete with in ingroup are viewed neg-
atively, having ‘cold’ traits (hostile, untrustworthy, etc.). When it comes to competence, however, it is
status rather than competition that matters. According to Fiske et al., high-status groups are gener-
ally seen as competent, while low-status groups are judged negatively on this dimension (as ignorant,
dependent on others, etc.).
Groups may be viewed positively or negatively on each of these dimensions, giving rise to various
combinations. Envious stereotypes (competent but cold) apply to high-status groups whose goals
conflict with those of the ingroup. For the predominantly White American students in Fiske et al.’s
research, Asians are a clear example of a group seen in these terms. Similarly, Jewish people have
Table 7.1 The stereotype content model
Low competition High competition
High status Admiration Envy

Warm and competent Cold and competent
For example, ingroup, ‘reference groups’ For example, Asians
Low status Paternalism Contempt
Warm and incompetent Cold and incompetent
For example, ‘traditional’ women For example, welfare recipients
Source: Adapted from Fiske et al. (2002) with permission of Taylor & Francis.
frequently been stereotyped as clever, but untrustworthy (Allport 1954). This kind of stereotype is
‘mixed’ because it includes both positive and negative traits (Fiske et al. 2002). However, it is impor-
tant to note that seeing such groups as competent does not make the overall stereotype more any
positive, as if compensating for their lack of warmth. If anything, the competence of an ‘enemy’ only
serves to make it more threatening (Fiske et al. 2002; Reicher 2007). We therefore need to consider the
implications of the overall stereotype (e.g. portraying an outgroup as a threat to be eliminated) rather
than the negativity of particular traits in isolation. Paternalistic stereotypes (warm but incompetent)
are applied to docile subordinates, i.e. low-status groups who know their place and do not rock the
boat. For example, as we shall see shortly, this kind of stereotype is applied to women who conform
to traditional gender roles. Groups that are low in status but who still compete for ingroup resources,
such as welfare recipients, are generally judged negatively on both dimensions (incompetent and cold)
and regarded with contempt. Finally, some groups are viewed as both warm and competent. These
are usually ingroup members and/or the dominant groups in society, who, due to their position, serve
as the ‘norm’ against which other groups are compared (in the US context, this would include men,
heterosexuals, and white people, for example). Given that the participants in Fiske et al.’s studies were
largely drawn from these dominant groups, they do not clearly distinguish stereotypes of the ingroup
from stereotypes of the dominant groups. This raises the question of whether members of subjugated
groups (e.g. African Americans) would share such a glowing perception of dominant groups or not.
This is a crucial issue to which we will return in the second part of this chapter.
A similar account of stereotype content can be found in Image Theory, which is a perspective devel-
oped in international relations before being introduced into social psychology (Alexander et al. 1999).
Image Theory presents three dimensions along which relations with an outgroup can vary: compe-
tition, power, and status. Various configurations of these three give rise to outgroup stereotypes or
‘images’ (such as ‘ally’, ‘enemy’, ‘dependent’, ‘barbarian’, and ‘imperialist’), each characterising the out-
group in a certain way and justifying actions towards it. Both the Stereotype Content Model and
Image Theory share the general perspective of the RGCT, which is that the content of stereotypes
is an outcome of structural relationships between groups and that stereotypes function to organise
ingroup members’ behaviour in a way that serves their goals.
Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Other Emotions

We noted above that the boys in the Robbers’ Cave studies really cared about the fate of their groups
and felt strongly about the other group as well, both for better and for worse. Emotional reactions
towards different groups can be seen clearly in real-life intergroup relations too: not only do we have
beliefs about other groups’ traits and attributes, we may also feel angered by some, envious of others,
and disgusted by yet others. Thus, examining stereotypes can only tell a part of the story because
how we view and treat others is as much about what we feel as what we think. The fact that people
feel powerful emotions on behalf of their groups is not surprising if we consider the basic points
about social identity made in Chapter 1. By having a social identity we are basing our sense of self on
membership of a group that we belong to. This means that what affects my group affects me, even
if it has no direct consequence for me as an individual. This point should be clear if we consider the
way in which people experience successes and failures of the sports teams they support, for example
despite the fact that such events have no direct consequences for them personally. It is the process of
social identification that makes the fate of a group feel like something personal, and hence something
to feel passionate about (Iyer and Leach 2008; Mackie and Smith 2015; Smith 1993).
Just as stereotypes map systematically onto levels of competition and status differences between
groups, so too do distinct patterns of emotions. If a competing outgroup seems more powerful than
our own group, we feel afraid and want to run away, but if the ingroup is more powerful, then we
feel angry and want to confront the outgroup (Mackie et al. 2000). Emotions, like stereotypes, are
functional: they mobilise people to act together towards the outgroup in specific, coordinated ways
to achieve some goal such as averting a threat or defeating an enemy. This is well illustrated by the
reactions of groups that are commonly targeted for hate crimes (attacks on members of stigmatised
groups that are motivated by prejudice towards those groups). Even those not directly targeted are
likely to feel anger and fear when learning of an attack on another ingroup member. In turn, those
feelings are linked to particular action tendencies – pro-action or avoidance, respectively (Paterson
et al. 2018, 2019).
Studying the particular emotional quality of how groups feel about each other can tell us more than
just whether they like or dislike each other. Cottrell and Neuberg (2005), for example examined white
Americans’ emotions towards a range of different ethnic, religious, and political groups. They found
that these outgroups triggered distinct emotional profiles. Interestingly, groups that were similarly
disliked nonetheless aroused quite distinct emotional reactions. For example Mexican Americans
and gay men provoked similar levels of overall negativity, yet while participants were afraid of the
former, they felt disgusted by the latter. To take another example, white participants were relatively
positive towards both Native Americans and Asian Americans overall compared to the other out-
groups. Yet, the emotional reactions to these two groups were distinct: Asians were envied, while
Native Americans were pitied. On the other hand, when it came to the most disliked group of all
(fundamentalist Christians), people were not particularly afraid, pitying, or envious of them (at least
compared to certain other outgroups). Instead, they were angry and somewhat disgusted. The point
here is that our feelings towards other groups go beyond just liking or disliking them and involve more
nuanced emotional reactions. According to Cottrell and Neuberg, these emotions depend on specific
threats posed by the outgroup: Mexican Americans were seen by the white American participants as
threatening to safety and property (prompting fear), gay men as threatening to values and health
(prompting disgust), and fundamentalist Christians as threatening to freedom (prompting anger).
Image theory (e.g. Alexander et al. 2005) attempts to link specific emotions to outgroup ‘images’
that in turn are linked to the specific power, status, and competitive relationship between ingroup
and outgroup. ‘Enemies’ are outgroups with similar power and status to us, but whose goals are in
conflict with ours. ‘Barbarians’ have lower status (e.g. being less ‘cultured’) but are powerful enough
to threaten us. Other outgroup images include ‘ally’, ‘dependent’, and ‘imperialist’, capturing different
Table 7.2 Outgroup images, corresponding emotions, and behavioural orientations
Image Relationship Emotion Behavioural orientation
Ally Compatible goals Admiration, trust Cooperate

Equal status
Equal power
Enemy Incompatible goals Anger Containment or attack
Equal status
Equal power
Dependent Independent goals Disgust or contempt Exploitation or paternalism
Low status
Low power
Imperialist Independent goals Jealousy or resentment Resistance or rebellion
High status
High power
Source: Adapted from Alexander et al. (2005) with permission of SAGE Publications.
combinations of goal compatibility, status, and power (see Table 7.2). Each also corresponds to a
behavioural orientation, such that these emotions help to coordinate the group response demanded
by the situation.
The Outgroup as Sub-human

From a ‘socio-functional’ perspective, then, stereotypes and emotions help groups to act together in
ways that further their goals, sometimes in cooperation and sometimes in opposition to other groups.
But what about actions that are so severe that they would generally be considered immoral? Consider
the examples given at the beginning of the chapter involving killing and other serious violence towards
others solely on the basis of some ethnic, religious, or gender category that they belong to. It might
be possible to see how actions could serve some narrow group self-interest by terrorising the other
group or weakening them to the point that they cannot compete with or harm one’s own group. Yet,
killing other human beings is surely one of the most universally and severely morally condemned
acts a person can commit, and we are usually inhibited from doing so irrespective of how much
it may advantage us or how much we dislike the victim. How and when, then, is this usual moral
reticence to severely harm others overcome? A number of factors have been suggested by scholars of
violent conflict. For example perpetrators might ignore the severity of the act through code names
and euphemistic language (terms such as ‘engaging’ or ‘pacifying’ to describe killing), by comparing
the act to even worse things done in the past by others, or by viewing oneself as having only a minor
role in the act and thus not wholly responsible for it (Bandura et al. 1996; Kelman 1973; Bauman 1989;
Milgram 1974; Reicher et al. 2008; Staub 2000). Here, though, we are concerned with one mechanism
in particular: the denial of others’ humanity, usually termed dehumanisation.
Outgroups can be dehumanised by explicitly portraying them as sub-human using animal
metaphors, and examples of this are especially clear in historical cases of genocide. For example dur-
ing the Holocaust, Nazi cartoons depicted the Jewish population as rats, and, during the Rwanda
genocide, radio messages calling for the killing of Tutsis referred to them as ‘cockroaches’ (Staub
2000). Of course, it is significant that the specific animals appearing in this propaganda are those con-
noting contamination and disgust. Comparing someone to a cockroach not only implies that they are
undeserving of compassion, but that they are unclean and should be removed. On the other hand,
during colonisation, Europeans characterised African people as ape-like, serving to justify violent
subjugation rather than extermination (Jahoda 1999). More recently, in the context of the refugee cri-
sis that has seen many thousands of refugees attempt dangerous journeys from North Africa across
the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, explicit dehumanisation of immigrants and refugees has appeared
in European newspapers. For example one British newspaper columnist described the refugees as
being ‘like cockroaches’, leading to widespread criticism and subsequent withdrawal of the article by
the Sun newspaper.
Archival work on historic death penalty cases in Philadelphia provides more systematic evidence
for dehumanisation though metaphor in news media (Goff et al. 2008). Goff and his colleagues first
identified articles in a local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, that mentioned defendants in death
penalty eligible cases between 1979 and 1999. From these they generated a list of words that connote
animalistic qualities (words such as ‘barbaric’, ‘wild’, and ‘prowl’) and coded the number of times such
words were used in relation to each of the defendants. This revealed that such words were more
frequent in news coverage of Black defendants compared to White defendants, indicating that Black
defendants in particular are dehumanised. Of course, some defendants tried for crimes eligible for
the death penalty are acquitted, others are executed, while others yet may evade execution for various
reasons. Is there a connection between the way a defendant is described in the press and their eventual
fate? By matching the press coverage to archival data on the outcome of each case, Goff and colleagues
found a statistical association between the dehumanising language and the defendant actually being
executed. The authors do not report whether the newspaper articles necessarily appeared before the
sentencing and execution or afterwards, and therefore it is difficult to make strong inferences about
the causal relation between press coverage and execution. Nonetheless, the evidence is clear that it
is primarily Black defendants who are dehumanised, whilst also suggesting that this difference could
contribute to the disproportionate use of the death penalty against Black people in the United States.
In short, dehumanisation of this sort may have very severe consequences.
However, metaphorical comparison to animals is not the only way to deny the humanity of others.
Dehumanisation can also be achieved less directly by denying outgroups the qualities that make us
human. Haslam (2006) argues for two kinds of ‘human-ness’ that might be denied. First, there are
traits that distinguish humans from animals, such as intelligence and refinement. People presumed
to these qualities are dehumanised in the sense of being seen as brutish, or animal-like. This can take
quite a subtle form: outgroups are commonly thought to lack complex emotions such as resentment
or remorse, compared to more basic emotions that we as presumed to share with animals, such as
anger (Leyens et al. 2007). Second, human beings are distinguished from inanimate objects such as
machines by their capacity for warmth and emotion. Another way to dehumanise is therefore to see
others as cold and mechanical, as objects rather than people with their own experiences and feelings.
This kind of dehumanisation appears to be involved mainly in the sexual objectification of women
(Loughnan et al. 2010).
Dehumanisation can take even more subtle forms, such as nonconscious associations between
groups and qualities of human or animal-ness. For example, white Americans’ responses in a sub-
liminal priming task suggests that they implicitly associate Black people with apes (Goff et al. 2008).
Line drawings of animals obscured by white noise would become progressively clearer until they
could be recognised by the participant. Goff and colleagues found that when the drawing depicted
an ape, it was recognised more quickly if it had been preceded by an image of an African-American
face presented subliminally (i.e. for a very short duration such that participants were not aware of
seeing it). More subtle still, patterns of neural activation measured using functional magnetic reso-
nance imaging (fMRI) suggest that members of some disliked groups are not fully apprehended as
people. Harris and Fiske (2006) explored this by examining the activation of a brain structure known
as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is involved when we form impressions of other people
as opposed to inanimate things. They found mPFC activation when participants viewed pictures of
a variety of social groups, but not when they viewed pictures of drug addicts and homeless people.
These are the groups that are typically perceived as lacking both warmth and competence and thus
held in contempt according to the Fiske et al.’s (2002) stereotype content model. Instead, viewing
pictures of these groups activated areas of the brain linked to disgust (the amygdala and insula).
Notwithstanding the existence of subtle dehumanisation, even overt forms appear to be quite
common. One way to measure blatant dehumanisation is to present participants with a series of
silhouettes based on the famous ‘March of Progress’ image depicting human evolution in a series
of increasingly upright and human-like figures (Kteily et al. 2015; see Figure 7.3). The image is
accompanied by list of social categories with sliders allowing participants to indicate how evolved
they think each group is on the scale of evolution from animal to human. American and British
participants’ responses to this scale suggest that they did indeed see some groups – particularly Arabs
and Muslims – as less fully human than others. Kteily and colleagues found that dehumanisation of
these groups increased in the aftermath terrorist incidents in both the United States and the United
Kingdom, and was correlated with participants’ support for violent forms of counter-terrorism
such as torture and bombing both civilians and combatants (see also Viki et al. 2013). Thus, as with
stereotypes and emotions, perceptions of the outgroups’ humanness (or lack thereof ) appears to
map onto relations of conflict versus cooperation between groups, and dehumanisation facilitates
extreme acts of violence on behalf of our groups.
Americans
Arabs
Canadians
Chinese
Europeans
Muslims
Figure 7.3 The ‘Ascent of Man’ dehumanisation scale. Note: Participants are given the following instruction: ‘People
can vary in how human-like they seem. Some people seem highly evolved whereas others seem no different than
lower animals. Using the image below, indicate using the sliders how evolved you consider the average member of
each group to be’. Ratings on the slider are then converted to a value ranging from 0 to 100, where 100 would indicate
most highly ‘evolved’. The mean ratings reported by Kteily et al. (2015) for the groups listed here were as follows:
Americans 91.5 (SD = 15.2), Arabs 80.9 (SD = 27.4), Chinese 88.4 (SD = 19.7), Europeans 91.9 (SD = 15.7), and Muslims
77.6 (SD = 29.7). Dehumanisation of Canadians was not measured in this study. Source: Kteily et al. (2015). Reprinted
with permission of the American Psychological Association.
Hierarchy and Oppression

Let us recap the key claims of RGCT. First, it advances the anti-reductionist view that prejudice
and stereotypes arise from that fact that we belong to groups that are interdependent (positively or
negatively) with other groups. That is, they cannot be understood in terms of individual characteris-
tics and mental processes in isolation from this intergroup context. Second, it advances the materialist
view that real group interests and competition drive subjective states such as antipathy: material real-
ity is the cause, while feelings and stereotypes about the outgroup are the result. Third, it advances
the functionalist view that these feelings and stereotypes are rational insofar as they contribute to
group goals. We have seen that these three key insights on intergroup relations have been developed
in interesting ways and proved quite useful in understanding intergroup relations in the real world.
However, we turn now to a number of observations that suggest we might need to rethink some
of these claims, and to develop alternative accounts that consider the role of hierarchy, power, and
ideology in intergroup relations.
Divide and Rule

Despite its appealing simplicity, there are problems with the idea that material ‘facts’ of interdepen-
dence explain the subjective aspects like prejudice and stereotypes. For example, if goals are subjec-
tive, then the condition of opposing goals cannot be purely an objective, material affair (Billig 1976).
Similarly, the very definition of ingroups and outgroups depends on how people self-categorise (see
Chapter 2). To make this point a little clearer, consider this question: Is there an alternative way that
the boys in Sherif ’s summer camp could have understood their group memberships? Billig argues that
there is. For example, what if the boys realised that the experimenters were manipulating them? They
could have seen themselves as a single group out to enjoy their summer holiday but thwarted by the
camp authorities, a meddling outgroup who divided up friends and generated conflict for their own
purposes (indeed, such a perception would have been quite justified). Under these circumstances,
the outcome of the studies would then have been very different.
An interesting study of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa provides a fascinating example
of how intergroup conflict is affected by more complicated kinds of interdependence between more
than two groups (Kerr et al. 2017). The study was carried out in the aftermath of an attack on the
homes of migrant Zimbabwean workers in a small South African grape-farming town. Superficially,
the conflict was between these migrants and the local Black South African labourers who attacked
and eventually evicted them. However, interviews with the local people on different sides revealed
that this relationship could only be fully understood by considering the role of a third party: namely
the White farmers for whom both groups were working. From the perspective of the South African
labourers, the real conflict of interest was between themselves and the farmers who sought to exploit
them and pay them as little as possible.
The farmers use Zimbabweans against us. Zimbabweans now, it’s like a remote controller, you
see, so, ‘if you don’t do that, we have people to do that’ … So now, they abuse the Zimbabweans
against us, you see. The problem is not the Zimbabweans, the problem is the White people.
(quoted in Kerr et al. 2017, p. 55; emphasis added)
To the South African farmers, then, the Zimbabweans represented a tool that the farmers used
against them since they always faced the threat of being replaced if they were reluctant to accept
the farmers’ demands. Similarly, the relative warmth and admiration between the White farmers and
the Zimbabwean migrants was not a simple matter of positive interdependence between these two
groups: it was an alliance between them against the Black South African labourers, whom they jointly
denigrated as lazy and unreliable.
Turning back to the Robber’s Cave Studies, then, why did the boys see themselves as two groups
in conflict rather than recognise the experimenters as the outgroup? One answer is the camp and
its activities were organised in such a way that the divisions between groups and their conflicting
interests were institutionalised (Billig 1976). Of course, advocates of RGCT are well aware that the
negative independence was introduced deliberately by Sherif (that is the whole point of the studies).
Yet, the ways in which groups and their relationships are institutionalised in the real world is not
usually treated as something to be explained by the theory. This is partly a question of power and
influence. For example for the experiment to work, the experimenters needed the power to organise
the camp in the way they wished, and the boys needed to accept their authority to do so. So the
relationship between the experimenters and the boys is surely as important to what happened as
that between the two groups of boys. The implications of the summer camp studies for intergroup
relations in the real world therefore involves not only a dynamic between two equal groups, but also
the power of leaders and third parties to get people to see groups and their interests in a certain way.
The idea that the powerful deliberately foster division and conflict between subordinates to under-
mine their resistance to oppression is often called divide et impera (divide and rule). We might ask,
then, what interests are served by when people categorise themselves in one way rather than another?
For example, does racism undermine working class solidarity between white and black workers, and
thus serve the interests of those who exploit them economically (e.g. Cox 1948)? The notion that
racial categorisation is an entirely top-down process imposed on unwitting dupes by manipulative
capitalists has become rather outdated among contemporary Marxist scholars (e.g. see Miles and
Brown 2003; Roediger 1991). Still, current theories of leadership as a group process, and particularly
the notion of ‘identity entrepreneurs’ (see Chapter 4), are promising avenues for explaining the con-
nections between rhetoric, influence, and categorisation (Haslam et al. 2011; Reicher 2007; Reicher
and Hopkins 2001).
Consensual Discrimination
In RGCT, there are only two ways in which groups may be interdependent: positive and negative.
We are either in conflict with another group, or cooperate with them in a harmonious win-win sce-
nario. Now, consider the relationship between men and women: are they generally positively or neg-
atively interdependent? In patriarchal societies – which is to say, almost all existing societies to some
degree – we could describe their interdependence as negative in that women’s loss as a group is men’s
gain (in status, economic opportunities and political power). That is, to the extent that women stay
subordinated, men can retain their dominance in the most prestigious and lucrative positions. Yet,
as the sociologist Jackman (1994, 2001) points out, this is not a relationship in which men’s inter-
ests are served by unbridled hostility of the sort that the boys in the Sherif ’s summer camps showed
towards each other. Rather, in order for women to be exploited to maximum advantage, some level of
willing cooperation from them is required. Admiration, affection and benevolence towards women
may therefore be more effective in securing their cooperation than outright hostility. Hostility might
have some role, but this is directed mainly towards women who threaten the hierarchy by not accept-
ing their traditional role. Meanwhile, those who toe the line are rewarded with male affection and
chivalry, a means of oppression in the guise of benevolence that Jackman terms ‘the velvet glove’. She
argues that, in the real-world, gender, race, and class relations are unlike the short summer camp
studies in the groups were relatively equal in power and status. Real-life intergroup relations often
involve powerful groups exploiting less powerful ones over a sustained period of time. In such set-
tings, groups develop far more nuanced ways to maximise and protect their advantage than outright
conflict or cooperation (see also, Dixon et al. 2012; Sidanius and Pratto 1999). As Jackman (2001)
puts it:
Dominants inject physical force into their relations with subordinates only spasmodically,
when some subordinates forget their place or challenge arrangements. Then it is time for a
demonstration of who is the boss. Most of the time, however, dominants wear a velvet glove.
Subordinates recognize tacitly that the velvet glove could readily be stripped off to bear the iron
hand beneath, and this reinforces their incentive to be compliant: friendly gains are preferable
to angry ones.
(Jackman 2001, p. 441)
The prevalence of this ‘velvet glove’ form of oppression challenges the neat distinction between
conflict and cooperation on which RGCT is based. Conflicts of interest often coexist in intricate
ways with cooperation, underpinned by a complex blend of kindness and targeted aggression. Sherif
presented us with an image of groups showing intense loyalty to their ingroup and derogation of
outgroups under competitive conditions, but in the case of stable hierarchies we see something quite
different: the apparent collaboration of the oppressed in maintaining an unequal relationship in which
they are the losers, or what can be termed consensual discrimination (Rubin and Hewstone 2004).
Ambivalent Sexism
We have already seen that stereotypes are shaped by the status as well as the competitiveness of
the outgroup and often combine positive and negative traits (e.g. Fiske et al. 2002, 2007). Jackman’s
notion of the ‘velvet glove’ puts such mixed stereotypes into context by describing how benevolence
towards low-status groups contributes towards their subordination. In line with this, Glick and Fiske
and colleagues have developed the notion of ambivalent sexism (e.g. Glick and Fiske 1996, 2001; Glick
et al. 2000). They argue that two complementary sets of beliefs about gender relations, termed hostile
sexism and benevolent sexism, work together to underpin male domination over women.
Hostile sexism is an antagonistic view of women that portrays them as seeking to control men,
whether by using their sexuality or through feminism, and is measured in questionnaires using items
such as ‘Feminists are making unreasonable demands of men’. In contrast, benevolent sexism com-
prises views that are ostensibly positive about women and includes three components. The first is
protective paternalism (e.g. ‘Women should be cherished and protected by men’), which sees women
as weak and therefore in need of male protection. Second, complementary gender differentiation
(e.g., ‘Women, compared to men, tend to have a superior moral sensibility’) characterises women
as superior to men in certain domains. Third, a concern with heterosexual intimacy (e.g. ‘Men are
incomplete without women’) sees romantic involvement with women as necessary to men’s happi-
ness and fulfillment. Far from denigrating women, then, benevolent sexism appears to venerate them
(the so-called ‘women-are-wonderful effect’; Eagly and Mladinic 1994). Yet, hostile and benevolent
sexism are usually positively correlated, in that people who strongly endorse benevolent sexist views
tend to endorse hostile sexist views as well. This holds at the national level too: in countries in which
hostile sexism is widely endorsed, one also tends to find that support for benevolent sexism is also
high. Subjectively positive and negative views of women therefore go hand in hand, constituting what
Glick and Fiske call an ‘ambivalent alliance’. Hostile and benevolent sexism operate together to reward
women who adopt traditional, subordinate roles, while at the same time punishing those who resist
these roles (Glick et al. 2000).
At this point, a sceptical reader might ask what is really sexist about benevolent sexism. Is chivalry
not just a matter of good manners and respect, even if sometimes a little old-fashioned? Can a such
positive view of women really be a bad thing? Does the concept of benevolent sexism not just confirm
that feminists are churlish and overly harsh on well-meaning men? Indeed, reactions such as these are
all common media responses to benevolent sexism research (e.g., Telegraph, 15 June 2011). Critics
might also suggest that women appreciate gestures such as opening doors for them. As we shall see,
the fact that benevolent sexism appeals to women is precisely what makes it such an effective way
of keeping them subordinated. Moreover, numerous research findings give the lie to the view that
benevolent sexism is harmless.
We have already noted the positive relationship between hostile and benevolent sexism, suggesting
that benevolent sexists are reserving their hostility for women who fail to meekly embrace their sub-
ordinate role. On top of this, the consequences of benevolent sexism itself are far from benign. For
example, benevolent sexism positively predicts blaming women for being raped (Abrams et al. 2003)
and excusing domestic violence (Glick et al. 2002). Exposure to benevolent sexism can also disadvan-
tage women by affecting how they feel and behave. For example, when led to believe that benevolent
sexist beliefs are widely endorsed in society, female participants increase the importance they place
on physical attractiveness as a basis for their self-esteem, whilst de-emphasising their competence or
academic achievement and showing more deference to a male partner in a cooperative task (Barreto
et al. 2010). Benevolent sexism in the workplace undermines women’s performance by increasing
the number of intrusive thoughts about their own competence (Dardenne et al. 2007; Dumont et al.
2010). There is evidence that countries with average levels of benevolent sexism are also those in
which women have markedly lower life expectancy, literacy, and living standards than men, although
since these countries inevitably have high levels of hostile sexism as well it is difficult to assess the
specific contribution of each (Glick and Fiske 2001). Such findings and others highlight the variety of
ways in which, despite appearances, benevolent sexism really does harm women.
In fact, benevolent sexism may be an even more pernicious way of subordinating women than
hostile sexism. A key reason for this is that, precisely because it says nice things about them, it secures
the active endorsement of women themselves in a way that hostile sexism usually does not. Thus,
while women are overwhelmingly more ready to reject hostile sexism than men are, no such difference
is evident for benevolent sexism (Glick et al. 2000). Women are less likely to judge benevolent sexist
views or those who hold them to be sexist (Barreto and Ellemers 2005). Glick et al. (2000) find that, in
most of the 19 countries they studied, women’s endorsement of benevolent sexism is to equal or even
higher than that of men. In the next chapter, we will see how benevolent sexism serves to undermine
women’s motivation to challenge their subordination by men (Becker and Wright 2011). In line with
the notion of the ‘velvet glove’, then, it seems that the consensual quality of benevolent sexism makes
it a more effective way of securing women’s cooperation, and therefore extending their subordination,
than outright hostility.
Cross-cultural evidence suggests an even more troubling incentive for women to embrace benev-
olent sexism (Glick et al. 2000). Countries in which women score relatively highly on the benevolent
sexism scale (e.g. Cuba, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, and Chile) are the same countries in which
men are also very high in hostile sexism. This suggests therefore that it is the fear of the sexist backlash
meted out to non-traditional women that drives women to seek the protected feminine role offered
by benevolent sexism. Moreover, where women are most exposed to male violence, protection from
some men may be a matter of personal safety. Ironically, then, the threat of violence by men forces
women to other men for protection (Glick and Rudman 2010). This again highlights the strong inter-
dependence between hostile and benevolent ideologies that makes sexism such a pernicious system
of oppression.
Outgroup Favoritism and System Justification

One implication of consensual discrimination is that low-status groups sometimes see themselves
as inferior to other groups, a phenomenon termed consensual inferiority (Tajfel and Turner 1979)
or outgroup favouritism (Hinkle and Brown 1990). Outgroup favoritism has been observed among
various devalued and oppressed groups, such as African Americans, Southern Italians (compared to
the higher status Northern Italians), gay people, and women (Hinkle and Brown 1990; Jost and Banaji
1994; Jost et al. 2004; Mullen et al. 1992). Although by no means ubiquitous, the fact that outgroup
favouritism exists at all seems difficult to explain from the perspective of RGCT. What function could
it possibly serve for advancing ingroup interests?
According to Jost and colleagues (e.g. Jost and Banaji 1994; Jost et al. 2001, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010),
the existence of outgroup favouritism is best explained by a psychological need to view the status quo
as fair, even if one is disadvantaged by it. According to their system justification theory, this system
justification motive works alongside motives to bolster the individual self (‘ego justification’) and the
group (‘group justification’), and may sometimes contradict them. For example, when people engage
in outgroup favouritism, thereby seeing their own group as inferior, this could undermine their self-
esteem. Jost and colleagues reason that since outgroup favoritism occurs in spite of these costs, there
must be a separate motive that is satisfied by it. The system justification motive:
captures social and psychological needs to imbue the status quo with legitimacy and to see it
as good, fair, natural, desirable, and even inevitable.
(Jost et al. 2004, p. 887)
Accounts of this motive have been refined and elaborated over the years, and it is now understood in
terms of three kinds of psychological need. These are: epistemic needs (avoiding uncertainty), existen-
tial needs (coping with fear and threat), and relational needs (seeking agreement and a shared sense
of reality with others). In other words, when people see their society as legitimate, they feel safer,
more certain, and more connected to others (Jost et al. 2003, 2009, 2010). Since this is preferred over
feeling uncertain, threatened, and disconnected, there is an incentive to justify the system even when
it opposes their interests.
Jost and his colleagues have produced extensive empirical evidence that, they claim, supports their
view that people are motivated to actively seek to justify and rationalise the status quo. This includes
much of the evidence of outgroup favouritism among low-status groups that we have already men-
tioned. To make the point that outgroup favouritism involves internalised inferiority, they point to
low-status groups’ automatic evaluations of groups as measured by the Implicit Association Test
(IAT). This measures people’s evaluations of groups indirectly, based on their reaction times to
pairings of the ingroup and outgroup with positive and negative words (Greenwald et al. 1998). There
is a typically clearer indication of outgroup favoritism as measured using the IAT than one finds with
explicit measures, on which ingroup bias is more common. Jost and colleagues argue that such mea-
sures assess the ‘true’ attitudes of participants, uncontaminated by participants’ wish to give ‘nice’,
socially acceptable answers to questionnaire items. Therefore, the argument goes, such tests provide
a good indication that a negative view of the ingroup has truly been internalised (Jost et al. 2004;
Jost and Hunyady 2002). This interpretation of the IAT is controversial, however. Critics argue that
the IAT measures mere familiarity with culturally shared stereotypes, rather than personal endorse-
ment of them (Arkes and Tetlock 2004; Olson and Fazio 2004). If this is the case, then the IAT scores
may simply reflect the fact that derogatory stereotypes of low-status groups are culturally dominant
(due to certain groups’ control of the media, for example), rather than that low-status groups actively
endorse them.
Jost and colleagues present other lines of evidence in support of their view that people are actively
motivated to bolster the status quo, rather than passively reflecting cultural knowledge. For example,
outgroup favoritism is strongest among individuals who see the status quo as legitimate, and those
who endorse conservative ideologies (Jost et al. 2001, 2004, 2009). This, they argue, indicates that
outgroup favoritism serves to legitimise the status quo. There is also evidence that people justify the
system more when they see some kind of threat to the ‘system’ (Kay et al. 2005). They also process
and remember information in a biased way that legitimises the status quo, and American participants
work harder on an anagram task if they are told that it indicates an ‘ability to succeed in American
society’ (Jost et al. 2010). While this does suggest active bolstering of the system, these studies do
not actually involve outgroup favoritism per se, but rely on other kinds of system justification such as
endorsing free market ideology, meritocracy or some more diffuse sense of the ‘legitimacy of Amer-
ican society’ (Jost et al. 2010). Since these are cherished and largely consensual values in the United
States, we may not need the idea of a special motive to explain why American participants try to
defend them. A simpler explanation might be that American participants are simply defending the
values of their group (Rubin and Hewstone 2004). We are not aware of any direct evidence of low sta-
tus groups actively defending their inferiority in such a motivated way, as opposed to simply reflecting
the dominant consensus view.
Jost and colleagues have certainly succeeded in drawing researchers’ attention to the phenomenon
of outgroup favouritism. While there is strong evidence that people often rationalise social systems
that harm their interests, the system justification motive is not necessarily the best explanation for
this. There are clearly occasions when people are not at all motivated to defend the status quo and
actively resist it, often at considerable personal risk. If there is a need to justify the status quo, then
it is clearly not ubiquitous. Jost and colleagues themselves claim that the eventual purpose of system
justification theory is to understand the conditions for change (Jost and Banaji 1994; Jost et al. 2010).
The motives they describe are very general, involving needs that, under the right circumstances (such
as when the system is uncertain, unstable and unpopular), could also be met by rejecting the system
(Jost et al. 2010).
If this is the case, the ‘system justification motive’ may be something of a misnomer since the same
motive may result in system rejection. Another problem is that if the system justification motive is
meant to explain why unfair social arrangements are stable and popular, then making stability and
popularity preconditions for the motive’s existence simply takes us back to square one. This seems to
be saying that the system will be legitimised when people see it as legitimate, and will be rejected when
it has been rejected. By portraying people as going along with the consensus and ignoring how they
challenge it, system justification theory might be compared to ‘conformity bias’ that plagued social
influence research until the 1970s (Moscovici 1976; see Chapter 4). Thus, while outgroup favouritism
seems to be an important phenomenon, we might need to look beyond system justification theory
for an explanation.
Social Dominance Theory

An alternative perspective on the stability and maintenance of oppression is offered by Social Dom-
inance Theory (SDT; Sidanius and Pratto 1999; Sidanius et al. 2004, Pratto et al. 2006). This theory
proceeds from the observation that group-based hierarchy is a universal feature of human societies,
even if the particular kinds of groups involved varies across time and across cultures. That is, in all
societies, there are always some social groups that enjoy greater access to wealth, prestige, power,
status, good health, and education than others (what SDT calls positive social value). Adult domi-
nation over children and male domination over women are said exist to some extent in all human
societies. In addition, however, surplus-producing societies are said to be structured by ‘arbitrary set’
hierarchies. Arbitrary sets are based on socially constructed categories such as race, caste, and class,
which are specific to time and place. SDT mainly focuses on these arbitrary set hierarchies, as well
how they interact with gender hierarchy.
A key tenet of SDT is that intergroup conflict, prejudice, and discrimination are ways of establishing
and perpetuating the domination of some groups over others. Scholars from this perspective gener-
ally approach the topic of intergroup relations in terms of their overarching concern with why such
hierarchies seem ubiquitous across different societies, and why they last so long. In other words, the
theory is intended to explain how certain groups retain their privileges, and why such expropriative
relationships between groups are apparently so hard to change. Three key mechanisms are said to
contribute to this. First, aggregated individual discrimination refers to routine behaviours (such as
biased recruitment or voting decisions) that cumulatively lead to more resources being systematically
allocated to dominant groups. Second, institutional discrimination refers to the way institutions such
as schools, the police, courts, private businesses systematically advantage the dominant group. This
happens whenever the institutions work in a way that leads to more negative outcomes for members of
subordinate groups, or more positive outcomes for members of dominant groups. Lastly, behavioural
asymmetry refers to the fact that members of dominant groups are better placed to discriminate in
favour of their ingroups than are members of subordinate groups; dominant groups are much more
effective discriminators than are subordinate groups and are so because they are more powerful.
These three factors (individual discrimination, institutional discrimination, and behavioural asym-
metry) work together to produce systematic group-based inequalities.
Discriminatory practices such as these need to be broadly supported – or at least not rejected as
immoral. In other words, such practices need to be legitimised. This is the role of hierarchy enhanc-
ing legitimising myths (HE-LMs), which are shared representations, beliefs, stereotypes, and ideolo-
gies that legitimise hierarchy-enhancing practices. Examples of HE-LMs include racism and sexism,
which legitimise the social arrangements and behaviours that keep certain groups (e.g. Black people,
women) in subordinated positions by making this seem natural, inevitable, or deserved. Less-obvious
HE-LMs include a version of the so-called ‘Protestant Work Ethic’ that portrays the poor as undeserv-
ing and the rich as deserving (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). One may note the parallel here with Tajfel’s
(1981) claim that a key function of stereotypes is to legitimise ingroup actions towards outgroups, as
we discussed earlier in this chapter. However, the notion of legitimising myths in SDT is broader, in
that it includes not only stereotypes but any kind of shared doctrine, belief or principle that has this
function. Such moral justification for oppression not only makes members of dominant groups more
coordinated in their hierarchy-enhancing actions, but also undermines any potential resistance by
the subordinated groups. Therefore, Sidanius and Pratto claim that dominant groups maintain their
position by inducing subordinates to endorse these HE-LMs as well. To the extent they succeed in
this, physical force is unnecessary.
The idea of consensual legitimising myths shows certain similarities with Jost and colleagues’
notion of system justification. Both suggest that ideologies that support inequality are endorsed by
both advantaged and disadvantaged groups, and that this accounts for their persistence. However,
there are some differences. First, the social dominance perspective is much more concerned with
how differences of power between groups mean that dominant groups can get subordinates to accept
HE-LMs. From this point of view, it is easier for the powerful to convince the powerless of their
worldview than the reverse. As Marx famously put it, ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas’. If nothing else, dominant groups’ material advantage enables them to control the
content of broadcast media, publishing, formal education, and other sources of influence in such a
way that their ideas become the consensual ones at any time. If this is the case, then we may not
need the notion of a system justification motive to explain subordinates’ acceptance of HE-LMs:
it is down to their objective powerlessness, rather than their existential motives. Second, accord-
ing to the social dominance perspective, there are also hierarchy-attenuating legitimizing myths
(HA-LMs), which serve the opposite function to that of HE-LMs: they support practices that under-
mine or challenge group-based hierarchy. This includes, for example feminism and egalitarian
doctrines of various kinds. Thus, while system justification theory portrays ideology as being over-
whelmingly a matter of bolstering the status quo, SDT describes two sets of opposing forces: those
that bolster hierarchy and those that undermine it (Sidanius et al. 2004).
Social Dominance Orientation

Legitimising myths may either enhance or attenuate hierarchy, so how do people navigate and posi-
tion themselves and their views within these two opposing ideological dynamics? According to SDT,
some people are more psychologically oriented to support group-based hierarchy in general than
others. This general disposition, termed social dominance orientation (SDO), is claimed to underlie
people’s support for a whole gamut of ideologies and practices that relating to domination. Scores
on the SDO scale (see box below) are consistently correlated with racism, sexism, support for war
and torture, prejudice towards a numerous subordinated groups, and opposition to policies designed
to ameliorate inequality in various contexts (for reviews see Pratto et al. 2006; Sidanius and Pratto
1999). All these pro-hierarchy attitudes and ideologies are therefore viewed as manifestations of a
more general disposition to favour hierarchical relationships between groups.
Some groups of people are just more worthy than others.
If certain groups stayed in their place, we would have fewer problems.
Inferior groups should stay in their place.
We should do what we can to equalize conditions for different groups.*

No one group should dominate in society.*
Typical items from a SDO scale (from Sidanius and Pratto 1999). Note that the items marked with
the asterisks (*) are ‘reverse coded’, meaning that a person with high SDO would disagree with those
statements.
According to SDT, variation in SDO has a number of causes, including personality (people high in
SDO are said to be ‘tough-minded’, for example). The status of one’s own group also seems to be par-
ticularly significant. For example in the United States, where Black people occupy a lower status than
White people, SDO scores vary accordingly, i.e. White people tend to score higher on measures of
SDO than do Black people (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). The theory also claims that men have evolved
to be biologically predisposed to higher SDO than women as a result of the adaptive value to them
of competing with other men for mates, restricting mates’ sexual behaviour and access to resources.
Not surprisingly, this claim has proved particularly controversial, with other researchers arguing that
observed sex differences in SDO reflect status differences between men and women rather than being
biologically determined (e.g. Batalha et al. 2011; Huang and Liu 2005).
Because SDO is affected by status, it can change situationally, depending on the groups that are
salient to people at any moment. In an unpublished thesis, Levin (1996, cited in Pratto et al. 2006)
examined such shifts in her study on the SDO scores of two ethnic groups in Israel: Ashkenazi Jews
and Mizrachi Jews. In Israel, Ashkenazi Jews enjoy high status compared to Mizrachi Jews. How-
ever, both of these groups are higher in status than Israeli Arabs. This means that the Mizrachi Jews
could see themselves as either high or low status depending on whether they are thinking about their
relationship to Ashkenazi Jews or to Israeli Arabs. Accordingly, Levin found that when Jewish partici-
pants completed the SDO scale immediately after some survey questions about Ashkenazi–Mizrachi
relations (an ‘ethnic’ prime), the Mizrachi participants did indeed score lower than the Ashkenazi par-
ticipants, reflecting their lower status (Figure 7.4). However, when they completed the SDO scale after
a set of questions about Jewish–Arab relations (a ‘national’ prime), there was no difference between
the two Jewish groups: both reported high SDO in line with the fact that both groups are high in
status compared to Israeli Arabs.
2.5
Ashkenazi jews
SDO
2
Mizrachi jews
1.5
1
Ethnic prime National prime
Social context
Figure 7.4 Group differences in SDO depend on which intergroup relationship participants are thinking about whilst
completing the scale. Source: Pratto et al. (2006). Reprinted with permission of Taylor & Francis Ltd.
Given that SDO scores are sensitive to the salience of particular group relationships, one may ask
whether the SDO scale really measures a general psychological orientation towards hierarchy as it is
supposed to. Perhaps the questions simply measure support for whatever specific hierarchies partic-
ipants have in mind at the time. To put it another way, did the Mizrachi Jews in Levin’s study change
their support for hierarchy in general as a result of being primed with the ethnic or national context?
Or did the SDO scale measure different things depending on the experimental condition: support
for Ashkenazi domination over Mizrachis when the ethnic context is salient, and support for Jewish
domination over Israeli Arabs when the national context is salient? The latter possibility would have
major implications for how we interpret the evidence that SDO scores correlate with a wide variety of
prejudices and oppressive ideologies. Rather than these particular ideologies being outcomes of a gen-
eral orientation, the SDO scale would simply be tapping into people’s attitudes about the particular
inequalities they have in mind at the time, making any correlations between SDO and prejudice rather
less interesting. The causal role and theoretical importance of SDO would be called into question.
On the basis of Levin’s findings alone, it is hard to confirm whether this is the case or not. A strict
test would involve examining whether being in the ethnic prime condition led to Mizrachi Jews being
more supportive of equal rights for Arabs, since lower SDO should correspond to lower support for
all group-based hierarchy, not just hierarchy that disadvantages one’s own group (indeed, it should
even increase support for equality in completely separate contexts). The within-subjects design of the
experiment does not allow for such a test. However, because the priming manipulation was carried
out within subjects (so each participant completed an SDO scale under both conditions), we can
analyse whether participants who scored higher than their peers on SDO in one condition still had the
highest SDO scores (relative to other members of their group) in the other condition. The correlation
between Mizrachi Jews’ SDO scores measured in each condition was 0.38, indicating that less than
15% of the variance in SDO scores is shared between conditions. This does seem rather low given
that is supposed to be the same variable and suggests that the scale might measure different things
in each condition.
A more direct challenge to the standard interpretation of SDO scores comes from Schmitt et al.
(2003). In one study, after participants had completed the SDO scale, they reported which social
groups they were thinking about as they completed the questionnaire. This revealed that the major-
ity of them were thinking primarily about race whilst completing the SDO scale, although other social
categories were mentioned as well, including class, nationality, and gender. Schmitt et al. then exam-
ined the relationship between SDO and participants’ level of racism as measured eight weeks previ-
ously, and found that this relationship depends on the amount of time participants said they had been
thinking about race whilst completing the scale (see Figure 7.5). This, they argue, shows that SDO
correlates with racism simply because participants have race in mind when completing the scale,
rather than because racism is caused by a more general support for hierarchy. In a further study, the
authors experimentally primed participants to think about either race or gender. They found that if
participants are thinking about gender while they complete the SDO scale, their SDO scores correlate
with sexism but not racism. Conversely, if they are thinking about race, their SDO scores correlate
with racism but not sexism. Therefore, Schmitt et al. argue, the SDO scale does not measure a gen-
eral orientation that gives rise to specific prejudices. Rather, it simply measures specific prejudices as
participants naturally bring actual groups to mind in order to complete the scale.
The debates surrounding the meaning of SDO scores and the implications of this for SDT, have been
often been quite heated (e.g. Schmitt et al. 2003; Sidanius and Pratto 2003; Turner and Reynolds 2003).
In order to evaluate the various competing claims, it is important to be precise about them. First, SDT
4 Figure 7.5 The relationship between racism and SDO

Low racism depends on how much the participant is thinking about
race. Source: Schmitt et al. (2003). Reprinted with
High racism
3.36 permission of John Wiley and Sons.
3
SDO
2.51
2.19
2
1.64
1
Low High
Time thinking about race
does not assume people’s SDO scores to be fixed. Indeed, Levin’s findings showing variability of SDO
scores in the Israeli context have generally been cited in support of the theory. Therefore, the concept
of SDO is not undermined by further findings showing that it is affected by priming manipulations. At
the same time, critics such as Schmitt et al. do not claim that SDO fluctuates unpredictably rendering
it unreliable when administered in the standard way. Their challenge is not to the actual stability or
reliability of SDO, but rather its meaning. If, as they argue, SDO is effectively a measure of support
for whatever specific forms of oppression are relevant in context (regardless of how stable this is),
then it can hardly be used to show a causal effect of more a general orientation on those very same
specific forms. This would be as meaningless as saying that prejudice causes itself.
However, even if the correlations between SDO scores and specific ideologies are inflated by this
measurement problem, it is still possible that a ‘true’ SDO exists and has at least some causal potency.
One way to assess this is to use longitudinal surveys. By measuring SDO and its presumed effects
(such as prejudice) at several points in time, perhaps months or years apart, it is possible to assess
whether SDO makes people more racist (for example), or whether being racist increases people’s
SDO. Using this method, some studies do suggest that SDO drives specific prejudices, in line with the
theory, although these studies tend to rely on fairly homogeneous samples of students drawn mainly
from dominant social groups (Kteily et al. 2011; Sibley and Duckitt 2010; Sibley and Liu 2010). When
we analysed responses from a more representative sample of (dominant) European and (subordinate)
Maori ethnic groups in New Zealand, we found limited support for the idea that SDO drives ethnic or
gender-related ideologies and more evidence for the reverse – that these more specific attitudes drive
SDO (Pehrson et al. 2017). We also found that the dominant group, the New Zealand Europeans, were
more supportive of ethnic hierarchy but less supportive of gender hierarchy, and had the same level
of SDO (Figure 7.6). This suggests the idea of group differences in support for hierarchy in general
(SDO) might often miss the point, as a group can be relatively opposed to one kind of hierarchy but
supportive of another.
Evaluating Social Dominance Theory

Social dominance theory is ambitious, integrating theories of biological evolution, individual dif-
ferences, institutional practices and policies, and shared cultural worldviews. Its early contributions
Maori NZ European
5
1
SDO Hostile sexism Benevolent Historical Symbolic
sexism negation exclusion
Figure 7.6 Compared to Maori participants, European New Zealanders reject legitimising ideologies related to
gender (benevolent and hostile sexism), but support legitimising ideologies related to ethnicity (historical negation
and symbolic exclusion). Source: Pehrson et al. (2017). Reprinted with permission of John Wiley and Sons.
renewed interest in ideology and oppression at a time in the mid-1990s when the mainstream social
psychology of prejudice was mostly about biases in individual cognitive processes rather than how
intergroup attitudes work within systems of power and inequality. The theory has been extremely
influential, inspiring countless studies and generating evidence on issues traditionally neglected by
social psychology such as institutional discrimination. Yet, as discussed above, it has also been tren-
chantly criticised, particularly by scholars associated with the social identity perspective. Some have
argued that there are fundamental contradictions in the theory, especially when it comes to trying to
understand how oppressed groups respond to their situation (Turner and Reynolds 2003).
On the one hand, the theory argues for the importance of consensus, which implies the willing
support of the oppressed groups in their own subordination. At the same time, subordinate groups
score low on SDO and reject hierarchy-enhancing ideologies and practices, suggesting ideological
divergence rather than consensus. Of course, it is possible that several opposing processes result in
a level of consensus but also some divergence. For example, it may be that dominant groups’ power
enables them to get subordinates to accept certain legitimising myths, while at the same time sub-
ordinates are driven to reject those myths through their pursuit of collective self-interest. Indeed,
the theory explains that some intergroup contexts are less consensual than others, and offers novel
methodological tools for gauging the level of consensus (Sidanius and Pratto 1999).
The problem is, though, that SDT does not actually explain the psychological processes underpin-
ning either self-interest or power (especially power in the sense of getting people to believe things – a
form of social influence): it just takes their existence for granted. With regard to power, dominant
groups apparently just have it, while subordinate groups just lack it. Those who have power can use it
to convince others that the status quo is legitimate and thus extend their power; those who lack power
can do nothing but assent to this, ideologically and practically, and thus sink deeper into powerless-
ness. With regard to collective self-interest, again, one simply has it by virtue of being in a group, and
this self-interest will lead dominant groups to accept hierarchy and subordinate groups to reject it.
All this means that SDT ultimately leaves us with the rather unsatisfying conclusion that there will
be both consensus and conflict, and things will probably end up somewhere in the middle.
This way of looking at things, which implies a kind of equilibrium between acceptance and rejection
of the status quo, presents no way of understanding how or why subordinates move from acceptance
to rejection of their position. If there is any change at all, it could only be towards domination becom-
ing more entrenched, since SDT sees domination and the ability to influence subordinates as mutually
reinforcing. And, if subordinates’ acquiescence to hierarchy is based on dominants’ superior power,
how could this conceivably change? Yet, history shows us that domination and resistance are not
locked in perpetual equilibrium. Empires rise and fall, legitimacy is gained and lost, and consensus
can be challenged and turned to conflict. SDT is very far from providing an adequate understanding
of these dynamics, even if it does a reasonable job of describing the variation in attitudes within stable
hierarchies.
Addressing this shortcoming may require more than just adding something on to the theory.
Understanding how power relations change means conceptualising power properly in the first place.
As we saw in Chapter 4, from a social identity perspective, power is defined as the ability to affect the
world through people, and this process begins not with control over resources but with psychological
group formation. The pursuit of collective self-interest, too, is a function of psychological group for-
mation rather than some ‘objective’ belonging to a high or low status category. This suggests that the
social identity perspective may be a good place to start if we wish to rethink hierarchy and oppression
in a more dynamic fashion. We shall return to these points in the next chapter, in which we consider
when and why people take action to challenge group-based disadvantage.
Integrating SDO and RWA

The idea of a relatively stable individual difference associated with a multitude of different prejudices
invites parallels between SDO and the notion of the authoritarian personality that we mentioned at
the beginning of this chapter. The latter enjoyed a revival from the 1980s onwards, primarily through
the efforts of Altemeyer, who reformulated some elements of Adorno et al.’s work on the authoritar-
ian personality in the form of what he called right-wing authoritarianism (RWA; Altemeyer 1988).
RWA consists of three values that tend to be endorsed by the same individuals and thus, according
to Altemeyer, make up a kind of overarching ideological stance with implications for both intra- and
intergroup relations. These three are (i) ‘traditional’ religious and social norms (conventionalism),
(ii) obedience to established authorities (authoritarian submission), and (iii) hostility towards groups
that transgress these norms (authoritarian aggression). Despite controversy over the questionnaire
scale used to measure RWA and the dimensionality of the construct itself (Mavor et al. 2010), accu-
mulated evidence does suggest that RWA frequently correlates with prejudice towards an array of dif-
ferent outgroups (e.g. Sibley and Duckitt 2008). At the same time, RWA is clearly not the same thing
as SDO: correlations between the two are generally positive but weak, and RWA and SDO appear to
explain distinct portions of the variation in prejudice – that is, each correlates with prejudice even
when controlling for the other (e.g. Duckitt et al. 2002; McFarland 2010; Pratto et al. 1994).
For this reason, in his dual-process model (DPM) of ideology and prejudice Duckitt (2001) proposes
that RWA and SDO tap into two distinct sets of motivations, each based in a different view of the
world. On the one hand, people who see the world as a place in which must either ruthlessly compete
or perish (a so-called ‘competitive jungle worldview’) are drawn to pursue power and domination over
others and thus endorse SDO as an ideology of group domination. On the other hand, those who see
Summary 219
Context Personality Worldview Ideology
Threat and
danger Dangerous Right-wing
Social world authoritarianism
conformity
Prejudice
Inequality and
competition Social
Competitive
dominance
Tough- jungle
orientation
mindedness
Figure 7.7 Dual process model of ideology and prejudice. Source: Simplified from Duckitt and Sibley (2010) with
the world as under threat from moral deviance and disorder are drawn to RWA as an ideology of
control and security (a ‘dangerous world’). These perceptions of the world in turn depend on both
social environments and personal dispositions. Those with ‘toughminded’ personality traits and those
who live in unequal contexts are more likely to see the world as a competitive jungle. Dispositionally
conformist individuals and those who live in threatening environments are more likely to perceive the
world as dangerous (Duckitt and Sibley 2010; Duckitt et al. 2002; see Figure 7.7). To date, longitudinal
and meta-analytic evidence regarding the DPM has been supportive of these distinct roles for RWA
and SDO in explaining individual variation in prejudice (Sibley and Duckitt 2008, 2013), and the
model may also explain why SDO and RWA might predict prejudice differently in different settings.
For example, Cohrs and Stelzl (2010) find that anti-immigrant attitudes are predicted more by SDO
in contexts of high unemployment where immigrants are viewed as a competitive threat, whereas it
is predicted more by RWA in contexts where immigrants are seen as a threat to law and order.
Summary
1. In the mid-20th century, psychologists along with other social scientists became interested in
explaining the negative feelings and beliefs that people have about outgroups (categories of peo-
ple that they do not belong to). Early accounts focused on the notion that some people are more
disposed than others to devaluing other groups.
2. The RGCT of prejudice was developed by Sherif in the 1950s and 1960s. Through his well-known
‘Robbers Cave’ field experiments, Sherif demonstrated that hostility between members of different
groups is a function of the material relationship between groups. Negative interdependence (when
groups work against each other towards opposing goals) produces hostility and aggression. Posi-
tive interdependence (when groups need each other to achieve a common goal) produces mutual
warmth and attraction.
3. Subsequent research supports the view that the way people think and feel about other groups
(stereotypes and intergroup emotions) are systematically related to the structural relationship
between groups. As well as the cooperation versus competition, differences of status and power
also shape the content of stereotypes and the quality of intergroup emotions. Groups generally
perceive each other as having a mixture of positive and negative attributes depending on the par-
ticular relationship between them.
4. Dehumanisation is the perception or portrayal of others as less than fully human. For example,
outgroups might be represented metaphorically as animals, or they might be viewed as lacking
the attributes that make us fully human such as intelligence or emotional sophistication. Dehu-
manisation has been implicated as a contributory factor to intergroup violence, weakening the
usual moral constraints against killing other human beings.
5. Exploitative relationships between groups often require a level of cooperation from subordinates,
so unbridled hostility does not always make strategic sense for a dominant group. This has been
studied mainly in the case of gender relations, where sexist ideology is understood as having both
‘hostile’ and ‘benevolent’ elements. Benevolent sexism portrays women as having positive qualities
but needing to be protected by men. Because benevolent sexism is often endorsed by both men
and women, it contributes to gender inequality in a particularly pernicious way.
6. People do not always view their own groups as better than outgroups. ‘Outgroup favouritism’ is
the phenomenon, particularly for members of devalued groups, to see the outgroup as superior.
7. System justification theory argues that people have fundamental psychological needs to see the
existing social system as fair, and that this is why some groups prefer to accept that they deserve
an inferior position rather than challenge it. However, the theory struggles with the question
of when such fundamental psychological needs lead to the rejection rather than defence of the
status quo.
8. Social dominance theory describes a number of processes that create and perpetuate hierarchy
between dominant and subordinate groups. In particular, it highlights the role of ‘legitimising
myths’. According to this theory, individuals and groups differ in their acceptance of legitimising
myths depending on their preference for hierarchy between groups in general (known as ‘social
dominance orientation’ or SDO). Measures of SDO are used extensively in intergroup relations
research, although they have faced some challenges, including the possibility that they may unin-
tentionally measure the more specific attitudes that SDO is supposed to cause, making correlations
difficult to interpret. As such, the meaning and validity of the construct remain contested.
Further Reading
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Brown, R. (2010). Prejudice: Its Social Psychology.
Dixon, J. and Levine, M. (eds.) (2012). Beyond Prejudice: Extending the Social Psychology of Conflict,
Inequality and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Rebellion and Social Change
In Chapter 7, we considered the role of group processes in sparking conflict and sustaining oppres-
sive relationships between groups. We saw how intergroup competition produces hostility and how
stereotypes, especially when shared among group members, enable coordinated aggression and
oppression of others. We also examined how stable group-based hierarchies such as sexism are under-
pinned both by the active discrimination and through fostering consent and compliance among sub-
ordinated groups. In short, we identified several ways in which our commitment to social groups can
feed conflict and oppression in the world.
Yet, while all this might have made for some depressing reading, we do not believe there is anything
inevitable about this darker side of group life, and nor do we see group processes as the root of all evil
in human affairs. The catalogue of injustices that one might find on consulting the history books
and newspapers must be balanced by such triumphs as the fall of apartheid in South Africa, the
independence of former European colonies across the world, and the ongoing advancement of the
status of women. These and other victories for human dignity and equality were made possible not
by individuals acting in isolation, but through collective struggle and resistance. Indeed, we hope to
demonstrate to the reader that solidarity, cohesion, and empowerment – all products of psychological
group membership – represent our best hopes of confronting and dismantling those very systems of
oppression that we have discussed.
Consider the following:
r In June 2002, in the context of a group of prominent American citizens issued a statement express-
ing opposition to the nature of their country’s ‘war on terror’ in this way:
[W]e must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus, we call on all
Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush
administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with
the people of the world.
(Guardian 14 June 2002)
r The Arabic slogan ‘Ash-shaʻb yurı̄d isqāt. an-niz.ām’ (‘The people want to bring down the regime’)
became a key slogan in the popular uprisings and revolutions known as the Arab Spring in 2011.
These examples capture some quite different types of goals, actions, and motivations, but one thing
they have in common is that they each indicate a wider collective identity – whether as American
citizens ‘making common cause with the people of the world’ or simply as ‘the people’ – as the basis
228 8 Rebellion and Social Change
for action. Social psychologists use the term ‘collective action’ to describe people acting as group
members, for the benefit of their group (Wright et al. 1990). Collective action is now a longstanding
field of social psychological research and much has been learnt about the psychological processes
involved in it. In this chapter we will consider some of the key findings and recent developments in this
large literature. We begin by considering the role of anger at injustice before exploring the importance
of social identity and the possibility of solidarity between groups in the struggle for social justice.
Angry Rejection of the Status Quo

What does it take for people to reject the status quo and act together in protest, rebellion, and revolu-
tion? That is, when does the thirst for social change overcome the security of acquiescence, such that
people are willing to directly confront their oppressors? One intuitive possibility is that people are
driven to the barricades by the sheer desperation of their current situation. That is, when stomachs
are empty, living conditions are intolerable and political repression is total – when (as Marx famously
put it) people have ‘nothing to lose but their chains’ – then we would expect people rebel, resist, and
take on whatever personal risks this entails.
Yet, the idea that people revolt when they are most desperate and deprived in absolute terms was
put to rest fairly early on in the scholarship of revolution. Desperate, hungry people are far too preoc-
cupied with meeting their minimal survival needs to organise revolutions. And, conversely, periods of
growing prosperity and opportunity are met not with contentment but by rising expectations about
what we can and should have. It is when these expectations are thwarted, such as when such grad-
ual gains are interrupted by a short-term downturns that unrest is more likely to occur. This pattern
of what is sometimes termed ‘revolutions of rising expectations’ was formally described by Davies
(1962) in his analysis of several case studies, such as the Russian revolution of 1917 and Egyptian rev-
olution of 1952. He argued that when a period of gradual increase in living conditions is followed by a
sharp downturn, a gap is created between what people think they should have and what they actually
do have. It is this gap, rather than objective conditions themselves, that leads to social unrest. This
characterisation of the conditions giving rise to revolution has been termed the J-curve hypothesis
and is depicted in Figure 8.1.
The J-curve hypothesis is not without critics and appears not to apply to all cases of revolt and
rebellion (e.g. Miller et al. 1977). Some relatively early evidence on urban riots in the United States
suggested that people who saw their economic circumstances as changing – whether getting worse
Figure 8.1 Revolution occurs following a period

Expected when the gap between expected and actual need
satisfaction is increased. Source: Adapted from
Need satisfaction
Increased gap Davies (1962) with permission of American

between Sociological Association.
expectations and
attainments
Actual
Time
or better – were more likely to support violent protest than those who thought things are staying the
same (Grofman and Muller 1973). Even so, it makes the important point that discontent is driven by
the gap that people see between what they have and what they expect, desire and think they deserve.
In other words, what matters is not absolute deprivation, but what is known as relative deprivation
(Crosby 1976; Stouffer et al. 1949). As such, relative deprivation results from judgements of needs,
wants, and entitlements: it is a subjective state, albeit one shaped by economic conditions.
Studies of political violence provide more examples of how complex the relationships are between
material, economic conditions on the one hand and relative deprivation on the other. For example,
active combatants within Palestinian militant groups tend to be more educated, and no poorer than
average within the populations that they are drawn from, while educated members of the Palestinian
population are the most supportive of armed action against Israel (Krueger and Malečková 2003).
Education can raise expectations about what one can do with one’s life but, as Krueger and Malečková
explain, job opportunities in Palestine have not necessarily expanded to match the increasing educa-
tion levels, in large part because of the Israeli occupation. These are precisely the conditions under
which we would expect to find the gap between opportunities and expectations that drives collective
action, as well as a clear target held responsible for this gap. Similar observations have been made
about the participants of riots in the United States (Abeles 1976).
There are a number of possible standards of comparison that we can use to assess our entitle-
ments, but relative deprivation research has tended to focus on how we compare our own lot to that
of others. In other words, it is an outcome of social comparison (Pettigrew 1967; Runciman 1966;
Smith et al. 2012). Where people judge others to have better opportunities, treatment, or material
well-being than they do, they see themselves as relatively deprived compared to those others. One
form of this might involve comparisons with other individuals: imagine a scenario in which your
friends and acquaintances seem to enjoy better outcomes than you personally. They might have bet-
ter jobs, be better paid, and live in bigger houses than you. In this case, the relative deprivation that
you experience is personal, in that it is about how you as an individual compare to other individ-
uals. Such relative deprivation is unlikely to inspire you to take collective action against the status
quo, although in severe cases, it might have other consequences such as withdrawal and depres-
sion. On the other hand, imagine another case in which some group that matters to you – let us
say your ethnic group – receives systematically inferior treatment and is worse off than another
group. Under these conditions of ‘fraternal’ or group relative deprivation one would feel that one’s
experience is shared, is a basis for common cause with others, and is best dealt with by banding
together to confront the injustice. Indeed, the transformation of personal experiences of hardship
into a sense of shared grievance is a key to collective struggle. Accordingly, scholars distinguish
individual, or ‘egoistic’, relative deprivation from fraternal relative deprivation and suggest that only
the latter would lead to collective responses like protest (Runciman 1966; Walker and Pettigrew
1984).
This is borne out in a study of the Surinamese minority in the Netherlands, which found that the
experience of being discriminated against fed both feelings of personal dissatisfaction and a readiness
to participate in various kinds of collective protest, an outcome termed ‘militancy’ by the authors
(Koomen and Fränkel 1992). However, each of these outcomes involved a different type of relative
deprivation. Feeling deprived as an individual, relative to other Surimanese people, was related to
low satisfaction but not to militancy. Conversely, fraternal deprivation – seeing the Surinamese as
deprived compared to the white Dutch majority – was related to militancy but not personal dissatis-
faction (Figure 8.2).
Egoistic (individual) Personal

relative deprivation dissatisfaction
Experience of
discrimination
Fraternal (group)
Group militancy
relative deprivation
Figure 8.2 Distinct pathways from discrimination to personal dissatisfaction and group militancy. Source: Adapted
from Koomen and Fränkel (1992) with permission of John Wiley and Sons.
A study of unemployed people in Australia yielded similar findings: those reporting egoistic relative
deprivation were more stressed, whereas those reporting fraternal relative deprivation were keener
to engage in protest (Walker and Pettigrew 1984). Finally, meta-analysis supports this distinction:
strong relationships are found between collective action and measures of relative deprivation that
explicitly involve comparisons between groups, whereas being relatively deprived as an individual is
more strongly associated with individual outcomes such as stress, depression, and anxiety (Smith and
Ortiz 2002; Smith et al. 2012). Egoistic and fraternal deprivation therefore appears to be two distinct
forms of relative deprivation leading to quite separate outcomes.
Anger
Besides the distinction between individual and group levels of relative deprivation, it has also become
increasingly clear that it is not group disadvantage per se that really spurs people to take collective
action, but rather feelings of anger and resentment about such differences (Smith et al. 2012; van
Zomeren et al. 2008; van Zomeren et al. 2004). Group differences in wealth and status abound (for
example, different professions often enjoy markedly different levels of salary) without these differ-
ences necessarily being a cause of anger or protest. Anger carries a sense of illegitimacy and grievance:
it is a response to being wronged (Averill 1983; Feather 2006). Because it so strongly connotes a sense
of injustice, and because it is an energising emotion that readies people for action, anger can expected
to be stronger precursor to collective action than merely perceiving oneself to be relatively deprived
(van Zomeren et al. 2004, 2008). In line with this, meta-analytic evidence indicates that while both
feelings and perceptions of relative deprivation are associated with collective action, feelings are more
strongly so (Smith and Ortiz 2002). Feeling angry, resentful, or dissatisfied about inequality is a more
powerful predictor of collective action than merely judging it to be unfair or illegitimate (Smith et al.
2012; van Zomeren et al. 2008). It seems that emotions have a special role in motivating action, over
and above whatever perceptions and beliefs one might have about one’s situation.
Early social psychological accounts of anger owed much to the so-called frustration–aggression
hypothesis (Dollard et al. 1939; Gurr 1970). In its simplest form, this is the proposal that having one’s
goals obstructed leads to aggression, or the deliberate attempt to harm some target. From this point
of view, anger is a rather transient emotion that we feel when something or someone gets our way,
frustrates our goals, and makes us lash out either at the cause of our frustration or at some scapegoat.
Characterised this way, angry actions do not necessarily serve any instrumental goal, and indeed
may be self-defeating. Anger is seen as irrational in that it makes us do things impulsively in the
heat of the moment which, were we to think them through more carefully, we might realise are not
helpful.
The frustration–aggression hypothesis was originally formulated as a general theory of aggression
rather than being specifically about groups and collective action, but some scholars have strongly
advocated for the relevance of frustration–aggression to social protest and unrest. Berkowitz (1972,
1989), for example, argues that rational, goal-oriented behaviour cannot account for phenomena such
as urban rioting. He suggests that much collective behaviour is non-instrumental in that it gives
expression to anger without actually contributing to any particular goal. An implication of this is
that aggression may be ‘displaced’ on to scapegoats who had little to do with cause of frustration.
Dollard et al. (1939) applied this perspective to growth of anti-semitism in Germany between the
two world wars. That Hitler was able to find such a receptive audience for his racist ideology was
due, they argued, to the previous decade of frustration caused by the collapse of the German econ-
omy in the 1920s. Similarly, using data from the southern states of the USA between 1882 and 1930,
Hovland and Sears (1940) found that the price of cotton (an index of economic prosperity) was
negatively correlated with the number of lynchings of Black people: as the economy declined and
times got hard so the number of lynchings increased (see also Hepworth and West 1988; c.f. Mintz
1946).
Horowitz (1973) has identified a number of examples of civil unrest where the violence has been
directed not against the original cause of the strife, but against some third party. One of these took
place in Burma in 1938, a country which was at that time under British colonial rule. After the break-
up of a demonstration by British police, there was extensive rioting. This uprising, however, was not
directed against their colonial oppressors but against Muslim Indians; Hindu Indians were much less
affected. This looks like a prime example of displaced aggression, although the frustration–aggression
hypothesis struggles to explain why aggression was ‘displaced’ mainly onto Muslims rather than
Hindus. As Horowitz himself notes, to answer this question we would need to look at the historical
and cultural aspects of the relationships between specific groups rather than any single psychological
motivation like frustration.
Experimental attempts to verify this so-called ‘scapegoat’ theory of prejudice have met with mixed
success. Miller and Bugelski (1948) conducted an experiment with a group of young men at a summer
camp. On the evening when the men were eagerly anticipating a night out on the town, the camp
authorities suddenly announced that they would be required to stay on at the camp to take some
uninteresting and difficult tests. This constituted the frustrating experience. Before and after this
frustration, they were also asked for their attitudes towards two minority groups. Analysis of these
intergroup attitudes revealed that after the frustration their stereotypes of the outgroups became
less favourable; a control group experiencing no frustration showed little such change. This seemed
like a classic demonstration of displacement. Although, understandably, the men were angry at the
real agents of their frustration (the camp authorities), this anger also appeared to have ‘spilled over’
onto the minority groups who could have no conceivable responsibility for the men’s plight. However,
Stagner and Congdon (1955) found no evidence for increases in prejudice in students following the
frustration of failing in some academic tests. On the other hand, Cowen et al. (1958), using a similar
methodology, did find some increase in anti-Black feeling after failing some puzzles, although on a
more general measure of ethnocentrism against all minorities, there was little change. Finally, just to
add to the complexity, Burnstein and McRae (1962) found that doing badly in an experimental task
had just the opposite effects on the evaluation of a Black team member. Far from displacing their
anger at performing poorly onto him, the white subjects actually saw the Black confederate more
favourably, and this was especially evident in highly prejudiced subjects who should have been the
most eager to derogate him.
Readers may note the similarity between the frustration–aggression view of social unrest and the
classic theories of crowd psychology associated with Le Bon, as discussed in Chapter 6. We dis-
cussed there the fallacy of assuming intergroup conflict as being irrational or ‘mindless’. Another
problem is that of translating separate individual states of frustration into collective acts of aggression.
Frustration–aggression theory assumes that whenever there is an outbreak of prejudice or discontent,
then several hundred (or thousand) people are simultaneously in roughly the same emotional state of
anger arousal and coincidentally select the same targets for the discharge of that anger. The implausi-
bility of this assumption can be shown with an analogy (Brown and Turner 1981). Imagine a student
cafeteria at 1 p.m. during term time. It is probably crowded with a hundred or more customers. Are
they all there at the same time and in the same place because, and only because, they are all hungry, as a
simple arousal explanation would have us believe? Of course, people do eat because they are hungry(!),
but the simultaneous choice of time and location must also surely have at least something to do with
such social factors as patterns of mutual influence (‘are you coming for lunch then?’), the availability
of other places to eat and the scheduling of classes in the institution concerned. So it is with aggres-
sion. The patterning and selectivity of intergroup antagonism suggest that over and above the mere
anger of the individuals involved, factors like social norms and collective goals must also be involved.
Moreover, if it is true that angry collective action is really a kind of cathartic release of aggressive
energy, simply making us feel better rather than necessarily achieving some goal, it would imply that
anger has limited potential to bring about real social change. It may be channeled into actions that
satisfy feelings of anger in the short term without providing a very sustained challenge to injustice.
This possibility was examined by Sturmer and Simon (2009) who presented German students with
some bogus information designed to make them angry: they were told that the head of their uni-
versity was to increase annual administration and library fees by €300 per student, and that this was
to happen without consultation because he viewed students as incapable of understanding the com-
plexity of the issue. Each participant then rated his or her feelings of anger, irritation and fury about
these proposals. In order to provide a means of cathartic anger reduction, participants in an exper-
imental group were then presented with a series of jokes that ridiculed university professors, while
control participants were given an irrelevant filler task instead. Overall, angrier students were more
likely to engage in ‘venting’ kinds of protest, such as sending furious emails, but not ‘instrumental’
actions such organising public discussions and presenting arguments against the proposals. However,
the relationship between anger and protest did not exist among participants who read the professor
jokes. Stuermer and Simon conclude that while anger may promote certain kinds of protest, it may
not actually serve the long-term goals of the group because efforts are directed into the shorter-term
emotional satisfaction of venting one’s rage, rather than finding constructive solutions to the problem.
This characterisation of group-based anger as distinct from and even opposed to rational, pur-
poseful action is strongly rejected by a group of theories known as ‘appraisal’ theories of emotion
(e.g. Lazarus 1991). These view emotions as being triggered by cognitive interpretations of particu-
lar events (appraisals) and giving rise to differentiated behaviours that respond to those events. This
also means that when someone identifies with a certain group, then they will respond emotionally to
situations affecting that group – even if as an individual they are unaffected – because their psycho-
logical connection to the group makes it self-relevant (Mackie et al. 2000; Mackie and Smith 2015;
Smith 1993). Anger is just one emotion that people can experience on behalf of their group; we will
consider others later in this and the next chapter.
Drawing on this perspective, van Zomeren et al. (2004, 2012) argue that group-based anger is based
on a set of cognitive appraisals about the nature of the disadvantage suffered by the group: (i) you
judge a group to be disadvantaged; (ii) this group matters to you; (iii) an external agent (such as an
outgroup) is to blame for this disadvantage; and (iv) like-minded others share this view. The anger
that these appraisals give rise to prepares group members to attack or confront the source of unfair-
ness in some way. Thus, anger relates to how people make sense of their situation, and anger-driven
collective action is directed specifically at the cause of disadvantage: it is not just about frustrated
people letting off their steam. We might conclude, then, that if anger stems from an appraisal of
entrenched injustice rather than some irritating event or slight, then far from a mere fickle outburst
it will be a sustained sense of grievance capable of motivating long-term action to bring about a fairer
situation. This point was certainly not lost on the famous civil rights leader in America in the 1960s,
Martin Luther King who, perhaps aware that angry protest might be interpreted as capricious and
easily dissipated, pointed out explicitly that:
This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an
invigorating autumn of freedom and equality … [T]hose who hope that the Negro needed to
blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to
business as usual.1
The question of whether anger can sustain long-term commitment to a cause as opposed to a mere
cathartic ‘blowing off steam’ can be approached in terms of the emotional consequences of engaging
in collective action. We will return to the topic of consequences of participation in more detail later
in the chapter, but for now consider this question: after having taken part in, for example a protest,
do we feel more or less angry about the issue at stake? On the one hand, one might suppose that if
anger is the cause of protesting, then taking action might dissipate this anger and make further action
less likely. On the other hand, getting involved might reinforce our beliefs about injustice, making us
even angrier and more likely to take further action. There is comparatively little evidence concerning
anger as a consequence of collective action than as a cause. However, one interesting experimental
study, set in the context of protest against university tuition fees, provides some support for the view
that anger increases after participation in protest and could motivate sustained involvement (Becker
et al. 2011). Students were approached and, after agreeing to participate in a short study, were asked
for their attitudes towards the introduction of university tuition fees. Those indicating opposition
were randomly assigned to an ‘action against the government’ condition, or else one of a number of
control conditions. Action against the government involved making an audio recorded message of
protest, which participants were told would be combined with 1000 other voices and sent to the gov-
ernment as a combined protest message from students. They were also instructed to blow a whistle
loudly into the recorder such that ‘the ears of the members of the government would fly off ’. They then
completed a questionnaire that included measures of anger towards the government and the likeli-
hood that they would engage in various kinds of action against the reintroduction of tuition fees in the
future. Participants in one of the control conditions either read about the issue without any actual
protest, or protested about an issue unrelated to tuition fees, or simply completed a questionnaire
without either protesting or reading about the issues. Compared to all of these control conditions,
those who participated in the recorded protest against the government were the angriest, which in
1 https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf.
turn led to them expressing the greatest likelihood that they would engage in actions against tuition
fees in the future. Thus, at least in this case, protest led to an enhancement rather than a dissipation of
anger, suggesting that where anger is rooted in perception of injustice it can sustain prolonged action.
Note also that the students in this study did not choose to protest but were merely approached and
asked to do so for an experiment yet, having done so, they were more willing than others to protest in
the future. This raises an interesting possibility that actions such as demonstrations could generate a
sense of genuine commitment to a cause, even among people who initially take part for much more
incidental or individualistic reasons. This is a possibility that we will take up in the section below on
the consequences of collective action.
Another potential fear that might be raised about angry collective action, if it is seen as irrational
and impulsive as the frustration–aggression hypothesis would have it, is a link to violence aimed at
harming the other party rather than changing things for the better. However, it is important here to
distinguish between anger and contempt, two emotions linked to different types of action against
whoever is blamed for injustice (Tausch et al. 2011). While anger may motivate confrontational
behaviours, according to Fischer and Roseman (2007), its goal is to change the behaviour of the people
who we think have wronged us in order to restore a mutually acceptable relationship. Contempt, on
the other hand, is experienced when we feel that changing the other’s behaviour is impossible or point-
less, and thus seeks to permanently remove them from one’s environment. Applying this distinction
to the role of emotions in political action, Tausch and her colleagues found contempt to be associ-
ated with German students’ support for violent opposition to tuition fees (e.g. attacks on the police,
arson, and bottle throwing), while anger is associated only with non-violent forms of action. Similarly,
contempt was implicated in British and Indian Muslims’ support for violent responses to collective
disadvantage, while anger was linked to non-violent responses (Figure 8.3). Thus, while both anger
and contempt both stem from perceived injustice, they motivate different responses. Tausch and col-
leagues suggest that this is because angry people ultimately seek to preserve relationships with the
other party, whilst confronting the perceived injustice, so they adhere to some of the moral standards
shared with them. Actions motivated by contempt are more hostile and often violent because they
are not constrained by such moral or normative concerns. Indeed, such action might even aim to
destroy the other party rather than seek longer-term coexistence with them.
It is evident that a variety of emotions underpin people’s reactions to being disadvantaged unfairly
as a group. Later in this chapter, we will consider the other side of the coin by looking at the emotions
experienced by people in relatively privileged groups: feelings such as guilt, sympathy, and moral
outrage. First, though, we will directly consider the role of social identity in collective action.
Nonviolent action
Anger
(e.g. demonstrations
(being angry about
and direct action such
tuition fees)
as blocking roads)
Perceived injustice
Contempt
Violent actions
(disdain for the
(e.g. arson and
people who support
attacks on police)
tuition fees)
Figure 8.3 Effects of anger and contempt on German students’ support for action against university tuition fees.
Source: Based on Tausch et al. (2011) with permission of American Psychological Association.
Social Identity Theory

We have seen that grievances have to be experienced as shared in order to give rise to collective action.
Only where there is investment in what happens to the group, can there be a feeling of collective
disadvantage whereby people feel relatively disadvantaged on behalf of their group rather than just
as individuals. This indicates another psychological element that needs to be present: social identity.
The South African activist Steve Biko, writing in the context of the anti-apartheid struggle, captures
the crucial importance of identity in the process of social change:
Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you
have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp
that marks you out as a subservient being.
(Biko 1971, quoted in MacDonald 2006, p. 118)
Social identity here has a close connection with rejecting an inferior position to which one has been
ascribed and is the basis for the commitment to the group that is needed if people are to take action on
its behalf. Countless studies confirm that group identification is a robust predictor of disadvantaged
group members’ willingness to participate in collective action, and of course, this effect is stronger
for identities whose very meaning entails a commitment to a cause, such as ‘feminist’ (Simon and
Klandermans 2001; for a review see van Zomeren et al. 2008).
In Chapter 1, we briefly introduced Tajfel and Turner’s (1979) social identity theory (SIT). Here, we
return to that theory in order to explore what that theory has to say about how groups deal with collec-
tive disadvantage, and which first introduced the concept of social identity to the study of intergroup
relations. Let us first recap the three assumptions that underpin SIT. First, people seek a positive self-
concept (they want to see themselves in a positive light). Second, because the evaluation of groups
that they belong to carries implications for this positive self-concept, individuals will try to achieve a
positive social identity. Third, since evaluating the value of a social identity is essentially comparative,
people prefer to see their groups as superior to other groups, at least on the criteria that matter most
to them.
However, as we saw in Chapter 7, people do not always view their own groups as superior to
outgroups. In real settings of domination and inequality, one can find a level of acceptance of this
inferiority, a phenomenon termed outgroup favouritism or consensual discrimination. We also saw
that, according to system justification theory (SJT), this is because people are motivated to legitimise
the status quo even if it disadvantages them, and, according to social dominance theory (SDT), it
is because dominant groups use their superior power to disseminate ideologies that legitimate their
position. Working before either of these theories had been developed, Tajfel (1975, 1978a,b,c) pursued
a somewhat different line of thinking. He noted that while subordinate groups sometimes acquiesce
to their inferiority, at other times, they collectively reject and challenge it. A key question for him
concerned the conditions that lead people to confront and challenge inequality rather than accepting
their supposed inferiority. In other words, how do dominant groups lose their power to inculcate a
sense of inferiority among subordinates, while subordinates in turn gain the power to resist it?
For SIT, the answer lies with social identity itself. As Reicher et al. put it, ‘the power of the powerless
lies in their combination and it is social identity that makes combination possible’ (2010, p. 51; origi-
nal emphasis). Tajfel saw the transition from internalised inferiority to rebellion in terms of identity,
whereby a disadvantaged group rejects the derogatory self-definition imposed by the outgroup in
favour of a positively valued definition of the group in its own terms. At the same time, the unity and
mutual support that comes with a shared social identity provides the practical basis for the group to
be able to effectively confront injustice, and thus to improve their condition in real terms. Thus, SIT
views social identity as being at the heart of social change.
So, given that people seek a positive social identity, how do members of low-status groups respond
to a situation in which they are viewed and treated as inferior? In fact, SIT proposes that there are
number of ways in which they might respond, depending on the structural and ideological features
of the context subordinate groups find themselves in. Usually, these are described in terms of three
‘strategies’: individual mobility, social creativity, and social competition.
Individual Mobility
One possible way of dealing with an unsatisfactory group identity is to disassociate oneself from the
group and attempt to ‘pass’ or assimilate into a higher status one, a strategy of so-called individual
mobility. This is a strategy that SIT predicts will occur when the boundaries between groups are seen
as permeable; that is, where it is possible either to hide one’s group membership or for it not to present
a barrier to being treated like a member of the high-status group. This strategy also requires that an
individual is not too attached to their group to effectively leave it behind. Tajfel (1975) illustrates
this point with the example of someone belonging to a political party whose policies are changing
in a way that they dislike. Such a person could leave to join a different party, but if their affiliation
has been strong in the past this will not be easy for them, and they will first try as hard as possible
to rectify things from within the party. Individual mobility is therefore only a ‘default’ option for
improving one’s status to the extent that one lacks a sense of connection to the group. Naturally, since
the individual mobility strategy entails a disassociation from the group, it creates some barriers to
social change for the group as a whole. If members are busy trying to go their own way, perhaps trying
to curry favour with the dominant group in the process, then they are unlikely to be sufficiently united,
dedicated, or willing to confront any injustice to bring about systemic change. SIT therefore suggests
that collective action is unlikely when group boundaries are seen as permeable, whether or not they
really are.
In support of this, Ellemers et al. (1993) demonstrated that people assigned to a low-status ‘incom-
petent’ group in an experimental setting prioritise working for themselves rather than the group, and
were more likely to compete with their fellow ingroup members, if they think it is possible to join the
higher-status group. The possibility for individuals to move from one group also makes any inequality
between groups appear more legitimate (Ellemers et al. 1990). A similar effect was observed in the
‘BBC Prison Study’, in which participants were randomly allocated to either a privileged ‘guard’ group
or a disadvantaged ‘prisoner’ group (Reicher and Haslam 2006; see Chapter 6). These groups were
provided with blatantly unequal qualities of food, accommodation, and privileges from the outset, as
would befit their roles in the prison setting. However, in the initial stages of the study, the ‘prisoners’
were told that it would be possible for one of them to be promoted to guard status, and that the lucky
candidate would be selected by the guards themselves. This possibility of promotion was sufficient to
undermine any sort of cohesive effort by the prisoners to challenge their inferior treatment, despite
the inequality being acutely felt. Only when one prisoner had been promoted, and further promotions
ruled out, did the remaining prisoners unify to directly confront the guards and resist their regime.
Thus, the possibility of individual mobility undermines both the commitment to the group and the
sense of illegitimacy that is needed for a subordinate group to confront inequality.
If even the perception that individual mobility is possible undermines collective action, then we
might expect advantaged groups to try to promote this perception as a way of protecting the status
quo. One way in which this is achieved is by allowing a very small number of disadvantaged group
members into advantaged positions whilst still denying this opportunity to the vast majority of them,
a practice often termed tokenism (Wright 2001; Wright and Taylor 1998; Wright et al. 1990). Success
of a few individuals could lead other members of disadvantaged groups to focus on the differences
between them rather than finding cause in their shared disadvantage. This was explored experimen-
tally by Wright and Taylor (1998), who led their student participants to believe they were going to
participate in a study of ‘decision-making’ as a member of either a high- or low-ability group. Partic-
ipants’ assignment to one of the groups was going to be based – they were told – on how well they
performed in a preliminary essay-writing task, and their answers were going to be judged by existing
members of the high-ability group. In fact, after having their essays ‘scored’ each participant received
bogus feedback created by the experimenters telling them that the judges had decided to refuse them
entry to the high-ability group. After receiving this feedback, they were given the opportunity to
either accept the decision or to take some kind of action to change it. Although all participants were
‘rejected’ by the high-status group, the course of action they took to deal with this rejection differed
according to the justification they had been given for the decision, which was determined by which
of three conditions they were randomly assigned to.
In the ‘open groups’ condition, the justification was that they had simply failed to achieve the min-
imum required score on the test. In other words, there were purely meritocratic grounds for being
assigned to the lower-status group. Participants in this condition tended to respond to the decision by
requesting to re-take the test (an individual response that was understood as acceptable to the judges).
In the ‘closed’ condition, participants learnt that they were being discriminated against on the basis
of their university faculty. For example, a science student would be told that, despite obtaining the
required score, the judges had decided that all science students should be denied access to the high-
ability group. Participants in the closed condition generally responded by composing a petition urg-
ing all members of their group to boycott the experiment until their collective treatment improved
(a form of confrontational collective action).
In the ‘tokenism’ condition, there was still discrimination based on the students’ faculty, but with
some opportunity for a very small number of individuals to be admitted – only 2% of those actu-
ally achieving the required mark. Interestingly, while participants in the tokenism condition also
protested and demanded to be treated better, they did this individually and sought better treatment
for themselves as individuals rather than for the group as a whole.
Thus, it appears that creating opportunities for a very small number of individuals within a dis-
criminatory system can be enough to undermine the solidarity needed for collective rebellion by the
group. Note, however, that the participants in the tokenistic condition were not any more accepting
of their unfair treatment than those in the closed system, but just had a different way of challenging
it. It may be that a more ambiguous form of tokenism in which the success of some individuals makes
discrimination less obvious might undermine even this individual level of protest. Indeed, real-life
tokenistic systems thrive on ambiguity, whereby a mixture of discrimination and meritocracy mean
that the unfairness is not recognised by everybody. Under these circumstances, group members who
do feel discriminated against would be expected to try and persuade others in their group in order to
mobilise a collective response to challenge it (Wright 1997).
The case of career progression among women in male-dominated professions provides an interest-
ing example of the individual mobility strategy in the real world (Ellemers 2001; Ellemers et al. 2004).
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3 Male faculty

Female faculty
0.2
0.1
0
Younger generation Older generation
Figure 8.4 Self-rated ‘masculine’ traits among male and female scientists. Among older scientists, females rated
themselves to be almost as masculine as men. Source: Ellemers et al. (2004). Reproduced with permission of British
Journal of Social Psychology.
Ellemers and colleagues argue that in order to succeed in such environments, women find that they
have to distance themselves from other women and present themselves as more masculine. Part of
this distancing and taking on a more masculine identity includes endorsing some of the very same
negative stereotypes about women that contribute to the inequality in the first place. In other words,
in order to succeed in a sexist environment, women may have to become more sexist (against women)
in order to succeed. This is a particular kind of individual mobility that has been termed the ‘Queen
Bee’ phenomenon: the idea that women who succeed in male-dominated domains might discriminate
more against other women than men do. In support of this, Ellemers et al. (2004) present evidence
that older women working in science (historically a male domain) rate themselves just as highly on
masculine traits as men do, whereas younger women do not show this pattern. This suggests that
these women have adopted a more stereotypically masculine self-concept in the course of pursuing a
career in male-dominated professions (Figure 8.4). From the perspective of SIT, this is because for a
woman whose gender is important to her identity, being in an environment that devalues femininity
is threatening to self-esteem. Emphasising masculine characteristics and thus distancing oneself from
a female identity would be a way to deal with such a threat. More disturbingly, the same study found
that established female academics were more sexist in their perceptions of their junior colleagues, see-
ing female PhD students as less committed to their work than males, while no such differences were
found in the perceptions of male academics (Figure 8.5). In other words, women who have succeeded
individually in male-dominated environments may be particularly unsupportive of other women try-
ing to do the same: a sobering example of how the individual mobility strategy might hinder progress
for the group as a whole.
Further studies suggest that women may respond to sexism in the workplace either with an individ-
ual mobility strategy (i.e. the Queen Bee effect), or with a commitment to collective advancement of
women as a group, depending on the strength of the gender identification. In a study of women work-
ing for the Dutch police, Derks et al. (2011) found that women with a low level of gender identification
5.6
5.4
5.2
5
Male students
4.8 Female students
4.6
4.4
4.2
Male faculty Female faculty
Figure 8.5 Perceived commitment of PhD students. Female academics saw female PhD students as less ‘committed’
than males; male academics did not see so much of a difference. Source: Ellemers et al. (2004). Reproduced with
permission of British Journal of Social Psychology.
(those with little sense of connection to women as a group) showed signs of the Queen Bee effect:
they distanced themselves from other women, denied that there was discrimination, and presented
themselves in more masculine terms when they were led to reflect on their experience of sexism.
Conversely, the same experience made highly identified women more committed to equal opportu-
nities and career advancement for other women (see also Derks et al. 2011). Thus, impermeability
is not just about a lack of external constrains on leaving the low-status group, but can also take the
form of internal, psychological factors that make it harder to distance oneself from the ingroup and
thus more likely that one will join together with fellow group members when faced with unfairness
(Tajfel and Turner 1979).
The potential for the individual mobility strategy to undermine collective action has consequences
for intergroup contact as well. Contact between groups is recognised as an extremely important and
effective way to reduce prejudice between groups (see Chapter 9). At the same time, it may under-
mine the conditions needed for collective action (Wright and Lubensky 2009). One reason for this is
that closer involvement with the dominant group leads disadvantaged group members to pursue an
individual mobility strategy (Tausch et al. 2015). A thorough discussion of the various consequences
of intergroup contact for intergroup relations will be the focus of Chapter 9.
Social Creativity
In some cases of group inequality, individual mobility is not seen as a viable option. This could be
because of a rigid enforcement of group boundaries by the advantaged group, extreme examples
being systems of de jure racism such as the South African apartheid or the American Jim Crow laws
that segregated public places, education, and transportation in the southern states of the USA until
the 1960s. Or it could be because of strong commitment to the group. Either way, SIT proposes that
some sort of collective strategy will be pursued. The first set of such collective strategies, termed
Happy Unhappy Figure 8.6 Exposure to ‘happy poor’ and ‘unhappy rich’
5 exemplars leads people to justify the status quo, compared
to those exposed to ‘happy rich’ or ‘unhappy poor’ ones.
Source: Kay and Jost (2003). Reprinted with permission of
the American Psychological Association.
System justification
2
Rich Poor
social creativity, entails re-appraising the situation in such a way that one’s group’s esteem is restored
even if the unequal relationship remains unchallenged.
Changing the Dimension of Comparison

One way to feel better about belonging to a devalued or low-status group might be to emphasise
some way in which your group compares more favourably to the outgroup. For example, you might
conclude that while you are poorer than others, at least you are happier than them, and after all
being happy is more important. Or your group may be less powerful than the outgroup, but morally
superior. By thinking in this way, it would be possible to avoid feeling of being deprived even with-
out actually changing the objective status of the group. This is precisely what Kay and Jost (2003)
demonstrated in a series of experiments in which American participants are presented with a fic-
tional description of a person who is either happy or unhappy, and as either rich or poor, giving rise
to four possible combinations (see Figure 8.6). Participants reading about the ‘poor, but happy’ or
the ‘rich, but unhappy’ character judged American society to be fairer than those reading about an
unhappy poor or happy rich one. ‘Poor, but honest’ and ‘rich, but dishonest’ exemplars produced sim-
ilar results. Across a variety of different kinds of low-status groups people feel less disadvantaged and
are less willing to challenge their low status when such ‘complementary’ characteristics are empha-
sised (Becker 2012). Low-status regional and ethnic groups are consensually viewed as less ‘agentic’
(e.g. less ambitious, intelligent, and generally able) but more ‘communal’ (e.g. honest and friendly)
compared to high-status groups, and these stereotypes contribute to the feeling that status differ-
ences are fair (Jost and Kay 2005). It seems, then, that if the high- and low-status groups are seen to
each have to have their own positively valued characteristics then the inequality between them will
be judged to be fair.
In the previous chapter, we considered the notion of ‘benevolent sexism’ (BS), in which women
are valued in a paternalistic light that implies that they need to be protected and kept in a position
of dependency. We saw that this view of women often coexists with hostile sexism (HS), which is a
more overtly negative view of women who do not conform to this subordinate role (Glick and Fiske
1996, 2001). If women endorse this view of themselves as a way of feeling better about their status
in relation to men, then we could see benevolent sexism as yet another form of social creativity. In
line with this, reminding women of stereotypes of them happy and moral reduces their perception
90
80
70
60
50 Benevolent sexim
40 Hostile sexism
Control
30
20
10
0
Number of flyers taken % Signing gender-related petition % Signing gender-unrelated petition
Figure 8.7 Exposure to benevolent sexist statements reduces women’s collective action for gender equality,
compared to hostile sexist of neutral statement. Source: Adapted from Becker and Wright (2011) with permission of
SAGE Publications.
of unfairness (Jost et al. 2005). Benevolent sexism secures women’s compliance by providing a pos-
itively valued identity that enables them to feel better about being women in a sexist world (Becker
and Wright 2011). In the guise of a ‘memory task’, Becker and Wright presented female participants
with statements drawn from either the BS or HS questionnaire scales (Glick and Fiske 1996). After
completing a questionnaire about gender issues, all participants had the opportunity to take flyers
endorsing gender equality and distribute them, and to sign a petition demanding the hiring of more
female professors within their university. As shown in Figure 8.7, participants in the HS condition
showed more willingness to take action against gender inequality (by distributing flyers and signing
a petition) compared to a control group who had been exposed to gender-neutral or irrelevant state-
ments. In contrast, women in the BS condition were less likely to take such action than the control
participants (Figure 8.7).
What causes this detrimental effect of benevolent sexism on women’s willingness to take action for
gender equality? Women exposed to benevolent sexist beliefs tend to view existing gender relations
as more fair, see more advantages in being a woman and report more happiness and satisfaction, than
those exposed to hostile sexism (Becker and Wright 2011). Rather than the distancing from the group
that we saw in the case of individual mobility and the ‘Queen Bee’ phenomenon, we see a different
strategy whereby women might still have a strong gender identity, but define this identity in a way
that is consistent with benevolent sexism (e.g. as a ‘traditional woman’; Becker and Wagner 2009). It
seems, then, that part of the effectiveness of benevolent sexism lies in the fact that it offers a positive
social identity to women, enables them to feel good in a sexist world, and thus demobilises them from
actions that might challenge inequality. However, it could be that while identifying as a ‘traditional
woman’ might provide a positively valued social identity in a benevolent sexist society, it would be
difficult to reconcile this identity with a traditionally male profession such as being a police officer,
and so in those ‘macho’ contexts the individual mobility (‘Queen Bee’) strategy discussed above is
more likely. We can see, then, that the mixed stereotypes discussed in Chapter 7 serve to reduce
those subordinates’ desire for social change by diminishing their feelings of injustice.
Downward Social Comparison

Alternatively, subordinate group members might prefer to emphasise their superiority over an even
more deprived outgroup, and thus avoid making comparisons with the high-status group. It is often
reported that White respondents from poorer socio-economic backgrounds show more overt anti-
Black prejudice than more middle-class samples (Brown 1965; Vollebergh 1991). Such ‘poor White
racism’, as it is sometimes called, may be motivated in part by the desire to avoid identity-damaging
comparisons with wealthier social classes and to seek positive distinctiveness in a relation to a more
deprived group. Women may prefer to compare their salary with that of other women rather than
men when assessing their level of satisfaction with how much they have been paid for work already
done, thus avoiding the unpleasant conclusion that female employees are relatively devalued (Blanton
et al. 2001; Crosby 1982).
As we saw in the case of the so-called ‘J-curve’ hypothesis, historical change provides another type
of comparison: comparison across time (Davies 1962). Thus, another option is for low-status groups
to compare their current position with their own position in the past rather than with another group,
particularly if things seem to be improving. Members of ethnic minority groups in England and
Germany, for example prefer to make such temporal comparisons when asked to think about their
present status, rather than comparing themselves with the majority ethnic group (Zagefka and Brown
2005). On the other hand, in the United States, White people see more progress towards racial equal-
ity than Black people do, precisely because they tend to compare the present situation with the more
overt racism of the past, whereas Black people tend more to compare the discrimination of the present
with a future ideal of genuine equality (Eibach and Ehrlinger 2006). Comparison across time, then,
can change how present inequalities are assessed by framing them against either an even worse past
or a better future.
Redefining the Meaning of the Devalued Attribute

A third form of social creativity – an aspect that was considered early on in SIT but has been explored
relatively little since then – involves redefining devalued attributes as positive. A classic example
often cited in the literature is the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement that emerged in the context of both
the American civil rights and South African anti-apartheid struggles (Tajfel and Turner 1979). This
sought to counter the cultural associations of ‘blackness’ with ugliness, establishing it instead as a
source of pride. Other examples include Mad Pride, deaf culture, and the concept of ‘Big Beautiful
Women’, all of which are ways of reclaiming characteristics that have conventionally been viewed as
inherently negative – mental illness, deafness, and being overweight – and building positive meanings
around them.
Unlike the first two forms of social creativity, evidence suggests that redefining the devalued
attribute does not necessarily undermine collective action. Becker (2012) argues that it differs from
the other strategies in that it aims to change the way in which the group is viewed by others and thus
challenges the common-sense assumptions underpinning their exclusion. In this way, it may serve to
unite members of a devalued group, bolster their commitment, and mobilise them to confront infe-
rior treatment rather than internalising it. To date, there is limited evidence on the effects of such
positive re-evaluation on collective action. However, Becker reports evidence from several studies
indicating that it at least does not reduce collective action intentions.
Social Competition
In general, though, with the exception of positive re-evaluation discussed above, efforts at individual
mobility and social creativity do not actually change the intergroup relationship in a real sense but
leave the unequal status relations intact. The third strategy, termed social competition, corresponds
to collective action. Here, rather than finding some imaginative way to live with inequality without it
affecting self-esteem, group members directly confront their disadvantage in an effort to ameliorate
it. According to SIT, this final strategy is most likely when the existing status relations are seen as
illegitimate (‘this should change’) and unstable (‘this can be changed’). Indeed, it may even be that
stability and legitimacy are related such that stable systems are seen as more legitimate and vice versa
(Ellemers et al. 1990). Capitalism in the United States and the caste system in India, for example are
both accepted as legitimate to the extent that people view these systems as having existed for a long
time (Blanchar and Eidelman 2013). In order to take action, people need to believe that things could
be different and that they therefore have the power to change them.
This final point, then, implies that people will get involved in collective action to the extent that
they believe that it is actually possible for their action to bring about the change they want, that
they have a sense of efficacy. The empirical literature strongly supports this, showing that efficacy,
like social identity and perceived injustice, is a robust predictor of collective action (van Zomeren
et al. 2004, 2008). Efficacy is in part an outcome of social identity in that people feel more able to
change injustice if they have the practical support of others like them and are embedded within social
networks that provide the information and resources they need to take action (Klandermans et al.
2008; van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2013; van Zomeren et al. 2004).
Winning the Solidarity of the Advantaged

So far we have considered the ways in which groups identify and respond to being collectively disad-
vantaged, and we now have some kind of outline of the conditions under which people might resist
the subjugation of their group: illegitimate and unstable status relations in which it is difficult or unde-
sirable to assimilate into the advantaged group. However, this begs the further questions about those
advantaged by the status quo: How will they feel about what is going on? How will they react to being
told that the relative power and advantage they enjoy is illegitimate, perhaps immoral, and needs to
change?
Given what we have discussed throughout this book about the nature of group loyalties, particu-
larly under conditions of conflict and competition, it might be assumed that reactions to such chal-
lenges tend to be rather negative and that advantaged groups would push back against any collective
action of the disadvantaged. Indeed, as we will see, this is one possibility, and not at all an uncom-
mon one. The nineteenth century abolitionist movement that fought for an end to the transatlantic
slave trade is just one example of how injustices are sometimes opposed even by those who ben-
efit from them. Perhaps even more powerfully, Lancashire cotton mill workers’ solidarity with the
slaves in the American south, who produced the cotton their jobs depended on, outweighed even
the massive economic hardship that they experienced in the 1860s as a result of the American Civil
War and the struggle for emancipation. More recently, the international movement against the South
African apartheid system illustrates the crucial role of countless sympathisers, well beyond those
directly oppressed by apartheid, in bringing that particular racist system to its knees. These exam-
ples in no way undermine the fact that meaningful social change is brought about by resistance of the
oppressed – equality is rarely a ‘gift’ from above – but they do show that the success of such resistance
depends at least in part on privileged groups’ inability (or unwillingness) to put up a united opposi-
tion to change. And, if the oppressed are able to win the active solidarity of other groups, so much the
better.
The first step, though, is for people to actually acknowledge that they are privileged by their group
membership, something that can be surprisingly difficult (Leach et al. 2002). Under conditions of sta-
ble inequality, the fairness of the status quo may not even be questioned by the majority of people who
are advantaged by it. This happens partly through a ‘normalisation’ of privileged status that renders
it invisible to people who enjoy it (McIntosh 2007). Consider a hypothetical White male born to rela-
tively wealthy parents in a white-majority developed country who, after completing his education in
a high-status university, successfully obtains a well-paid job in an esteemed profession. Such an indi-
vidual might well have worked hard for his achievements and feel justifiably proud of having done so.
At the same time, given various forms of discrimination that we know to exist, his gender, ethnicity,
and class will also surely have contributed to this success at least some of the time. In other words,
while both gross and subtle discrimination may be quite apparent to people who are disadvantaged by
it, it remains largely invisible to those who benefit. Similarly, members of dominant ethnic groups can
feel free to voice criticism of their national groups without this being construed as disloyalty, which is
often not the case for ethnic minorities (Wakefield et al. 2011). Yet, the fact that this is a privilege not
enjoyed by others is generally not noticed by the majority, who can afford to simply ignore their eth-
nicity much of the time. In this way, the privileges some groups enjoy can simply be taken for granted,
with the unfairness of the status quo barely entering into their consciousness. However, such blissful
ignorance becomes less and less sustainable as collective action by disadvantaged gains prominence
and efficacy. A number of more active responses then become more likely.
Resentment and Backlash

Demands for equality and associated actions such as protest and political mobilisation may make
it difficult for advantaged groups to ignore, but will not necessarily convince them of the need for
change. In other words, advantaged groups do not necessarily accept that their advantaged position
is illegitimate but may seek to affirm their entitlement to the advantages they enjoy, such as the jobs,
wealth, and positions of power from which other groups are excluded. A sense of entitlement could be
supported by stereotypes that portray the disadvantaged outgroup as less deserving on the grounds
that they are less able or less hardworking, thus justifying their low position (Bobo 2004; Yzerbyt
and Rogier 2001). In the context of immigration, non-immigrant populations might base their sense
of legitimate privilege on a feeling that ‘we were here first’ (Smeekes and Verkuyten 2013). Under
these conditions, efforts by a disadvantaged group to attain parity of power and resources could be
resented by an advantaged group as an illegitimate encroachment on their position – ‘them’ taking
what is rightfully ‘ours’. After all, as we saw in our discussion of angry rejection of the status quo,
relative deprivation is a discrepancy between what one has and what one feels entitled to. It is there-
fore entirely possible for an advantaged group to experience relative deprivation and anger if their
perceived legitimate entitlements are encroached upon by an outgroup (Leach et al. 2006).
As Blumer (1958) argues in a classic paper, this feeling of threatened group position comes about
as groups and their leaders interpret their social position in relation to other groups in the context
of inequality. The idea has been applied most comprehensively to the study of racism in the United
States. In the decades following the civil rights movement, racist ideology primarily emphasised the
supposed illegitimacy of government efforts to ameliorate the effects of racial inequality (Bobo 2004;
Bobo and Kluegel 1997). For example, ‘symbolic racism’ is said to comprise beliefs that Black people
are no longer discriminated against but make excessive demands, are lazy and benefit unduly from
government assistance (e.g. Sears and Henry 2003). ‘Modern racism’ is a very similar concept, centred
on some White Americans’ claims that the demands and gains made by Black people have gone too
far and are no longer justified (McConahay 1986; McConahay et al. 1981). ‘Laissez-faire racism’ also
includes the idea that Black people’s claims of continued discrimination are no longer valid as well
as stereotypes that portray them as lazy and preferring to live on benefits than to work (Bobo 1988,
2004; Bobo and Smith 1998). All of these attitudes imply the feeling of violated entitlement, such
that collective action by Black people is illegitimate and that they deserve their low status. If efforts
to equalise relations between groups are interpreted as giving unfair advantage to the other group,
then we can expect such perceptions to be closely related to a sense of relative deprivation and anger
among members of the historically advantaged groups. Efforts to improve their status come to be
viewed as unfairly disadvantaging White people, provoking resentment (Taylor 2002).
This configuration of beliefs and perceptions is consistently associated with White people’s oppo-
sition to policies such as affirmative action in the United States (e.g. Sears and Henry 2003). It can
also be seen elsewhere, such as in Australia where the Aboriginal minority are frequently viewed as
enjoying undeserved privileges compared to non-Aboriginal Australians, regardless of the reality of
economic and health inequalities they actually face. There, non-Aboriginal Australians who endorse
symbolic racist beliefs – that Aboriginals are aggressive in their demands, are given too much help
and are not really discriminated against – tend to view themselves as relatively deprived as a group
and feel more angry and indignant, which in turn leads them to oppose the government apologis-
ing for historic atrocities against the Aboriginals (Leach et al. 2007). A very similar kind of ethnic
resentment was found in a study of White opposition to indigenous people’s fishing rights in the
United States (Bobo and Tuan 2006). Such ‘inverse’ relative deprivation can also be seen in attitudes
towards low-status ethnic minorities in Europe, who are often suspected – generally falsely – of enjoy-
ing being unfair advantaged (Garner and Clark 2010; Pettigrew and Meertens 1995). Pehrson et al.
(2012) argue that attitudes towards immigrants are more negative among Protestants than Catholics
in Northern Ireland because the former enjoyed relative domination in the past and thus view their
status as more threatened. In line with this, Protestants’ higher level of cultural threat, indicated with
agreement with statements like ‘My cultural tradition is always the underdog’ largely accounted for
their more negative attitude towards immigrants compared to Catholics.
Resentment about collective action by disadvantaged groups helps to explain ‘backlash’, the hos-
tile and sometimes violent reactions to members of subordinate groups who challenge the status
quo. As we saw in Chapter 7, the most hostile reactions by dominant groups are reserved for people
who ‘rock the boat’ by not submitting to their designated low position (Jackman 1994). A compelling
example of this can be found in experimental lab studies of sexual harassment (Maass et al. 2003).
In these experiments, male participants were led to believe that they were engaged in a computer-
mediated interaction task with a female participant in another room. The task involved exchanging
images in an online ‘chat’ format. Participants could select images to send from various on-screen
folders, including one labelled ‘porno’ that, as the name suggests, contained sexually explicit images.
A male confederate was recruited to goad the participant to send images from this folder to the female
interaction partner and to continue doing so despite her clearly expressing that these were not appre-
ciated: a form of sexual harassment. Of course, the participant was unaware that the female interac-
tion partner did not actually exist and ‘her’ responses were predetermined by the experimenters in a
manner akin to the classic obedience experience by Milgram (1963). Most crucially for our current
discussion, levels of sexual harassment were increased when the partner was described as a feminist,
thus provoking a threat to the legitimacy of males’ dominant status. Sexual harassment, then, is a
form of aggression that can stem from threatened group status.
Numerous historic examples make a similar point. Klarman (1994), for example describes the hard-
ening of anti-Black politics and associated violence in the form of lynching, riots, and police brutality
triggered by efforts at desegregation in the 1950s and 1960s United States. In colonial settings, too,
nonviolent resistance has been met with extreme violence such as that by the British army in Amritsar
in 1919, or the Chinese army in response to the 1959 Tibetan uprising to name just two examples.
Experiencing Illegitimate Privilege

As these cases illustrate, advantaged groups are often resistant to the idea that their position is unde-
served and should be changed. Indeed, it seems that merely drawing people’s attention to their group’s
advantaged position provokes attempts to justify it (e.g. Harth et al. 2008). In a sense, this is unsur-
prising. Benefitting from oppression of another group associates you with something immoral and is
therefore something deeply discomforting that many of us would prefer not to face. It is not pleasant,
for example, to be reminded that many of the opportunities one has enjoyed in life are the result of
having being born into an ethnic group or gender that has historically oppressed another. Similarly,
as we will explore further in Chapter 9, people overwhelmingly seek to downplay the responsibil-
ity of their group for past atrocities (Leach et al. 2013). Despite this, some members of advantaged
groups may come to see the social structure that advantages them as wrong, and there are a number
of different experiences than can occur in this case (Figure 8.8).
Reactions to being in an advantaged group
Recognising inequality Ignoring inequality
Status quo is legitimate Status quo is illegitimate
Backlash, blaming Moral outrage:

Sympathy: action to
outgroup for their Guilt, action to Invisible privilege,
relieve suffering of Solidarity with
low status (for other compensate and taken for granted by
outgroup without disadvantaged group
possible reactions reduce guilt the advantaged
necessarily to confront immoral
see Leach et al. group
challenging injustice third party
2002)
Figure 8.8 Some reactions to being in an advantaged group. Source: Loosely based on Leach et al. 2002 and Thomas
et al. 2009 with permission of Cambridge University Press.
First, people may feel guilty about being in a privileged group. In general, guilt is an emotion
that we experience when we hold ourselves to blame for some moral transgression. In this case,
members of advantaged groups are not necessarily blaming themselves as individuals for oppress-
ing an outgroup – that is they may not personally have engaged in deliberate discrimination – but
rather feel guilty by association with a group that has. Alternatively, one can feel so-called exis-
tential guilt merely because of having undeserved advantages over others, regardless of the cause
(Leach et al. 2002). As one might expect, people who feel guilty are more prone to support efforts
to put right the wrongs that they feel guilty about. For example, White Americans and Australians
who feel guilty about their own groups’ advantages are supportive of compensation for the injus-
tices of racism (Iyer et al. 2003; Leach et al., 2006; see also Brown and Čehajić 2008; Brown et al.
2008). At the same time, there seem to be significant limits to the kinds of things that people will
do for social justice as a result of feeling guilty. One problem identified by Leach et al. (2006) is
that guilt is a dysphoric, dejected sort of experience that fails to energise people for action. In that
sense, it is quite different from emotions like fear and anger, which make people feel agitated and
physically aroused. This means that while guilty, people might be supportive of the abstract idea of
compensating for discrimination, they are not energised to actually do anything concrete about it.
Another problem with guilt is its emphasis on one’s own distress at being implicated in injustice,
rather than with the plight of the victims. As such, guilty people may help disadvantaged groups
only if this is seen as compensation for past wrongdoing. In other words, we might try to alle-
viate our guilt rather than the suffering of the disadvantaged group (Harth et al. 2008; Iyer et al.
2003). The potential for guilt to motivate restitution for historical wrongdoing by the ingroup has
been investigated quite extensively in comparison with the related emotion of shame, particularly in
the context of reconciliation (Allpress et al. 2014; Brown and Čehajić 2008; Brown et al. 2008). We
will discuss this line of research in Chapter 9.
While thinking about our own (perhaps indirect) moral culpability for social injustice makes us
feel guilty, focussing more on the difficulties faced by the outgroup leads to feelings of sympathy
or compassion whereby one feels moved to alleviate the suffering of others (Harth et al. 2008; Iyer
et al. 2003; Leach et al. 2002; Thomas et al. 2009). Unlike guilt, such a compassionate response is
more far-reaching in its ability to motivate action that is genuinely aimed at alleviating suffering
(Iyer et al. 2003; Saab et al. 2015). This is particularly the case when the feeling of compassion is
cognitively supported by empathy, which entails a fundamental same-ness of self and other, so in
a sense dissolves the distinction between ingroup and outgroup (Thomas et al. 2009). Empathy-
based compassion therefore bonds the advantaged and disadvantaged together in a way that guilt
does not, even if in practice these emotions can be experienced simultaneously (Brown and Čehajić
2008).
We have seen that anger at collective injustice is a powerful motivator of collective action among
disadvantaged groups, and there is another kind of anger that becomes relevant in the case of advan-
taged groups: moral outrage. Moral outrage is experienced when we see some third party (perhaps a
government, institution, or unjust system) as violating some standard of morality (Leach et al. 2002;
Montada and Schneider 1989; Thomas et al. 2009). For example, a person might not only feel compas-
sion for the plight of asylum seekers in their country but also outrage at their government’s treatment
of them because it violates basic standards or fairness and humanity. Such outrage is not directed at
the ingroup as a whole, nor at the victims, but at a third party that is held responsible (the govern-
ment). While feeling sympathy for asylum seekers may be enough to make you want to help them,
moral outrage will focus your actions more explicitly at challenging the injustices they suffer. Unlike
guilt, moral outrage (being a form of anger), is subjectively energising rather than depressing, and
therefore strongly action-oriented. It motivates people to confront perpetrators as well as helping

victims (Iyer et al. 2007; Saab et al. 2015; Thomas et al. 2009).
Advantaged and disadvantaged groups can be united by a shared feeling of moral outrage that
joins them together in confronting the source of injustice itself. As Subasic et al. (2008) point out,
struggles for social justice generally involve conflict between an oppressed minority group and some
authority – perhaps a state – that oppresses them. The role of the majority group, who are neither the
direct oppressors nor the victims of oppression, but who serve as a kind of audience for the claims
of both, therefore, becomes very significant (Simon and Klandermans 2001). On the one hand, they
may see the authority’s actions as being in line with their norms and moral standards, showing hos-
tility towards the minority who seek to challenge them. Under these circumstances, the minority will
remain isolated and uninfluential with the rest of society against them, and resistance will be difficult.
On the other hand, the majority might be persuaded that the minority’s cause is in fact wholly in line
with the defining values of the majority group, and that it is the actions of the authority that violate
this shared morality. To the extent that this is successful, it becomes much harder for those in power
to resist change because they now have the majority and minority working together against them.
Such political solidarity therefore rests on the relative success of the authority and the minority in
presenting their agenda as an expression of a shared identity with the majority, and their opponents’
agenda as a violation of it (Subasic et al. 2008).
For illustration, consider the case of the campaigns to legalise same-sex marriage that have recently
been fought in several countries. LGBT groups campaigning for same-sex marriage have been in con-
flict with governments that did not allow it, and perhaps other groups such as churches that resisted
change. The status quo would have been favoured if the majority heterosexual population viewed the
LGBT community and their campaign as a violation of their group norms, which would render them
as outgroup while the government would be supported as defenders of ingroup morality. Indeed, this
may have frequently been the case in the past. However, to a large extent, majorities have come to
see the denial of the right for gay and lesbian couples to marry as being discriminatory and there-
fore inconsistent with wider norms of equality and fairness. Support for same-sex marriage becomes
an expression of majority group identity, with majority and minority effectively united in a strug-
gle against what both understand as discrimination. In this way, anger directed at a powerful third
party or system held responsible an injustice is a powerful basis for alliances between advantaged and
disadvantaged groups in common struggles for equality.
Intergroup Contact and Collective Action

The potential for solidarity between members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups in challenging
inequality raises the question of what role contact between groups plays in collective action. In fact,
the effect of bringing groups together on their attitudes towards each other has been a major area
of research in intergroup relations for many decades, and a significant portion of the next chapter is
dedicated to examining that research literature in detail. Here, though, we consider how intergroup
contact affects disadvantaged groups’ motivation to confront inequality.
There are a number of reasons why we might expect contact with the advantaged outgroup to
undermine collective action. For instance, contact might reduce perceptions of injustice by empha-
sising instead the similarity between groups, while warmer attitudes between groups might dilute the
recognition of the outgroup as an oppressor (Wright and Lubensky 2009). In support of this, Saguy
Intergroup Contact and Collective Action 249
4.5
Number of credits
3.5
3
Expected Received
Commonality-focussed Differences-focussed
Figure 8.9 Contact focussed on commonalities causes a low-power group to have a misplaced expectation of fair
treatment: they expect a fairer distribution, but do not get it. In this task, an equitable distribution of credits would be
they were awarded five. Source: Based on Saguy et al. (2009) with permission of SAGE Publications.
et al. (2009) report an experiment in which students are assigned to high- and low-power groups for
a laboratory task, whereby the high power-group can choose how to allocate a set of research partic-
ipation credits (which are valuable to the student participants) between the groups following a brief
interaction. They find that when the interaction task emphasises commonalities between the groups,
the low-power group anticipate that the high-power group will be fair in its allocation of the credits.
Yet, this anticipated fairness turns out to be unwarranted. In other words, emphasising commonality
makes the low-power group believe that they will be treated fairly but does not actually make the high-
power group behave more fairly (Figure 8.9). Thus, if contact encourages groups to see each other
as having more in common, it might make disadvantaged groups more exploitable by giving them
a mistaken confidence in the fairness of the outgroup. Several studies of real disadvantaged groups
bear out this concern that contact undermines collective action. For example, Israeli Arabs who have
had more contact with Jews see them as more fair and pay less attention to inequality (Saguy et al.
2009). And, Black South Africans who have more friendships and social contact with White people
perceive their group as less disadvantaged, are less willing to engage in collective action, and are less
supportive of policies that would benefit Black people as a group, such as government assistance and
scholarships (Cakal et al. 2011; Dixon et al. 2007).
Contact could also exert ‘sedative’ effects by making individual mobility seem a more appealing
strategy than collective action, similar to the role of ‘tokenism’ discussed above (Wright and Luben-
sky 2009). Indeed, in some situations intergroup contact could be closely tied to individual mobility
or even tokenism. Consider, for example, the circumstances under which advantaged ethnic groups
could come into contact with disadvantaged ones. Whether in residential areas, workplaces, or uni-
versities, contact is likely to happen on the advantaged groups’ ‘turf ’. That is, groups often come into
contact about when some members of disadvantaged groups have managed to live or work in places
that have historically been dominated by the advantaged group, where the latter are more established.
If this is the case, the very contact situation itself might entail disadvantaged group members loos-
ening their ingroup ties in order to make gains into the advantaged group’s domain, as we saw above
in the example of women in science. In line with this, Latino-American students in the United States
who had more White friends said that they were more likely to try to improve their individual status
by making connections with powerful people or moving to another neighbourhood, and were less
likely act in support of the group as a whole, such as by organising meetings, voting for particular
candidates or writing letters (Tausch et al. 2015). Although these individual mobility strategies them-
selves did not account for their disinterest in collective action, their weaker Latino identity did. And,
replicating the evidence from South Africa, Tausch et al. also found that the Latino students with
more contact with White people saw their group as being less disadvantaged, were less angry, and
liked White people more than did those with fewer White friends, all of which were implicated in a
relative disinterest in collective action.
There therefore seems to be some basis for the concern that contact between advantaged and disad-
vantaged group could undermine the conditions needed for inequality to be challenged. The point is
an awkward one for the field of intergroup relations, since, as we shall see in the next chapter, contact
is also one of the most important means of reducing prejudice and gaining the support of the advan-
taged for equality. If, as we have argued above, building solidarity between groups is a key element
of social change, and given that segregation is virtually always practised in a way that entrenches
inequality, it is unlikely that advocates of equality would suggest further segregation as part of the
solution (although there may be specific situations in which certain kinds of self-segregation by an
oppressed group might have strategic value as part of a broader struggle – see Reicher 2007). As
Wright and Lubensky (2009) argue, then, the real question is what kind of contact could serve to
build alliances between disadvantaged groups and potentially supportive members of advantaged
groups rather merely promoting harmony at the expense of social justice. They propose subtyping
of certain advantaged group members as ‘allies’, distinct from the outgroup as a whole, as a potential
solution (see Droogendyk et al. 2016, for more discussion about the possibilities as well as potential
pitfalls of advantaged group allies). However, to date, this remains a question without a clear answer
from the research literature.
Consequences of Collective Action

In general, the research on collective action discussed above has treated a person’s participation in
collective action as the endpoint of a psychological process involving identities, feelings about injus-
tice, and appraisals of possible alternatives. In other words, it asks questions about what leads to
collective action. Much less attention has been given to the consequences, or what collective action
leads to. Yet, the pursuit of meaningful social change can be expected to involve activists in a long,
perhaps indefinite, series of specific actions and campaigns unfolding over time. Along the way, there
may not only well be some victories but also frequent frustration and setbacks demanding consid-
erable persistence from activists. Thus, the way in which action feeds back into participants’ under-
standing of the world and further action must be as important as the way what initially led to their
participation.
In our discussion of the role of anger, we saw that randomly assigning experimental participants to
join in an act of protest led to more anger about that issue compared to a control condition (Becker
et al. 2011). This highlights the possibility that even a person who becomes involved in collective
action for entirely incidental reasons may nonetheless be transformed by it in such a way that further
action is likely in the future. If group identification, anger, and efficacy are outcomes as well as causes
of collective action, then participation may involve a feedback loop whereby prolonged commitment
Consequences of Collective Action 251
to a movement or cause is sustained by the reciprocal impact of action and transformations in one’s
understanding of the injustice (van Zomeren et al. 2012).
How might participating in collective action increase commitment to the issue at stake? There are
a number of likely ways this could happen. First, getting involved in an issue, and going to meetings,
protests and other events brings us into contact with others who share and validate our opinions
and feelings. In this way, anger becomes a shared experience that is socially supported within one’s
milieu, and thus more powerful and sustained than a private personal judgement (van Zomeren et al.
2004). In a similar way, merely seeing that others are prepared to join together to act with us supports
our belief that things can be changed for the better, and that we have the power to do this together.
This is most obviously the case where immediate objectives of an action are successful. For example,
student activists’ pride at successfully bringing about the abolition of tuition fees in Germany led to
their increased sense of efficacy and willingness to act to prevent the reintroduction of fees in the
future (Tausch and Becker 2013). On the other hand, those same students’ anger about a later court
ruling that tuition fees were not unconstitutional (a failure for the movement) also increased their
willingness for action. Thus, if – as often happens – the immediate goals of protest are thwarted,
then anger at this very lack of progress could strengthen motivation to take further action.
Second, engaging in protest often entails direct face-to-face confrontation with other groups that
instantiate the injustices one is protesting about, such as with the police. If, for example, the police
impose restrictions on a protest or treat protestors with disrespect or hostility, this may heighten
the sense of grievance with the status quo and make stronger dissenting voices more plausible and
persuasive. We saw this in Chapter 6 when we looked at the emergence of collective violence in riots
(e.g. Reicher 1996). Moreover, confrontation with the police or other outgroups can create the cir-
cumstances for activists to temporarily defy outgroup power and to shape things in the image of the
world they wish to see, which, according to Drury and colleagues, is an intensely empowering expe-
rience (Drury and Reicher 2005, 2009; Drury et al. 2003). This is illustrated most comprehensively
in Drury and colleagues’ extensive study of a direct action campaign against a road-building scheme
in London during 1990s. At one event within this campaign, anti-roads activists and local residents
set out to ‘dress’ with ribbons a tree within a green that was scheduled for destruction to make way
for the new road. The dressing ceremony was obstructed by a security fence that, in the eyes of the
protestors, illegitimately expelled them from ‘common land’ in order to enable its demolition. In spite
of the police efforts, protestors succeeded in pushing the fences down and occupying the green. This
was experienced not only as a practical accomplishment but more significantly as a successful impo-
sition of their shared understanding of the area as rightfully belonging to the community. This impo-
sition (termed ‘Collective Self-Objectification’ by Drury and Reicher) was accompanied by joy as well
as a sense of empowerment that persisted beyond the event and stimulated further action. Following
their forcible eviction from the green after a month of occupation, campaigners felt depressed, not
simply because it meant they failed to prevent the demolition but because it was – in their eyes – a
victory for oppressive force over the ‘community’. However, even this eviction subsequently came to
be viewed as a success for the campaigners in that it exposed the perceived brutality of the author-
ities they were struggling against, not least due to the very public spectacle of the police violently
dragging protestors from the tree to allow it to be destroyed by the private contractors. More gen-
erally, the potential for disruptive collective action to provoke and thus expose the violence of the
oppressor has been a key strategy of nonviolent movements for social change. Thus, an apparent fail-
ure for the campaign served to enhance anger at the illegitimacy of the road-building program and
motivate campaigners to commit to further action. Thus, success and failure for a protest event, may
not be straightforwardly defined in terms of its demands being ceded to, but its ability to empower
and motivate participants and to bring injustices (including opponents’ propensity to violence when
challenged) into sharper relief.
Based on this and similar analyses of protests involving confrontation with outgroups such as the
police, Drury and Reicher (2009) argue that one reason crowds play a crucial role in social change is
that they can enable an exhilarating subjective sense empowerment that among by crowd members.
Readers may recall from Chapter 6 the joy expressed by rioters as they reflected back on their expe-
rience of overpowering the police. Even though the outgroup might soon reassert control, according
to Drury and Reicher, the empowering experience and associated positive feelings continue beyond
the event and can be deeply meaningful for the participants, transforming their understanding of the
world and their ability to change it.
Summary
1. Belonging and commitment to social groups and categories is not just a source of discrimination
and oppression but is also the psychological basis for people to join together in struggles for dignity
and equality. To see group behaviour primarily in terms of the darker side of social relations would
be incomplete and one-sided.
2. People do not necessarily engage in protest and rebellion when they are most deprived in absolute
terms. Rather, it is when we experience relative deprivation – a gap between what we have and
what we think we deserve – that we take action. In particular people generally join others to chal-
lenge the status quo when they feel that their group is treated worse than other groups. Feeling
individually disadvantaged does not have this effect.
3. Anger is an emotion that entails a sense of having being wronged by another party. As such, being
angry is a more immediate motivation for collective action than merely perceiving a disparity in
how groups are treated. Although some theorists have viewed anger as a fickle emotion that is
easily dissipated, others have argued that is it based on longstanding appraisals of injustice and
can therefore motivate long-term action to bring about change.
4. Anger has been distinguished from contempt, whereby only the latter involves a devaluation of
the other party such that one wishes to destroy rather than reform one’s relationship with them.
It is contempt that is more closely associated with violent forms of collective action.
5. SIT proposes that people prefer to view the groups that matter to them positively. This has impli-
cations for how groups deal with being in an inferior position within an intergroup structure.
Members of subjugated groups may see joining the advantaged group as a possibility (‘individual
mobility’). In this case, the status quo is unlikely to be challenged because it is difficult to coor-
dinate collective action, while people are individually trying to ingratiate the outgroup. Group
members might also seek imaginative ways to derive esteem whilst occupying a subjugated posi-
tion (‘social creativity’) such as by making alternative kinds of social comparison, which similarly
leave the unequal social structure intact. Only through a strategy of ‘social competition’ do group
members directly contest their inferior position. This is expected when the existing intergroup
relationship is seen as unstable and illegitimate.
6. Members of advantaged groups often ignore their privileged status. When forced to recognise it
by collective action, they can respond in a variety of ways. They may reaffirm their entitlement to
their advantaged position, characterise the outgroup as undeserving and pushy, or even violently
References 253
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to assuage their guilt or join in solidarity with the disadvantaged group to challenge the status quo.
7. Contact with the advantaged outgroup may appear to reduce motivation for collective action by
reducing the perception of unfairness and reducing identification with the disadvantaged group
members. It remains a challenge for the field to understand how contact could help disadvantaged
group members recruit outgroup allies for their cause without acting as a ‘sedative’ to confronting
injustice.
8. Collective action behaviours are not only the end-point of psychological processes but often also a
part of an ongoing struggle in which participation, identity, efficacy, and understandings of injus-
tice all feed into each other over time. In particular, activists’ experiences as part of crowds can
give rise to powerful and transformative experiences of empowerment that support their term
commitment to a movement.
Further Reading
Drury, J. and Reicher, S. (2009). Collective psychological empowerment as a model of social change:
Researching crowds and power. Journal of Social Issues 65: 707–725.
Thomas, E.F., McGarty, C., and Mavor, K.I. (2009). Transforming “apathy into movement”: The role of
prosocial emotions in motivating action for social change. Personality and Social Psychology Review 13:
310–333.
Wright, S. C. and Lubensky, M. E. (2009). The struggle for social equality: Collective action versus
prejudice reduction. In: Intergroup Misunderstandings: Impact of Divergent Social Realities
(eds. S. Demoulin, J.-P. Leyens and J.F. Dovidio).
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261
Bringing Groups Together
As we write this (in the Summer of 2017), the world seems a gloomy place. The war in Syria is in its
eighth year (and counting) and over a quarter of a million people have lost their lives in that benighted
country. That conflict follows the West’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where hundreds of thou-
sands more civilians have died in the past 15 years. Understandably, millions of others have sought
to escape this carnage and the destitution that it leaves in its wake. According to the UN Refugee
Agency (UNHCR 2016), over 65 million people are now forcibly displaced from their homes as a
result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. Closer to home, prejudice shows
little sign of abating. The daily lives of Muslims, disabled people and lesbian, gay and transgender
people are sullied by verbal insults, online abuse, or physical assaults – in England and Wales alone,
the police recorded 80 000 incidents in 2016/2017, an all-time high and a 29% increase on the pre-
vious year (O’Neill 2017). Faced with these and many other instances of intergroup division that we
have discussed elsewhere in this book (Chapters 2, 7, and 8), it is easy to be pessimistic about the
human condition.
In this chapter, we offer a modest riposte to such pessimism. In it we discuss the various contribu-
tions that social psychology has (or could have) made to bringing groups together, notwithstanding
the many forces conspiring to keep them apart. We begin in the Section “Getting to Know You: Inter-
group Contact and Prejudice Reduction” by discussing one of the oldest – and most enduring – of
social psychology’s contributions to the reduction of prejudice, the contact hypothesis. One of the
hallmarks of successful ideas in science is not just their durability but also their ability to stimu-
late new lines of thought and research. So it has proved with the contact hypothesis. The decades
from 1980 onward saw several important revisions and developments of the contact hypothesis, and
these are discussed in Section “Elaborating the Contact Hypothesis.” Then we review various cri-
tiques of the contact hypothesis from both within and outside of social psychology. In Section “‘From
Both Sides Now’: The Importance of both Victim and Perpetrator Emotions”, we widen the lens
to consider what social psychology can offer in the aftermath of violent conflict. A key issue there
and, indeed, throughout the chapter, will be to understand the roles that emotions play in governing
people’s intergroup behaviour. Finally, in Section “Living Together or Living Apart: The Challenges
of Diversity and Multi-culturalism” we discuss some of the challenges posed by cultural diversity as
we assess what we know about acculturation, the myriad ways in which majority and minority groups
respond to each other in an era of mass migration.
262 9 Bringing Groups Together
Getting to Know You: Intergroup Contact and Prejudice Reduction

In social psychology, one of the most successful contributions to the reduction of prejudice was initi-
ated by Allport (1954) in his famous contact hypothesis. Allport’s idea was this: if we can arrange for
members of mutually distrustful or antagonistic groups to interact with each other under conditions
which promote enduring (and enjoyable) equal status co-operation, and where that positive interac-
tion is encouraged by those in positions of authority, then one is likely to observe a lessening of the
distrust and antagonism. Prejudice, in other words, can be reduced if people get to know each other
better under the right conditions.
This simple – some have suggested too simple – hypothesis inspired succeeding generations of
researchers and policy-makers to develop interventions in schools, workplaces, and communities
whose objective was the promotion of more opportunities for positive intergroup contact (Aboud
et al. 2012; Brown and Paterson 2016; Pettigrew and Tropp 2011; Turner and Cameron 2016; Vezzali
and Stathi 2016).
Why did Allport place so much emphasis on those particular preconditions for successful contact?
The primary reason was his suspicion that mere contact, in and of itself, might be insufficient to bring
about any change. Actually, as we shall see, his views about the limitations of mere contact may have
been a little too cautious; very often, increased opportunities for contact between different groups
do seem to result in more favourable intergroup attitudes even under less-than-ideal circumstances.
Nevertheless, his intuition that the presence of four additional favourable conditions would enhance
the benefits of contact had much to recommend it.
First, contact that is enduring and pleasant, rather than fleeting and casual, may in Cook’s (1978)
words, have more ‘acquaintance potential’ since it is likely to lead to many cross-group friendships.
Such friendships will be rewarding in themselves, generating positive feelings which might gener-
alise to the outgroup as a whole (Cook 1962). Moreover, as those interpersonal relationships develop,
people may discover many similarities between their group and the other(s) and, as is well known,
similarity often leads to attraction (Byrne 1971; Pettigrew 1971). Finally, greater mutual acquaintance
was thought to have the potential disconfirm negative stereotypes about the outgroup. Some of the
early research on contact supported this particular precondition. For example Deutsch and Collins
(1951) found that neighbours of ethnically integrated housing schemes got to know each other well,
and this greater acquaintance was associated with reduced prejudice. However, this common sense
idea that contact works by changing people’s misconceptions of the outgroup rather overestimates
the ‘informational’ role of contact. As we shall see, emotion plays a larger part.
Second, the value of equal status contact is that it has the potential directly to disconfirm pre-
existing stereotypes where the stigmatised group is seen as inferior. By arranging for school students
or employees to work alongside each other as peers, such non-egalitarian stereotypes are harder to
sustain, especially if the outcomes of the co-working are successful (Amir 1976).
Third, cooperation is a useful, if not vital, ingredient of contact situations because it gives groups
an incentive to be friendly with one another. If members of different groups are dependent on one
another to achieve some desired common goal – a joint project set by a teacher, the development
of a new product in a factory, or dealing with the external threat to the local community – they will
be more likely to achieve it if they are accommodating of each other. Such a situation of positive
interdependence is obviously quite different from competitive intergroup situations where antipathy
(and not sympathy) may be more ‘useful’ for the achievement of the group’s goals (Cook 1978; Sherif
1966; Worchel et al. 1977; Chapter 7).
The final condition, social and institutional support for the contact, is the least studied but perhaps
the most important of the four. When those in authority – be they teachers in schools, managers in
factories, or elected politicians – make it clear that they endorse the goals of integration and oppose
discrimination, then any intergroup contact that does take place is likely to have more beneficial
effects. In part, this will be because those in such positions of influence also have the capacity to
administer sanctions if people step out of line. But perhaps more significantly, such high-status per-
sons can act as role models to create a normative climate in which people simply come to accept
that certain behaviours are no longer appropriate. This is one reason why legislation – for example
against sex or race discrimination – can be such an important tool. Beyond its power to penalise var-
ious forms of discrimination, it carries symbolic power to convey the message that groups (and their
members) should be treated equally. Some early studies of ethnically integrated housing schemes in
the USA revealed how powerful new housing policies were for changing residents’ views about the
acceptability of cross-group friendships (Deutsch and Collins 1951; Wilner et al. 1952).
Elaborating the Contact Hypothesis

One of the great virtues of the contact hypothesis was its simplicity. It offered a straightforward and
practical means to intervene in many intergroup relationships with the promise of improving them.
Yet, as we hinted in our opening paragraph, that simplicity was not to last. As research into the contact
hypothesis intensified in the decades after its publication, the need for some theoretical elaboration
became apparent.
One problem that soon emerged was the difficulty of getting the positive changes engendered by the
contact to generalise beyond the particular outgroup individuals encountered. This was a problem
noted early on by Cook (1978). In several studies, conducted by himself and others, he noticed that
meetings between members of different groups often led them to change their attitudes towards the
individual outgroup members involved, but this did not easily transfer to other outgroup members
they had not yet met. An even tougher nut to crack was to achieve some generalisation across groups.
That is, to reduce prejudice not just towards the outgroup in the contact situation but also towards
other outgroups.
A second concern was to understand why contact worked. Even if its effects were demonstrable and
reliable, to design effective interventions it is important also to understand the psychological process
which underpinned those effects. As we shall see, the most important of these processes turned out
to be emotional in nature.
A third challenge for contact researchers was to discover whether it was possible to reduce preju-
dice by some means other than via direct face-to-face contact. Although the latter was (and remains)
desirable, it is not without its practical difficulties. There are some outgroups with whom there
are few obvious opportunities for direct contact – foreign nationals and refugees are two obvious
examples – and yet towards whom it might be thought socially beneficial to reduce prejudice. Would
it be possible to extend some of Allport’s ideas to forms of indirect contact in which we learn about
other groups only secondhand?
How to make Contact Work Better: Decategorisation, Categorisation, or Recategorisation?

The first responses to these questions appeared in the 1980s with three theoretical elaborations
of the contact hypothesis, each drawing on social identity processes, although arriving at rather
different conclusions. The first, a so-called de-categorisation model was proposed by Brewer and
Miller (1984). Noting that when social categories are salient in any situation, discrimination and neg-
ative stereotypes often seem to result (see Chapter 2), they proposed that contact could be made
more effective if ways could be found to deemphasise, or even eliminate altogether, the boundaries
that separate groups. They argued that those seeking to reduce prejudice should aim to ‘personalise’
contact interventions as much as possible so that those involved will be more likely to attend to all the
individualised information about each person instead of their group-based attributes. Such contact
should result in the disconfirmation of prior outgroup stereotypes and this would be
more likely to generalise to new situations because extended and frequent utilisation of alter-
native informational features in interactions undermines the availability and usefulness of cat-
egory identity as a basis for future interactions with the same or different individuals.
(Brewer and Miller 1984, pp. 288–289)
This idea stimulated several studies that seemed to support the benefits of de-categorisation
(Bettencourt et al. 1992, 1997; Miller et al. 1985). The usual paradigm of these experiments was first
to create two artificial groups (e.g. ‘under-estimators’ and ‘over-estimators’) and arrange for mem-
bers of these groups to work together as a team on a cooperative task under conditions which either
‘personalised’ the interaction (participants were urged to try to find out what their fellow team mem-
bers were like) or ‘depersonalised’ it (participants had to concentrate on the task at hand). After the
task, people had to allocate rewards not only to their fellow team members (of ‘over-estimators’ and
‘under-estimators’) but also to other ‘over-’ and ‘under-estimators’ that they did not know (these
were shown in a video clip). Typically, results from these experiments showed that those in the
‘personalised’ conditions showed less bias in their allocations than those working with the
‘depersonalised’ instructions, though this seemed to be more true for majority than for minority
members (Bettencourt et al. 1997), a point to which we will return in the next section.
Brewer and Miller (1984), then, advocated that there could be benefits to people ‘losing’ their
group identities in contact situations. Not long afterwards, Gaertner et al. (1989) proposed an alter-
native idea: instead of encouraging people to lose their identities, we should be looking for ways
for them to enlarge their identities. Starting from the same premise as Brewer and Miller – that
ingroup–outgroup divisions can generate discrimination – Gaertner and his colleagues reasoned that
there could be advantages in subsuming those divisions into a larger superordinate category so that
everyone will now see themselves as part of a common ingroup (see Chapter 2). Aptly naming their
approach the common ingroup identity model, Gaertner and Dovidio (2000) have amassed consid-
erable evidence in its support. Their typical laboratory procedure is to first create two small artificial
groups and give those groups a few minutes interaction to develop some initial cohesion and iden-
tity. Then, these groups are brought together to work on a second task under one of several exper-
imental conditions. In the original experiments (Gaertner et al. 1989), there were three conditions:
a ‘two groups’ condition, in which the groups maintained their separate identities, wore distinctive
clothing, sat on opposite sides of the table, and were in competition with each other; a ‘separate indi-
viduals’ condition, where the groups were split up and everyone sat independently at separate tables;
and a ‘one group’ condition, which involved the two groups wearing the same clothing, thinking of
a new joint group name for themselves, sitting around a table in alternate seats, and working on a
cooperative task. After this second task, everyone was asked to evaluate the original two groups on a
number of dimensions. A consistent finding was that the ingroup bias in these intergroup ratings was
lowest in the ‘one group’ condition, highest in the ‘two groups’ case, and intermediate in the ‘separate
individuals’ situation. On the basis of experiments like this, and some field research involving real-life
groups, Gaertner and Dovidio (2000) believe that a key additional ingredient in contact interventions
is to find ways to encourage people to create new superordinate identities which should eventually
dissolve the former subcategory divisions.
Despite the impressive support for both the decategorisation and common ingroup identity
approaches, they are not without their difficulties. First of all, it is not clear how, or if, they really
tackle the problem of generalisation. In the case of Brewer and Miller’s (1984) model, to the extent
that one truly succeeds in eliminating (psychologically) all traces of prior social identities, then on
what basis will people be able to connect their newly formed positive attitudes towards the out-
group members present in the contact situation with other outgroup members that they have not
yet met? A similar limitation would apply to the common ingroup identity model. Then, there
is a practical problem: will it be so easy to persuade members of real-life groups to renounce
their former group identities in favour of either a purely personalised vision of themselves (in the
case of de-categorisation) or a superordinate identity (in the case of common ingroup identity)? It
may be possible to achieve this with artificial – and hence, temporary – groups in the laboratory,
but for real-life groups, such as ethnicity or religion, such identity abandonment may be fiercely
resisted.
It was objections like these that led Hewstone and Brown (1986) to propose a third elaboration
of the contact hypothesis, the mutual intergroup differentiation model. In contrast to the two other
approaches, Hewstone and Brown argued that there could be some advantages in maintaining (and
not losing) group salience in contact situations, provided all the other Allport conditions were also
present. The reason for this is that then the people involved will be more likely to be acting somewhat
as ‘representatives’ of their groups rather than as ‘free floating’ individuals. In Tajfel’s (1978) terms,
the situation will be shifted more towards the ‘intergroup’ end of the interpersonal–intergroup con-
tinuum (see Chapter 1). If this can be achieved, positive attitude change brought about by the contact
should generalise to other members of the outgroup since the particular contact partners will be seen
as more typical of their group. Another advantage of this approach is that it does not require people
to relinquish what may be for them important social identities.
At first glance, the Hewstone–Brown approach seems to run counter to both of the other two
models. Far from seeking to downplay all references to existing group divisions, as Brewer and Miller
and Gaertner and Dovidio advocate, Hewstone and Brown argue that is some virtue in continuing
to emphasise them. As we shall see shortly though, it is possible to reconcile these three apparently
conflicting viewpoints. For now, let us consider some of the research that supports the Hewstone
Brown position (see Brown and Hewstone (2005) for a fuller discussion).
Perhaps the clearest evidence was provided by Van Oudenhoven et al. (1996). In this experiment,
Dutch school students found themselves cooperating with a Turkish peer (again, an experimental
confederate). In half the conditions (Group Salience), everyone had to introduce themselves by mak-
ing explicit reference to their respective ethnicities; in the remainder (Control), ethnicity was not
mentioned. At the end of the experiment, the Dutch students were asked to rate both the individual
Turkish student they had met, and Turkish people in general. As can be seen in Figure 9.1, the ratings
of individual outgroup person differed little between the two conditions. But when it came to the
ratings of Turkish people in general, the group salience condition helped the Dutch participants to
see their Turkish peer as more representative of Turkish people, and hence the positivity generated
by the cooperative activity ‘spilled over’ into the generalised outgroup evaluations.
5.5
5
Control
Group salience
4.5
4
Individual outgroup Outgroup as a whole
member
Figure 9.1 The effects of heightened group salience during intergroup contact. Source: Van Oudenhoven et al.
(1996), adapted from table 1. Reproduced with permission of John Wiley and Sons.
The beneficial effects of perceived typicality are not confined to short-term laboratory situations
however, as Binder et al. (2009) confirmed in a longitudinal study of minority–majority relationships
among school students in three European countries. They asked these students to record the qual-
ity of their friendships with outgroup peers and then, six months later, they assessed the students’
levels of prejudice. As expected from the Contact Hypothesis, there was a significant – if not very
strong – negative correlation between the prior contact and the subsequent prejudice. However, that
correlation was significantly stronger for those who saw their individual outgroup friends as typical
of the outgroup; for those who did not, the correlation between contact and prejudice disappeared.
If the Hewstone–Brown model offers some hope to tackle the generalisation problem in a way
which does not require groups to give up their identities, it is not without its own problems. If
heightened salience or typicality can facilitate the generalisation of positive attitudes, it will work
just as well to generalise any negative attitudes as well. So, if the contact conditions are not optimal,
there is a risk that the intergroup encounter will result in more prejudice, not less. Moreover, it is
but a short step from encouraging perceived typicality to reinforcing existing, and sometimes nega-
tive, stereotypicality. Finally, if the salience of category divisions is exaggerated too much so that the
contact situation becomes pushed too close the ‘intergroup’ pole of Tajfel’s (1978) continuum, it may
increase people’s intergroup anxiety (Greenland and Brown 1999; Islam and Hewstone 1993). In gen-
eral, heightened intergroup anxiety is inimical to positive intergroup attitudes (Brown and Hewstone
2005; Stephan and Stephan 1985).
Here, then, are three diverging elaborations of the contact hypothesis. How can they be reconciled?
Some years ago, Pettigrew (1998) suggested one solution. He argued that it is useful to think of the
development of positive intergroup relationships as a stage process which, ideally, begins with inter-
personal friendships (the Brewer–Miller idea) and only later deals with the issue of generalisation
by explicitly recognising group diversity (the Hewstone–Brown approach), progressing ultimately to
some more inclusive superordinate identity (Gaertner–Dovidio approach). An advantage of this pro-
posed sequence is that the first (personalised) stage may help to reduce levels of intergroup anxiety
which are so endemic in initial meetings between members of different groups. Once people get to
know each other better, they may be in a more secure position to appreciate some of the group dif-
ferences which will help them to generalise the positive attitudes and emotions generated in the first
phase. Finally, so Pettigrew (1998) thought, this more ‘intergroup’ form of relationship should then
be transformed into a single common ingroup identity to achieve maximum reduction in prejudice.
In fact, subsequent commentators have questioned the psychological and social feasibility of this last
stage in Pettigrew’s model arguing, instead, that it might be better to replace it with a ‘dual identity’
phase in which both subgroup and superordinate identities are encouraged (Brown and Hewstone
2005; Gaertner and Dovidio 2000; Gonzalez and Brown 2006).
Partly because of its complexity and partly also because of the inherent difficulty in conducting
longitudinal research, there have been few attempts to test Pettigrew’s model directly. In the two
studies, Eller and Abrams (2004) found some support for the importance of crossgroup friendships
as a starting point of the conflict reduction process, but their longitudinal analyses were hampered by
rather small sample sizes. Nevertheless, other research has supported the complementarity between
the three approaches that is integral to Pettigrew’s model. For example, Ensari and Miller (2002)
conducted two experiments using members of real-life groups (secular and religious Muslims in
Turkey, political parties in the USA). In these studies, they varied both the ‘interpersonal’ nature
of the situation (by having participants engage in more or less self-disclosure during the interac-
tion) and its ‘intergroup’ aspects (by varying the typicality of the outgroup member or the salience of
the categories). Self-disclosing behaviour combined with salience and typicality produced the most
favourable generalised outgroup attitudes. Thus, combining both ‘interpersonal’ and ‘intergroup’
aspects of contact situations seems to be advantageous in bringing about attitude change (Brown and
Hewstone 2005; Miller 2002) even if, in these studies, there was no temporal ordering as Pettigrew’s
model specifies.
Other examples of the benefits of adopting a complementary perspective come from research
which has sought to combine the Gaertner–Dovidio and Hewstone–Brown models in investigat-
ing the benefits of a dual identity approach. This line of research was stimulated by a central idea in
social identity theory, that groups are frequently motivated to maintain some positive distinctiveness
from each other (Tajfel and Turner 1986). If so, then any attempt to impose a single common ingroup
identity, as a strict application of Gaertner and Dovidio’s model implies, runs the risk of thwarting
the subgroups’ need for distinctiveness as they are assimilated into the superordinate group. Better
perhaps would be to find some way in which these subgroup identities could be preserved, albeit
under the umbrella of a larger group. The flourishing of so many hybrid identities around the world –
African–American, British–Asian, French–Canadian – suggests that, at least for minority groups,
such dual identities are seen as highly desirable. Social psychological research would seem to agree.
Several studies have found that minority subgroups show less bias in situations in which both sub-
group and superordinate identities are maintained (Dovidio et al. 2007; Gonzalez and Brown 2006;
Hornsey and Hogg 2000, 2002; although cf. Guerra et al. 2010, 2013). We will return to this idea later
in the chapter when we discuss acculturation processes.
The question of group–group generalisation, however, may not be soluble by any of the techniques
discussed so far. This form of generalisation is called the ‘secondary transfer effect’ (Pettigrew 2009;
Tausch et al. 2010). An early study by Pettigrew (1997), involving representative samples of French,
Dutch, German, and British participants, showed that the number of minority group friends a person
had (e.g. for Germans, the number of Turkish friends) was negatively correlated not only with preju-
dice towards that particular group (Turkish people in this instance) but also with prejudice towards
several other minority groups (e.g. North Africans, South-East Asians, and Jews). In another study,
Pettigrew (2009) found that German citizens’ contact with foreigners was associated with less preju-
dice towards them, and also to homeless people, gay people, and Jews.
How might this come about? One possibility is that prejudice is a syndrome involving a generic
rejection of the ‘other’, as claimed by some personality theorists for example (e.g. Altemeyer 1998).
Highly prejudiced people would tend to avoid contact with all outgroups, thus accounting for the
negative correlations between contact and prejudice. Another idea would be that contact leads to
less prejudice towards one group which then spreads to other outgroups by a process of ‘stimulus
generalisation’. In another model, contact lessens attachment to the ingroup which then also leads to
less prejudice. Pettigrew (2009) concluded that his cross-sectional data was consistent with all three
models.
However, longitudinal research has favoured the second stimulus generalisation model more than
the general prejudice idea (Tausch et al. 2010; Van Laar et al. 2005). Tausch et al. (2010) found clear
evidence for secondary transfer effects in contexts as diverse as Greek–Cypriot and Turkish–Cypriot
relations in Cyprus, Catholic–Protestant relations in Northern Ireland, and interethnic relations in
the USA. One of their studies (Study 4) was notable because it was longitudinal. The amount of
contact with a rival religious group (Catholic or Protestant) led to more favourable attitudes towards
that group one year later. It also led to less prejudice towards other ethnic minorities in Northern
Ireland, and statistical analysis revealed that the latter effect was mediated by the changes in inter-
religious attitudes. Importantly, reversing the temporal order of the variables (prejudice–contact)
yielded no reliable associations. In addition, and unlike in Pettigrew’s (2009) study, outgroup contact
had little effect on ingroup attachment, so it seemed that it was genuine stimulus generalisation that
was responsible for the observed secondary transfer effects.
This secondary transfer phenomenon is important because it shows that contact has the poten-
tial to generate a genuinely tolerant outlook. Nevertheless, we suspect that there must be limits to
the transfer effects that can be achieved. For generalisation to occur, there must be some psycho-
logical connection between the primary and secondary outgroups. By way of a (doubtless extreme)
illustration, would we expect people’s anti-semitism brought about by contact with Jewish people,
to instigate a more favourable attitude to people living in Outer Mongolia, a land with no Jewish
connections whatsoever? It seems unlikely.
Understanding how Contact Works: The Role of Emotion

As we have just seen, there are ways of ensuring that the changes brought about by contact do not
remain confined to the contact situation. But if we also hope to address the second challenge facing
the contact hypothesis, it is important to understand how contact brings about its effects. Pettigrew
and Tropp (2008), in a follow-up meta-analysis to their earlier (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006) paper,
identified three likely mediators of the contact-prejudice relationship: a reduction of ignorance, a
reduction of anxiety, and an increase in empathy.
The first process is primarily cognitive in nature and is based on the simple idea that contact pro-
vides new information about outgroups which then weakens the preexisting negative stereotypes
(Stephan and Stephan 1984; Williams 1947). It is also thought that this additional knowledge of
outgroups leads to the discovery of intergroup similarities and, thereby, to intergroup attraction
(Pettigrew 1971; Stephan and Stephan 1984). Pettigrew and Tropp (2008) were able to locate a
small number of studies that had investigated the role of information in reducing prejudice and
concluded that there was some evidence for it. However, although statistically reliable, the mag-
nitude of the effect was quite small and, on reflection, perhaps this is not so surprising. Con-
tact may, indeed, convey new information about an outgroup, but it is not so certain that this
information will result in the discovery of similarities between the ingroup and the outgroup. In
some cases, where the groups are culturally diverse as many differences as similarities may be
encountered. Moreover, information by itself may not be enough to revise stereotypes because of
the human tendency either to attend selectively to confirmatory evidence whilst ignoring disconfir-
matory evidence, or to process that information in a way that creates some new ‘exceptional’ subtypes
of the outgroup and leaves the main outgroup stereotype unchanged (see Brown 2010, Chapter 4 for
a fuller discussion).
In contrast to the weak effects attributable to reducing ignorance, Pettigrew and Tropp (2008) found
that two emotional reactions – reduced intergroup anxiety and increased empathy – were much more
frequent consequences of contact and hence more powerful inhibitors of prejudice.
Stephan and Stephan (1985) first brought intergroup anxiety to social psychologists’ attention.
They noted how, in intergroup encounters, people often feel uneasy, either because they worry about
behaving inappropriately towards the outgroup or because they anticipate that the members of the
outgroup may behave negatively towards them, or simply because of some learned negative asso-
ciations (stereotypes) that they may harbour for that outgroup. Whatever the reasons, intergroup
anxiety is likely to have negative implications for our intergroup relationships. Stephan and Stephan
(1985) suggested that repeated intergroup contact can do much to reduce anxiety, especially if it
is structured according to Allport’s conditions. It may do so by dispelling ignorance about the out-
group, its typical customs, and behavioural norms. But, perhaps more powerfully, the contact expe-
rience itself is likely to generate its own positive affect which should then counteract the intergroup
anxiety.
Research has borne out the Stephans’ hypothesis. In a wide variety of contexts – between religious
groups in Bangladesh and Northern Ireland (Islam and Hewstone 1993; Paolini et al. 2004), Anglo-
Japanese attitudes in Britain (Greenland and Brown 1999), straight people’s attitudes towards gay
people (Vonofakou et al. 2007), majority–minority attitudes in South Africa, Norway, Europe, and
Chile (Binder et al. 2009; De Tezanos Pinto et al. 2010; González et al. 2010; Swart et al. 2011), and
Italians’ attitudes towards immigrants (Voci and Hewstone 2003) – it has been repeatedly found that
increased contact is associated with reduced intergroup anxiety, and that diminished anxiety is asso-
ciated with lessened prejudice. Although most of those studies employed cross-sectional designs, at
least two were longitudinal studies which give us a bit more confidence that it was the contact which
reduced the anxiety which then led to the improved intergroup outcomes (Binder et al. 2009; Swart
et al. 2011).
At the same time that contact with outgroups makes us less anxious about them, it also helps us
to see and feel things from their point of view. Such increases in perspective-taking and empathy are
typically associated with a more favourable and less prejudiced view of the outgroup (Batson et al.
1997). One of the best demonstrations of the power of intergroup contact to generate empathy was
a study by Swart et al. (2011). Conducted among a large sample of mixed-ethnicity adolescents in
South Africa, these researchers looked at the effects of having White friends on these young people’s
levels of empathy with and attitudes towards White people in general. Unusually for a longitudinal
study, it was conducted over a full year and also included three time points. The results were clear:
the more White friends the participants had at the start of the study, the more empathy for them they
felt six months later, and the more favourable were their intergroup attitudes six months further on
(see Figure 9.2).
Two other results from this study (not shown in Figure 9.2) were also interesting. In general,
the direction of the effects was from contact to empathy and thence to intergroup attitudes, thus
Time 1 Time 2 Time 3
Positive intergroup attitudes

+.15***
Cross-group +.13**
Empathy Perceived outgroup variability
friendships (contact)
+.15**
–.18*** Negative behavioural intentions
Figure 9.2 Contact improves intergroup orientations via empathy. Note: Not shown for simplicity of presentation:
temporal stabilities of all variables, reversed causal paths and intergroup anxiety. Source: Adapted from Swart et al.
(2011), figure 1 with permission of American Psychological Association.
supporting Allport’s (1954) original intuition about the nature of the casual link between contact
and prejudice.1 There were one or two bidirectional associations – for instance, more favourable ini-
tial outgroup attitudes were correlated with later empathy – but the contact–prejudice links were
mostly unindirectional. The other finding was that empathy and intergroup anxiety seemed to oper-
ate somewhat independently to reduce prejudice; there were few indications that they affected each
other.
Empathy and perspective-taking have been found to operate in several other intergroup contexts
also, helping us to understand why increased contact leads to decreased prejudice – for example
in Bosnian Muslims’ attitudes towards Bosnian Serbs after the war in Bosnia in the 1990s (Čehajić
et al. 2008), in young people’s attitudes towards the elderly (Harwood et al. 2005), and in Italians’
attitudes towards immigrants (Pagotto et al. 2010) (see also Brown and Hewstone 2005). There is
just one minor qualification to add to this discussion of the role of empathy and perspective-taking
in reducing prejudice. Under some circumstances, it is possible that our enhanced understanding of
the outgroup’s point of view can lead to a realisation that the outgroup views us in negatively. In that
case, the intergroup interaction may be disrupted as we worry about what the outgroup is thinking
of us (Vorauer et al. 2009). Ironically, these unintended consequences of perspective-taking may be
more likely among less prejudiced people (Vorauer et al. 2009).
Indirect Forms of Contact: Extended, Vicarious and Imagined

So far, we have discussed how bringing members of different groups together can help reduce preju-
dice. But, in fact, such direct contact is not the only way to bring about such positive change; various
indirect forms of contact can also be useful, especially in circumstances where opportunities for direct
contact are rare, difficult or ill-advised.
Wright and colleagues (1997) were the first to explore this. They suggested that if we know of others
in our ingroup who are friends with someone in an outgroup, this would be likely to have an effect
on our own attitudes towards that outgroup. They labelled this form of second-hand relationship’
extended contact’ and argued that it could reduce prejudice in any or all of three ways: (i) by reducing
1 Although we can never infer causality definitively from correlational studies, even longitudinal ones, studying phenomena
over time (as in longitudinal research) gives us a bit more insight into causal direction than is possible with cross-sectional
studies. The reasoning is this: suppose we measure variables A (contact) and B (prejudice) at two (or more) time points.
If (after statistically controlling for stability over time) the association between At1 and Bt2 is noticeably stronger than the
association between Bt1 and At2 then, all other things being equal, it is more likely that A leads to B than vice versa.
intergroup anxiety since it signals that having harmonious relations with members of the outgroup is
easier than we might have thought; (ii) by bringing about cognitive changes by extending the scope
of our ingroup identity to include members of the outgroup – they called this process ‘inclusion of
the other in the self ’; and (iii) by changing what we perceive to be the norms in our group or the other
group about the acceptability of such cross-group relationships.
Wright and his colleagues found support for their hypothesis. American college students who knew
at least one member of their group who enjoyed a friendship with someone from another ethnic
group had lower levels of prejudice than those who knew no one with such friendships. Even in the
laboratory, simply observing a fellow ingrouper interacting in friendly fashion towards an outgroup
member was enough to reduce the amount of ingroup bias towards that outgroup (compared to those
who observed only a neutral or hostile interaction).
There is no doubt that extended contact effects are real. A large number of studies, conducted in
countries as far afield as Chile, England, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway,
and the United States have consistently shown that the more people we know with positive relation-
ships with outgroup members, the lower will be our prejudice towards that outgroup, (De Tezanos
Pinto et al. 2010; Gomez et al. 2011; Gonzalez and Brown 2016; Munniksma et al. 2013; Paolini et al.
2004; Pettigrew et al. 2007; Turner et al. 2007, 2013). And the mediating processes proposed by Wright
et al. (1997) have all received support as well: extended contact is associated with less intergroup anx-
iety, more inclusion of the other in the self, and changed group norms (De Tezanos Pinto et al. 2010;
Turner et al. 2008, 2013).
How strong are such extended contact effects compared to those of direct contact that we con-
sidered earlier? In general, if both forms of contact are considered alongside each other in the same
analysis, extended contact usually emerges as having the weaker effect (Brown and Paterson 2016).
Indeed, in some longitudinal studies, extended contact did not predict intergroup attitudes above
and beyond direct contact (Christ et al. 2010; Feddes et al. 2009; Munniksma et al. 2013). Never-
theless, although extended contact is usually less powerful than direct contact, it can still be useful,
especially in contexts where there are few opportunities for direct contact. This was shown most
clearly by Christ et al. (2010) who compared the correlations between extended contact and prej-
udice in geographical areas where the chances of intergroup mixing were low (e.g. East Germany,
segregated communities in Belfast, Northern Ireland) with the same correlations in more integrated
areas (e.g. West Germany, mixed communities in Belfast). In both Germany and Belfast, the corre-
lations were stronger in the more segregated areas, as could be seen most clearly in the Belfast case
(see Figure 9.3). Such results are encouraging because they suggest that, even in unpromising socially
segregated settings, it may be possible to develop interventions to reduce prejudice.
Of course, extended contact does not lend itself easily to the design of such interventions. After
all, how feasible would it ever be to arrange for people’s ingroup friends to develop new friendships
with outgroup members? This is where another form of indirect contact comes into its own, vicarious
contact. With his usual foresight, Allport (1954) suggested that such contact – through films, nov-
els, dramas, and fantasy – could be an ‘effective first step’ (p. 453). This is because such media lend
themselves readily to the design of relatively practical and inexpensive interventions implemented to
initiate the process of prejudice reduction.
Liebkind and McAlister (1999) exploited the concept of vicarious contact by arranging for stories,
which depicted close friendships between Finnish boys and girls and foreigners, to be distributed in
some secondary schools in Finland. After reading the stories, the students discussed them with older
Finnish peers, who reinforced the positive message of the cross-group friendships. The effects of this
Segregated neighborhoods Mixed neighborhoods

3
Positive behavioral intentions
1
Low High
Extended contact
Figure 9.3 The effectiveness of extended contact in mixed and segregated neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland.
Source: Christ et al. (2010), figure 3. Reprinted with permission of SAGE Publications.
experience of vicarious contact, measured over a period of several months, were clear: the intergroup
attitudes of the students exposed to the stories remained stable or improved, while in schools where
no stories had been read attitudes towards foreigners generally worsened.
This idea to use storybook interventions in schools has been successfully taken up by many other
investigators, mostly working with younger children of primary school age. In Britain, Italy, and the
United States, a consistent finding has been that stories portraying crossgroup friendships have ben-
eficial effects of reducing various kinds of prejudice (Aronson et al. 2016; Brown and Paterson 2016;
Cameron et al. 2006; Cameron and Rutland 2006; Greenwood et al. 2016; Lemmer and Wagner 2015;
Turner and Cameron 2016; Vezzali et al. 2014). Some of the details of these studies are worth dis-
cussing. At first, it seemed that stories that emphasised dual identities – for example ethnic sub-
groups within a superordinate group like school – were more effective than those that just stressed
a common ingroup identity (Cameron et al. 2006). However, subsequent interventions, using better
research designs and more carefully controlled story content, found little difference between dual
and common identity stories; both seemed equally useful in reducing prejudice (Aronson et al. 2016;
Cameron et al. 2011).
Such interventions seem to work better for younger children (eight years or less) than for older
children (older than eight years) (Aronson et al. 2016; Cameron et al. 2011). However, it is not clear
whether this is a genuine age (developmental) effect, a result of using the same stories over a wide age
span (which might make the stories less interesting to older children), or because younger children
have had less direct contact with members of minority groups. Cameron et al. (2011) found that
stories were only effective for children who had few prior crossgroup friendships themselves, an echo
of similar results we noted above for extended contact (Christ et al. 2010). Finally, useful though
storybook interventions undoubtedly are, their effects may be short-lived unless the interventions
are consolidated over several months (Aronson et al. 2016).
Telling stories in schools is not the only form of vicarious contact. Other media, especially radio
and television, can be even more powerful means of conveying vicarious contact messages because of
their ability to reach millions of people simultaneously. One of the most vivid illustrations of this was
a specially designed radio program in Rwanda, broadcast only a decade or so after the genocide in
1994 where nearly a million Tutsis were murdered, mostly by a rival ethnic group the Hutus (Paluck
2009). The radio program was a soap opera involving friendships and even romantic relationships
between people from the Hutu and Tutsi communities. Paluck arranged for episodes of the soap
opera to be listened to in a number of villages, while some other villages, chosen at random, listened
instead to a soap opera with a more health-related theme (changing attitudes about AIDS). After
a year, Paluck and her research team returned to these villages to assess the listeners’ beliefs about
the causes and cures of intergroup violence and their norms about trust and intermarriage between
ethnic groups. They found little difference between those who had listened to the two soap operas in
their personal beliefs about violence. However, norms about trusting, empathising with and marrying
someone from the other ethnic group were all more favourable in the villages who had listened to the
intergroup soap opera compared to those who had heard the program with the health messages (see
also, Bilali and Vollhardt 2013). Apart from the methodological sophistication of this work – a true
experiment carried out a challenging field setting – what is impressive about it is that the changes
brought about by the vicarious contact were long-lasting and were achieved in a postconflict context
where the wounds of the genocide had barely healed.
Paluck (2010) conducted a similar study in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country still
riven by bloody interethnic conflict. As in Rwanda, a radio soap opera was broadcast which empha-
sised conflict reduction and peace-building between ethnic groups and contained the usual obligatory
love story between two adolescents with different ethnic backgrounds. An added twist to this inter-
vention was that Paluck arranged for some parts of the DRC to receive a talk show discussion of that
week’s episode of the soap opera, whilst other areas received only the soap opera. The talk show host
highlighted extracts from listeners’ letters and sought to encourage intergroup perspective-taking by
inviting listeners to imagine and discuss what they might do in situations faced by various protago-
nists in the soap opera. What might the effects be of this additional collective discussion? On the one
hand, one could expect that the perspective-taking and ‘imagined contact’ (see below) would induce
further positive changes in intergroup attitudes, over and above those brought about by the vicarious
contact of the radio program itself. On the other hand, though, we know from an earlier chapter in
this book that group discussion can bring to light issues and arguments not previously considered,
resulting in polarisation of opinion (see Chapter 4). After a year of broadcasts, some with and some
without the talk show discussions, the researchers assessed not just people’s intergroup attitudes, but
their behaviour too. At the conclusion of each data collection interview – and there were over 800 of
them – each respondent was offered a 2 kg bag of salt as a token of appreciation for their participation
(salt is a valuable commodity in DRC). Before concluding the interview, the researcher invited each
participant to donate some of their bag of salt to a disliked outgroup.
To analyse her results, Paluck (2010) split her sample into three groups: those who had never lis-
tened to the radio program (or the talk show), who served as a control group; those who had listened
to but had not discussed it with others; and those who had both listened to the program and discussed
it. And, of course, there was a further distinction between the areas of the country where the extra
talk show element had been broadcast and the other areas where it had not. The results were striking,
especially on the salt donation measure (see Figure 9.4). First, note the increase in numbers of donors
in both the baseline and talk show groups between ‘no listeners’ and ‘listeners’ (left-hand graph). This
effect might be attributable to the soap opera itself although, strictly speaking, it could also be a self-
selection effect – more tolerant and charitable people being more likely to listen to a ‘progressive’
0.9 Figure 9.4 Paradoxical effects of adding an additional Talk Show

element to a reconciliation radio programme in Democratic
Republic of Congo. Dots show the results for the talk show
0.8 condition, squares show the control condition. Source: Paluck
(2010), figure 2. Reprinted with permission of SAGE Publications.
Proportion who donated
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
No listen Listen no Listen and
discuss discuss
radio program. However, more interesting were the consistent differences in the numbers donating
salt between the Baseline (soap opera only) listeners and those who had also listened to the talk show
afterwards. These differences became dramatic in the ‘Listen and Discuss’ group – over 80% donated
in the baseline condition compared to less than 60% in the comparable talk show condition. In other
words, the addition of the talk show element, in which listeners’ views were discussed on air, actually
made people less helpful towards outgroups, especially when they further discussed the talk show
within their own groups.
One reason for dwelling at such length on these two studies by Paluck is that they illustrate rather
nicely both the potential but also the risks of using vicarious contact interventions to bring groups
together in postconflict settings. To be sure, specially designed radio programs have demonstrable
value in changing intergroup norms and, possibly, behaviour. But, as the second study showed, some-
times interventions can have unintended consequences. The incorporation of a further indirect con-
tact component in the talk shows seems to have polarised people’s views of the outgroup in a negative
direction, possibly as a result of the additional discussion it provoked within the ingroup.
One aspect of those talk shows in the Paluck (2010) study was the incorporation of a form of imag-
ined contact – the presenter frequently invited listeners to imagine what they might do in particular
situations portrayed in the program. Although this seems to have rather backfired in this instance,
other imagined contact experiments have generally yielded positive – if modest – outcomes (Miles
and Crisp 2014). The idea of imagined contact is simplicity itself. People, usually in a laboratory con-
text, are invited to fantasise about a pleasant encounter with a member of a particular outgroup (Crisp
and Turner 2009). After a few minutes of this mental imagery, their attitudes – and, occasionally,
behaviour – towards that outgroup are assessed and compared to those of people in a control con-
dition who have imagined some neutral scene. Typically, the intergroup attitudes in the imagined
contact condition are a little more positive. So far the technique has been successfully applied to
several minority group targets: the elderly, Muslims, Mexican Mestizos, gay people, overweight peo-
ple, people with mental health problems and disabilities, and others besides (Crisp and Turner 2013;
Miles and Crisp 2014).
Notwithstanding these encouraging results, the imagined contact hypothesis has its sceptics. Some
have questioned whether it could ever be applied in severely conflictual contexts, and others have
suggested it might be a result of demand characteristics (Bigler and Hughes 2010; Lee and Jussim
2010). Imagined contact effects have not always proved easy to replicate (Asbrock et al. 2013; Klein
et al. 2015; McDonald et al. 2014), and some worry that they may not persist outside the laboratory
setting (Bigler and Hughes 2010). These are all reasonable points. Nevertheless, it is hard to argue
with a meta-analysis which statistically aggregates over 70 independent tests of the imagined contact
hypothesis and finds that the overall effect is quite robust and even somewhat larger in size than
the effects of direct contact (Miles and Crisp 2014). Moreover, some studies suggest that imagined
contact can reduce implicit bias or unobtrusive prejudice, which makes it less likely that the effects
are wholly attributable to demand characteristics (Turner and Crisp 2010; Turner and West 2012;
Vezzali et al. 2012). And at least one study has found that the effects of imagined contact can last
for some months (Vezzali et al. 2015). All in all, therefore, it seems safe to conclude that the imagery
technique proposed by Crisp and Turner (2009) can play a role in reducing prejudice, probably by
helping to reduce people’s apprehensions about the prospect of future actual contact.
Intergroup Contact and its Critics

As we have seen, the contact hypothesis and its subsequent derivatives have attracted a large volume
of empirical research, most of it supportive. In a great many different intergroup settings, getting to
know members of other groups, whether in actuality or indirectly, somewhat lessen the prejudice
towards those groups. Nevertheless, this whole tradition of work has not been without its critics.
One obvious problem with using just contact to reduce prejudice is that its effects tend not to
be very strong. A meta-analysis of over 500 studies revealed the correlations between contact and
prejudice averaged out at around r = −.20 (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006). Even if all of Allport’s additional
conditions were met, the correlation was still only r = −.30. With correlations this weak, even if they
are statistically significant, the lion’s share (over 90%) of the variability in people’s prejudice is left
unexplained by variations in the amount of their contact with outgroups.2
We stressed at the outset how important it is that additional favourable conditions are present in the
contact situation: equal status, cooperation, acquaintance potential, and institutional support. How-
ever, this might not always be realistic. Worse still, sometimes contact takes place under distinctly
negative conditions, the intergroup encounters being marked by perceived threat or outright hostil-
ity. Such was the case for a long time in Belfast at the boundaries between predominantly Catholic
and predominantly Protestant communities, and probably exists today in many other cities around
the world. The likely effects of such contact are obvious. As we saw from an earlier chapter, when
groups contest power or territory, they usually end up disliking each other, or worse (Sherif 1966;
Chapter 7). Now, the interesting question is what is the relationship between such negative contact
and the more frequently studied positive contact? Can one episode of aversive contact undo all the
good brought about by crossgroup friendship, or can the latter provide some immunity against the
worst effects of the former?
These questions were brought into sharp relief by Barlow et al. (2012) who, in eight studies
conducted in several different intergroup contexts in Australia and the USA, reported that the dele-
terious effects of negative contact were consistently stronger than the beneficial effects of positive
2 However, it is worth noting that in other fields such modest correlations are not unusual. For instance, the associa-
tion between condom use and HIV infection is around –0.2, while that between homework and academic achievement
is around 0.1 (Cooper 1989; Weller 1993; both cited in Bushman & Huesmann 2001).
contact. Others, too, have found similar effects (Dhont and Van Hiel 2009; Dhont et al. 2010; Graf
et al. 2014; Paolini et al. 2010). Barlow et al. (2012) labelled this phenomenon ‘positive–negative con-
tact asymmetry’, citing it as another example of the well-known finding in other areas of psychology
in which negative stimuli often have more impact than positive stimuli (Baumeister et al. 2001). This
greater apparent potency of negative contact leads Barlow and others to be somewhat pessimistic
about potential of the contact hypothesis to ameliorate problematic intergroup relationships (Barlow
et al. 2012; Hayward et al. 2017; Paolini et al. 2010).
Actually, such pessimism may not be warranted. To begin with, positive–negative asymmetry in
contact effects is far from being the rule. Several studies have not found any reliable difference
between the strength of positive and negative contact effects and, indeed, some have found that posi-
tive contact effects are stronger (Árnadóttir et al. 2018; Bekhuis et al. 2013; Fell et al. 2016; Mazziotta
et al. 2015). Second, even if, on occasion, negative contact is more corrosive than positive contact is
curative, fortunately it is less common (Graf et al. 2014). Thus, as Baumeister et al. put it, ‘…good
may prevail over bad by superior force of numbers. Many good events can overcome the psychologi-
cal effects of a single bad one’ (Baumeister et al. 2001, p. 323). And, third, it has been discovered that
positive contact can actually protect us from the harmful effects of negative contact, not just because
it is more common, but because it seems to interact with negative contact to counteract the latter’s
effects (Árnadóttir et al. 2018; Fell et al. 2016). One study of Fell et al. (2016, Study 2) illustrates this
‘buffering’ effect clearly. This was a large survey of Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland
which recorded people’s positive and negative experiences in encounters with people from the other
community (e.g. ‘been made to feel welcome’, ‘been verbally abused’), as well as their attitudes towards
that community (on a feeling thermometer). Not surprisingly, for both groups there was a positive
correlation between contact and favourable attitudes towards the outgroup, and a negative correla-
tion between negative contact and those same outgroup attitudes. However, in both groups those
two forms of contact interacted, as can be seen in Figure 9.5. Note how, as one would expect, those
with high levels of negative contact (dotted lines) have less favourable intergroup attitudes. But note
Low negative contact High negative contact Figure 9.5 Positive contact can buffer the
negative effects of negative contact. Source: Fell
80
et al. (2017), study 2. Reproduced with
permission of Bodleian Libraries University of
70
Oxford.
60
Outgroup attitudes
50
40
30
20
10
0
Low High
Positive contact (cross-group friendships)
also how the gap between those with high and low levels of negative contact is narrower for those
who also have high levels of positive contact (right side of the graph) than for those with less positive
contact (left side of graph). Thus, the existence of many crossgroup friendships served to ‘inoculate’
the respondents against their negative intergroup experiences.
Other criticisms of contact theory have come from sociology and political science (e.g. Blalock
1967; Putnam 2007; Quillian 1995; Semyonov et al. 2006). The broad thrust of this critique is that
while increased ethnic diversity (in organisations, neighbourhoods and cities) may afford more
opportunities for contact, it will also increase the likelihood of intergroup competition over scarce
resources (see Chapter 7). Such competition will work directly against the development of positive
social relationships between groups and outweigh any possible benefits of contact. Thus, the argu-
ment goes that increases in immigration and consequent rises in ethnic diversity will generally lead
to less, and not more, societal harmony.
One of the most pungent of these critics has been Putnam (2007). Putnam acknowledges that immi-
gration and diversity usually bring many long-term economic and cultural benefits to a country but
he worries that, in the short-term, the increased social heterogeneity may be corrosive for what he
calls ‘social capital’, and especially for levels of trust, both within and between groups. Putnam’s con-
cept of social capital has two aspects, ‘bonding’ (social connections with others in your group) and
‘bridging’ (social ties with members of other groups) (Putnam 2000). He argues that both forms of
social capital are adversely affected by increased ethnic diversity. As their neighbourhoods get more
mixed, he believes, people ‘hunker down’ within their own private spaces and trust everyone less,
neighbours and outgroup members alike (Putnam 2007, p. 149). In support of his argument, Putnam
(2007) surveyed levels of trust (in neighbours, own ethnic group, other ethnic groups) in a large num-
ber of cities in the USA. He then correlated those levels of trust with an index of ethnic homogeneity
(the opposite of diversity). On all three measures, he found a positive correlation between trust and
ethnic homogeneity. These correlations held up even when controlling for a large number of indi-
vidual and community level variables (e.g. home ownership, level of education, income, economic
inequality of the city, and so on).
Actually, however, there are reasons to doubt both the generality of these results linking diver-
sity to problematic intergroup relations, and processes presumed to underlie them. Wagner et al.
(2006) examined the relationship between the percentage of foreigners in each of several hundred
German ‘districts’ (neighborhoods) and the level anti-immigrant prejudice. Directly contrary to
Putnam’s (2007) findings, Wagner et al. (2006) observed a negative correlation between the minor-
ity percentage and prejudice: the higher the proportion of immigrants the less the prejudice toward
them.
Further evidence for the positive role of neighborhood contact was provided by Christ et al. (2014).
They adopted a rare multilevel approach, in which they analysed not just the association between con-
tact and prejudice at an individual level (the conventional method) but also the correlation between
the average level of contact and the average level of prejudice in a whole neighbourhood. One advan-
tage of this technique is that it allows one to examine whether there could be social advantages in
having communities with above (or below) average levels of intergroup contact. As it turned out, the
correlations at a neighbourhood level were consistently stronger than the individual level correla-
tions. Moreover, when the researchers added neighbourhood levels of belief in the benefits of ethnic
diversity to their analyses, they found that this measure helped to explain the (negative) contact–
prejudice relationships. In other words, living in neighbourhoods with high levels of crossgroup con-
tact seems to generate more tolerant multicultural norms. The fact that this research included large
samples from several different countries, some of which were longitudinally surveyed, gives it added
credibility (see also, Schmid et al. 2014).
A final set of criticisms of contact theory are more political in nature. Dixon et al. (2012) are con-
cerned that contact researchers presuppose ‘prejudice reduction’ – that is improving majority groups’
attitudes towards minorities and disadvantaged groups – as the primary route to social change.
Although Dixon and colleagues accept that contact can be effective in reducing prejudice, they con-
tend that psychologists should be taking inequality and exploitation, rather than hostile attitudes per
se, as the central problem to be solved (see also, Wright and Lubensky 2009). And, they suggest, such
inequality can be more seriously challenged by disadvantaged groups engaging in rebellion and resis-
tance than by majority groups developing warmer feelings towards them. Their critique has several
strands.
To begin with, they note that some – perhaps most – forms of exploitation are underpinned by a
combination of positive and negative attitudes toward the disadvantaged group, not by unbridled hos-
tility. As we saw in Chapters 6 and 7, certain kinds of apparently benevolent attitudes and behaviours
towards disadvantaged outgroups can be an effective way of perpetuating their low status by securing
their cooperation and dependence within the context of some subordinate ‘supportive’ role in society.
Overt hostility is reserved mainly for those members of the group who step out of line by challenging
the status quo, while more compliant members are rewarded with ‘kindness’ and flattery (Glick and
Fiske 1996, 2001; see also Chapter 7 in this volume, as well as Brown 2010, Chapter 7). While this
has been explored most comprehensively in the context of gender relations, Dixon and colleagues
argue that most kinds of intergroup exploitation, including many class and ethnic inequalities, have
historically relied on a more mixed pattern of intergroup liking and disliking than is assumed the ‘prej-
udice reduction’ model of social change. Thus, so the argument goes, making majority and minority
groups like one another may miss the point, or even more run the risk of masking societal inequalities
or defusing subordinate groups’ claims for social redress.
That contact researchers assume social change to come through friendlier attitudes from above
rather than resistance from below is reflected, Dixon et al. suggest, by the way contact research
focusses predominantly on the attitudes of advantaged groups, whilst overlooking that of disadvan-
taged groups. As we saw in Chapter 8, when disadvantaged groups’ perspectives are examined, the
findings often suggest that contact undermines their sense of injustice and willingness to take action
against it (e.g. Saguy et al. 2009; Tausch et al. 2015). Moreover, as we noted earlier in this chapter,
some revisions of the contact hypothesis have advocated the benefits of dissolving existing group
boundaries (Brewer and Miller 1984; Gaertner et al. 1989). Such category dissolution might also con-
tribute to a psychological disarming of minority groups’ potential for collective action in pursuit of
social change (Wright and Lubensky 2009). Finally, and in common with much other applied social
psychology, contact research is seen to be reductionist in nature since it seeks to change individuals,
and not societal institutions of inequality (Dixon et al. 2012, pp. 417–418).
This is a penetrating critique. Nevertheless, it has not gone uncontested (see rejoinders to Dixon
et al. (2012), pp. 425–451). Here, we would make five observations: first, these critics may have over-
stated the contemporary prevalence of ambivalent prejudice. Regrettably, overtly hostile prejudice is
still all too easy to find – witness the continued growth of Islamophobia in Europe (Pew Research
Centre 2008), the persistence of hate crime in Britain, and the USA (Hanes and Machin 2014), and
the rise of anti-foreigner sentiment in many European countries (Semyonov et al. 2006). Seeking to
reduce some of this outgroup hate might not be such a bad thing, and it would not need to entail
any ‘benevolent’ outgroup liking. Second, not all situations of intergroup hostility involve ongoing
‘From Both Sides Now’: The Importance of both Victim and Perpetrator Emotions 279
inequality or exploitation. For example in Northern Ireland, the structural disadvantage and politi-
cal exclusion of Nationalists compared to Unionists has been substantially dealt with post-conflict,
but there is a legacy of antipathy and division from the conflict. In this context is it hard to argue
that collective action by one of these traditional categories in relation to the other would serve bet-
ter than integration and prejudice reduction. Third, not all current models propose the dissolution of
group boundaries; as we saw earlier, some have explicitly exposed the benefits of creating or retaining
dual identities (Brown and Hewstone 2005; Gaertner and Dovidio 2000). It is not clear how possess-
ing a dual identity would necessarily undermine minority groups’ collective search for social justice;
indeed, there is even some evidence that adopting such a dual-identity can enhance the propensity
of under-privileged groups to become more politicised (Simon and Grabow 2010). Fourth, even in
Allport’s (1954) original formulation of the contact hypothesis, the importance of institutional norms
was emphasised as a key ingredient of successful contact. Such group norms cannot be reduced to an
individual level, as we saw in Chapter 3. And, indeed, as we have just reported, some contemporary
contact research specifically recognises the importance of such nonindividualistic levels of analy-
sis by studying contact–prejudice relationships at a neighbourhood level (Christ et al. 2014; Schmid
et al. 2014; Wagner et al. 2006). And, fifth, even if one accepts the main thrust of Dixon and col-
leagues’ critique – that collective action is what is needed to reduce structural inequalities between
groups – there would still be a role for intergroup contact in helping to form alliances between pro-
gressive members of privileged groups and members of deprived groups. Such alliances could facil-
itate collective action for social change. Similarly, contact between different groups that have faced
similar discrimination could give rise to solidarity between them and in that way support collec-
tive action – the flip side of the ‘divide and rule’ phenomenon discussed in Chapter 7 (Dixon et al.
2015).
Much of the research we have discussed so far in this chapter has focussed on ways of bringing
groups together in situations of fairly mild intergroup tension. With one or two exceptions (e.g. Paluck
2010), the majority of the studies showing the beneficial effects of contact have been conducted in
societies where, notwithstanding the existence of ongoing and sometimes substantial discrimination
and inequality, the intergroup relationships are (thankfully) far from incendiary in character.
We turn now to more fraught settings where groups encounter each other in the aftermath of – or
sometimes during – an intense conflict. What can social psychology contribute to the understanding
of intergroup reconciliation in such contexts?
‘From Both Sides Now’: The Importance of both Victim

and Perpetrator Emotions
Even by the twentieth century’s abysmally low standards, the 1990s was a particularly bloody decade
in the history of humankind. It witnessed brutal civil wars in at least three African countries – Liberia,
DRC, and Sierra Leone – ongoing conflict in the Middle East between Palestine and Israel, and
instances of genocide in Bosnia Herzegovina and Rwanda, the latter accounting for nearly a mil-
lion deaths in a matter of months. In all of these countries, once the blood-letting had ceased and
a semblance of peace had returned, their citizens have been faced with the task of rebuilding their
societies and working towards intergroup reconciliation.
In Rwanda, a part of that reconciliation process involved the use of Gacaca courts, a traditional
system of justice in which alleged perpetrators are brought before a tribunal of respected members
of the community and asked to give an account of themselves. Also present are other members of the
community, including survivors of the genocide or the victims’ relatives.
By all accounts, these Gacaca courts are very emotional affairs as perpetrators and victims retell –
and relive – their experiences during the genocide (see, https://www.youtube.comwatch?v=LiDea-
PNoyw). What are the effects of this social sharing of emotion about such traumatic events? Rimé
et al. (2015) were able to answer this question in a remarkable piece of field research. They persuaded
over 750 Rwandan citizens – just over half from the victim (Tutsi) group, and the remainder who had
been accused of being perpetrators (mainly Hutus) – to participate in their study. About half of these
participants would attend a Gacaca court in their village; the rest would not be taking part in a Gacaca
court for at least a year and hence could serve as a Control group. All were interviewed twice (about
10 weeks apart) and, in the case of the Gacaca participants, this interval spanned their involvement
in a trial, thus providing a before-after element to the study’s design. Not surprisingly, being part of
a Gacaca court led to an increase in several negative emotions, for victims and perpetrators alike.
Both groups reported feeling sadder and more fearful and anxious after the trial was over. Victims
also felt angrier and more disgusted but less ashamed3 after taking part, while perpetrators showed
little change in anger, a small decrease in disgust but an increase in shame. Victims showed increased
symptoms of post-traumatic stress (PTS) after the trial, while the perpetrators showed a decrease.
On all these measures, the Control group who had not participated in a Gacaca court showed very
little change over the same 10-week period.
Considered at just an individual level, then, the experience of participating in Gacaca courts seems
not to have been very positive for either group, despite reduction in PTS amongst perpetrators. How-
ever, if we consider the relations between the groups, the picture was very different. For both victims
and perpetrators, the trial process led participants to see outgroup members as more different from
one another, and to an increase in positive outgroup stereotypes (see Figure 9.6). There were also
decreases in both groups’ strength of ethnic identification (as Tutsis or Hutus). Moreover, further
statistical analysis revealed that the changes on three of the emotions (sadness, fear, and anxiety)
were partly responsible for the improved intergroup perceptions. In other words, distressing though
the Gacaca courts undoubtedly were for all concerned, to observe members of the outgroup express-
ing these emotions seems to have made them seem less as an undifferentiated ‘other’ and, perhaps in
the process, as more human (Staub 2006).
Rimé and his colleagues interpreted these changes in intergroup perceptions in terms of Durkheim’s
(1912) theory about the importance of collective rituals in building societal cohesion. However, there
is another analysis which is worth considering because it has wider implications for intergroup recon-
ciliation in other settings. This analysis comes from Nadler and Shnabel’s (2008) needs-based model
of reconciliation. Nadler and Shnabel (2008) begin by making a distinction between conflict resolu-
tion, in which the disputing parties find some way to accommodate one another’s conflicting interests
(e.g. territory, access to scarce resources), and reconciliation, in which there is a changed psychologi-
cal orientation towards the other group involving the satisfaction of each group’s different socioemo-
tional identity needs. Conflict resolution will often be an important first step to bring a destructive
intergroup conflict to an end. Examples would include the 1995 Dayton Agreement to halt the hostili-
ties in Bosnia Herzegovina or the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to bring about the end of the Troubles
3 In an earlier investigation of Gacaca courts, Kanyangara et al. (2007) actually observed an increase in shame for the victim
group after participating in a trial. It is not clear why this happened, although shame has sometimes been reported by other
trauma victims (Janoff-Bulman 1979; Paterson et al. 2018).
Victim group
7
4 Before
3 After
1
Outgrp Outgrp positive Outgrp Outgrp positive
homogeneity stereotype homogeneity stereotype
Gacaca Gacaca Control Control
Perpetrator group
7
4 Before
After
3
1
Outgrp Outgrp positive Outgrp Outgrp positive
homogeneity stereotype homogeneity stereotype
Gacaca Gacaca Control Control
Figure 9.6 Changes in perceived outgroup homogeneity and positive outgroup stereotypes after participating in
Gacaca Courts in Rwanda. Source: Rimé et al. (2011), from table 2. Reproduced with permission of John Wiley
and Sons.
in Northern Ireland. Such agreements provide an instrumental basis for groups to stop waging war
on each other but, so argue Nadler and Shnabel (2008), they will seldom provide a lasting basis for
true reconciliation unless further emotional barriers are addressed and overcome.
From the ‘victim’ group’s side – and we place ‘victim’ in quotation marks because in some conflicts
it may not be so obvious that there is a clear victim–perpetrator distinction – the primary socioe-
motional need is to be re-empowered. If your group has been subjected to symptomatic abuse (or
worse) – as, for example were the Tutsis in Rwanda or Muslims in Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990s –
then the sine qua non of any genuine rapprochement with the perpetrator group is a recognition by
the latter of their responsibility for the atrocities they have committed and an acknowledgement of
the victim’s rights to existence, justice and self-determination. But the ‘perpetrator’ group has needs
that must be satisfied too. At the conclusion of a severe conflict, atrocities committed by the perpe-
trator group will often become widely publicised. Public knowledge of such atrocities, particularly
in cases of genocide such as in Rwanda or Bosnia Herzegovina, will cause members of the perpe-
trator group to fear their exclusion from the international moral community to which they believe
they belong. Their own social identity as a basically decent and moral group is thus threatened, and
they will be motivated to try to regain membership in that moral community. For this group, there-
fore, the emotional imperative is to seek acceptance and understanding from others, including the
victim group. Such an understanding might eventually restore their moral reputation, especially if it
culminates with forgiveness by the victim group.
Viewed from this needs-based model perspective, the results of Rimé et al.’s (2015) evaluation of
Gacaca courts make sense. Perhaps what the Gacaca process does is to allows both the victims and the
perpetrators to address their different emotional needs: the victims get to have their say and hopefully
obtain some recognition from the perpetrators and some justice from the court; the perpetrators, by
expressing remorse and confessing their crimes to the local community, may hope to be eventually
readmitted to that community.
More direct evidence of the importance of the diverging socioemotional needs of victims and per-
petrators was provided by two experiments conducted by Shnabel et al. (2009) in Israel and Germany.
The first of these involved a sample of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. The participants were presented
with two brief commentaries written on the 50th anniversary of the Kafr Kassem killings (in 1956) in
which between 40 and 504 Israeli Arabs, including some young children, were shot by a group of Israeli
soldiers. Both commentaries were purported to have been written by a member of the outgroup (an
Israeli Jew for Arab participants, and an Israeli Arab for Jewish participants). One of the messages
emphasised empowerment and spoke of the importance of the participants’ ingroup (whether Arab
or Jewish) to be independent and to be able to determine their own future. Words such as ‘respect’,
‘strong’ and ‘proud’ were used to describe the participants’ own group. The other message stressed
acceptance and talked about the importance of remembering and recognising the pain and suffering
provoked in the participants’ ingroup (again, whether Arab or Jewish) by the Kafr Kassem killings. In
the context of this tragic event, the Arab group were clearly the victims and the Israeli Jewish group
the perpetrators.
How did the two groups react to the two commentaries, supposedly written by someone from the
other group? In particular, how much did each message make them want to seek reconciliation with
the outgroup? Jewish participants (the perpetrator group) were more willing to reconcile if they read
the ‘acceptance’ message rather than the ‘empowerment’ message, but for Arab participants, it was
exactly the other way round, although a little less strongly (see also, Mazziotta et al. 2014).
Another approach to intergroup reconciliation, also stressing the importance of emotion, has been
offered by Čehajić-Clancy et al. (2016). Here, however, the perspective is more individually focused.
It emphasises the use of various cognitive strategies to regulate group members’ emotions, and
4 As an aside, it is noteworthy how this same event has been differently described by the Jewish and Arab communities
in Israel. The headline in a post on the Jewish Virtual Library reads “Incident at Kfar Kassem”, and reports that “47 Israeli
Arabs were killed” (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Kassem.html; 2016). In contrast, the headline on the
blog site A Voice from Palestine reads, “Kafr Qasem Massacre”, and the article reports that “49 inhabitants of Kafr Kassem
(were) slaughtered” (https://avoicefrompalestine.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/Kafr-qasem-massacre-29-october-1956/%20;
%202009). In Shnabel et al.’s (2009) scientific article, the number of deaths is reported to be 43. Thus is history differently
written by vanquishers and the vanquished.
especially the emotion of anger which is seen as nearly always obstructive for reconciliation. These
strategies may be direct, involving a cognitive reappraisal of the situation, or indirect, seeking to
change people’s perceptions of the outgroup or the world as less immutable.
An example of the first technique was provided by Halperin et al. (2013). Using two, admittedly
small, samples of Israeli Jewish participants, they subjected half to a ‘re-appraisal training’ interven-
tion (the remainder [Control] had no training). The training consisted of participants being shown
some anger-inducing pictures and being asked to respond to them ‘objectively and analytically – to
try to think about them in cold and detached manner’ (Halperin et al. 2013, p. 107). After this brief
exercise, everyone was shown some further pictures, this time depicting scenes from the current con-
flict with the Palestinians showing examples of Palestinian aggression towards Israel. This was also
designed to be anger-inducing, but those in the intervention condition were asked again to apply their
reappraisal training. Afterwards, when asked for their feelings and reconciliation attitudes, those who
had experienced the emotion regulation training showed less anger and more favourable attitudes
towards reconciliation compared to those in the Control condition (see also, Halperin and Gross
(2011) for other research on emotion regulation).
Interesting though these cognitive techniques are, we are doubtful that, by themselves, they stand
much chance of bringing about a durable reconciliation between disputing parties. Note how, unlike
the needs-based approach discussed earlier, they do not necessarily involve both groups’ perspectives
nor do they take account of prior intergroup relationships (see, Klar and Branscombe 2016; Shnabel
and Ullrich 2016; Van Zomeren 2016; and Wohl and Tabri 2016 for similar critiques). Nor, also, is it
so obvious that a reduction in anger will always be necessary for reconciliation. As we saw earlier,
victims showed a sharp increase in anger after participating in Gacaca Courts but this did not stop
them from also having less homogeneous and more positive perceptions of the outgroup (see also,
Leach (2016) for further comment on the role of anger in intergroup relations).
Group-Based Emotions: Guilt, Shame, Victimhood, and Forgiveness

We turn now to the particular emotions that may be felt by members of perpetrator and victim groups
in the aftermath of an intergroup conflict. Before we do so, however, a few preliminary words of clar-
ification are necessary. Most often, what we feel in relation to intergroup events are not emotional
reactions to something we have experienced directly. If we ask Jewish or German people today for
their feelings about the Holocaust, few if any of them will have had any direct involvement in it,
yet they will often report some strongly experienced emotions. Such feelings are called group-based
emotions, and they are possible because of the process of social identification, one of the core con-
cepts of this book. As we discussed elsewhere (see Chapter 1), the essence of the concept of social
identity, as articulated by Tajfel and Turner (1986), is that the ingroup’s concerns can become indi-
vidual group members’ concerns, independently of their own personal well-being. We can feel good
(or bad), happy (or sad), simply because other in our group have done something fine (or terrible)
(see Iyer and Leach 2008; Mackie and Smith 2015; and Smith 1993).
We have already considered a number of intergroup emotions in earlier chapters in the context of
conflict (e.g. fear, anger, and disgust; see Chapter 7) and structural advantage (guilt, sympathy, and
moral outrage; see Chapter 8). In the case of the latter, we saw that guilt has a role to play because
of the implied moral culpability of being part of a group that enjoys an illegitimately privileged posi-
tion in society. Similarly, we can expect guilt to also be felt by perpetrator group members when the
past misdeeds of their group come to light and are subject to moral condemnation by others (indeed,
awareness of such past wrongdoing may often go together with a sense of unfair ingroup advantage
in the present). However, research on emotions in the context of reconciliation and historical atroc-
ities has often considered guilt alongside another related but distinct emotional experience, namely
shame. Although ‘guilt’ and ‘shame’ are often used interchangeably in everyday language to describe
the uncomfortable awareness of having done wrong, social psychologists have found it useful to dis-
tinguish these two emotions. Traditionally, the focus of guilt was on the wrongdoing itself and its
consequences for others, while with shame, the focus is more on the self (Lewis 1971; Tangney 1991).
Thus, we may feel guilty because we did those bad things to that group, who suffered as a result, or
we may feel ashamed because what we did makes us (be seen to be) an immoral group (Branscombe
et al. 2004; Lickel et al. 2004). Because of these different emphases, the consequences of the two emo-
tions were originally thought to differ: guilt leading to attempts to apologise or make restitution to the
harmed group, shame to avoidance of, or perhaps even hostility towards, the victims (Branscombe
et al. 2004; Lickel et al. 2004).
There was initially considerable support for these predictions, especially regarding the effects of
guilt. In contexts as varied as the Dutch colonisation of Indonesia, post-conflict Bosnia Herzegov-
ina, the mistreatment of indigenous peoples in Chile and Australia, and the discrimination experi-
enced by African-Americans, feelings of guilt have generally been found to lead to intentions to make
reparations and apologies to the harmed group (Brown et al. 2008; Brown and Čehajić 2008; Doosje
et al. 1998; Harvey and Oswald 2000; Iyer et al. 2003; McGarty et al. 2005; Swim and Miller 1999).
However, the consequences of shame were less clear-cut. Sometimes, it was indeed associated with
motives to distance oneself from the situation (Lickel et al. 2005). But other studies found it also to
be linked to more prosocial orientations (Brown et al. 2008; Brown and Čehajić 2008; Harvey and
Oswald 2000).
These inconsistencies led to a more refined analysis of group-based shame (Allpress et al. 2014;
Gausel et al. 2012). In this later research, care was taken to distinguish between shame which spoke
to the potential immorality of the ingroup’s nature, sometimes called ‘moral shame’ (Allpress et al.
2014), and the shame which was more concerned with the ingroup being rejected by other because
of its tainted public reputation. This has been called ‘image shame’ (Allpress et al. 2014). The latter
emotion may evoke avoidance or a defensive strategy of covering up the ingroup’s misdeeds, while the
former, because it implies a threat to the group’s moral values, may more readily be dealt with by trying
to make amends to the victim group. Several studies, based in the context of Britain’s controversial
invasion of Iraq (Allpress et al. 2014) and the historical mistreatment of the Tater, an ethnic minority
group in Norway (Gausel et al. 2012), found consistent correlations between these two kinds of shame
with positive and negative orientations towards the (victim) outgroup: image shame was associated
with a desire to avoid or cover up the ingroup’s malfeasances; moral shame with a wish to make
restitution. Furthermore, Allpress et al. (2014) found moral shame to be a stronger predictor of a
prosocial attitude towards the outgroup than guilt.
Thus, if members of perpetrator groups come to accept responsibility for their group’s past mis-
deeds, the emotions they feel may be sufficiently discomforting for them to need to find ways of
expiating them. But note the crucial word ‘if ’! Precisely because guilt and shame are unpleasant feel-
ings, and because they tend to reflect badly on the ingroup, people may erect psychological defences
against them, especially if they are strongly identified with their group (Doosje et al. 1998; Leach et al.
2013; Roccas et al. 2006). Moreover, some have suggested that guilt and shame may only seldom insti-
gate people into action, unlike anger, which seems to be a more ‘energising’ emotion (Iyer and Leach
2008).
Now let us consider things from the victims’ side. What factors will dispose (or inhibit) them to
contemplate forgiving the perpetrators? How do they react to expressions of contrition and apology
from them? Recall, first of all, Nadler and Shnabel’s (2008) needs-based model discussed above. In
that model, the paramount need of victim groups is that their suffering be recognised and that they
can regain some power. Only then, it is argued, may they be ready to begin to trust the outgroup again
sufficiently to contemplate forgiving them. In the first step of that process – the recognition of their
suffering – introduces a paradoxical element into the equation. In very many post-conflict settings,
those who have been on the losing end may develop a ‘victim identity’. They will often be at pains to
point out to the rest of the world that they have suffered much more than the other group(s) in the
conflict. This outlook has been called ‘competitive victimhood’ (Nadler and Saguy 2003; Noor et al.
2008). Unfortunately, while understandable, a strong sense of victimhood is antithetical to intergroup
forgiveness.
Noor et al. (2008) were among the first to document the pernicious effects of competitive victim-
hood. In studies set in post-Pinochet Chile and in post-Good Friday Agreement Northern Ireland,
they found consistent and robust negative correlations between competitive victimhood (e.g. ‘overall,
victims in my community have not received adequate attention to their needs compared to victims in
the other community’) and a willingness to forgive the outgroup. Fortunately, other results from those
same studies also provided clues as to how one might counteract those negative effects of compet-
itive victimhood. Running alongside the latter were some positive correlations between forgiveness
and empathy for and trust in the outgroup, and also with strength of a common ingroup identifi-
cation (see Section “Group-Based Emotions: Guilt, Shame, Victimhood, and Forgiveness”). Thus, if
ways can be found to promote empathy, trust, and a more inclusive social identity, it is possible that
these could combat and perhaps overcome the effects of the otherwise all too salient victim identity.
Such ways exist. One factor is by now familiar to us, intergroup contact. Hewstone et al. (2006),
working in Northern Ireland, observed that cross-religious friendship was reliably correlated with
intergroup forgiveness. It was also associated with increases in outgroup trust and perspective-taking.
Those authors did not report analyses to show that contact led to more trust and perspective-taking
and thence to forgiveness, but it seems likely that this is what happened, at least to judge from a
subsequent study conducted in Bosnia Herzegovina with Bosnian Muslim adolescents (Čehajić et al.
2008). At issue in this research was to understand what might lead Bosniaks (as Bosnian Muslims
call themselves) to consider forgiving Bosnian Serbs for what they had done in the 1992–1995 war,
including the murder of some 8000 Bosniaks at Srebrenica in 1995. Just as Hewstone et al. (2006)
had found, more contact with the outgroup (Bosnian Serbs) was associated with greater willingness
to forgive them, and this relationship seemed best explained by corresponding increases in outgroup
trust, empathy, and heterogeneity. Independently of those relationships, those who identified more
strongly with the common ingroup category (Bosnia) also showed more forgiveness.
In fact, creating a common ingroup identity does seem to generate forgiveness. Wohl and
Branscombe (2005) found that Jewish participants who were experimentally induced to think of
themselves as ‘humans’ (instead of ‘Jews’) showed more forgiveness of Germans for the Holocaust.
However, the distinctive identity of particular victim groups will often be rather valuable to them, and
expecting them to give it up for the sake of reconciliation with the perpetrator seems unreasonable
and unrealistic, similar to the concerns we noted earlier in the chapter. These considerations have led
researchers to develop other kinds of common ingroup identification.
Vollhardt (2013), for instance, sought to create three different representations of the Holocaust
and presented them to a sample of Jewish and non-Jewish participants. The first resembled the
manipulation used by Wohl and Branscombe (2005) and described the Holocaust as a crime against
humanity; the second underlined the damage done by the Holocaust specifically to the Jewish peo-
ple; while the third simultaneously emphasised both the ‘crime against humanity’ and ‘crime against
Jews’ representations. This is akin to the dual identity contact strategy described earlier. The key out-
come measures were participants’ prosocial attitudes and behaviour towards other victim groups
(e.g. victims of ethnic violence such as in Darfur). On two of these measures, those in the dual
identity group showed a more prosocial orientation than those in the first superordinate condi-
tion, with the ‘Jewish victim only’ condition falling between the two. Since these representations
were particularly relevant to the Jewish participants, only they revealed the differences between
conditions.
Somewhat surprisingly, especially in view of the dangers of competitive victimhood that we have
just discussed, it seems that there can be advantages in encouraging a victim consciousness, so long
as that identity is inclusive (recognising that other groups are also victims) and not exclusive (only the
ingroup has suffered). Vollhardt and Bilali (2015) tested this idea in three large surveys conducted
in the Great Lakes region of Africa – Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC, countries that had seen much
interethnic violence in the 1990s. They examined the correlations between inclusive and exclusive
victim consciousness and various indicators of intergroup attitudes and found that exclusive vic-
timhood was consistently associated with the negative outgroup attitudes, while inclusive victim-
hood was associated with political inclusion or pro-sociality. The trick, then, seems to be to facilitate
the development of a broad victim identity whilst discouraging any tendencies towards competitive
victimhood.
That, at least, was the thinking behind two experiments by Shnabel et al. (2013), both conducted
in Israel. These researchers also examined two other ideas: the effectiveness of a common regional
identity (‘we are all from the Middle East’) and of a common perpetrator identity (‘both Jews and
Palestinians have inflicted harm on each other’). Shnabel et al. (2013) suspected that the common
regional identity intervention might not work so well because it left groups’ needs to have their suf-
fering recognised unaddressed. The common perpetrator idea, on the other hand, despite its coun-
terintuitive nature, might be expected to address groups’ needs for agency or empowerment and so
go some way to encouraging a more reconciliatory outlook (Noor et al. 2012). So it turned out. Both
the Jewish and Palestinian participants who took part in the study showed more forgiveness towards
the other side under the ‘victim’ ‘perpetrator’ conditions than under the neutral control condition
(see Figure 9.7). They also showed less competitive victimhood. The common ‘regional’ identity par-
ticipants did not differ from the control group on either measure. (However, see Cohrs et al. (2015)
for some contrary results for inclusive victimhood.)
We turn now to the final issue we will consider in this section: how do members of victim groups
react to apologies from their erstwhile persecutors? In political circles, such apologies seem to have
become quite fashionable. Just in the first two decades of this century we have seen: Kevin Rudd, then
prime minister of Australia, apologising to the Aboriginal community in his country for the many
thousands of Aboriginal children who were abducted from their families to be placed in Christian
homes (2008); Cardinal Brody, head of the Irish Catholic Church, apologising to all the victims of
child abuse perpetrated by Irish priests (2009); David Cameron, then prime minister of the United
Kingdom, apologising for the killing by British soldiers of unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland on
‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1972 (McNeill et al. 2014); and Shinzo Abe, prime minister of Japan, apologising
for the kidnapping of Korean women to be used as sex slaves in World War II (2015). In some of these
cases, offers of financial reparation were also made.
5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
Forgiveness Competitive
victimhood
Common perpetrator Common victim Common region Control
Figure 9.7 Effects of different kinds of common ingroup identity on intergroup forgiveness and competitive
victimhood. Source: Shnabel et al. (2013), table 3. Reproduced with permission of Elsevier.
Despite the fact that such official apologies are often the result of years of campaigning by victim
groups and their sympathisers, historical analysis suggests that they rarely lead straightforwardly to
intergroup reconciliation (Barkan 2000; Blatz et al. 2009). Social psychological research tends to bear
out that conclusion. While it is true that some studies have found that apologies from representatives
of perpetrator groups may encourage intergroup forgiveness (Brown et al. 2008; Leonard et al. 2011;
Nadler and Livitian 2006), as many have found that they have no discernible effect on victim group
members’ willingness to forgive (Hornsey and Wohl 2013; Philpot and Hornsey 2008).
There are several possible reasons for these equivocal results. The perpetrators’ true motives for
making the apology may be ambiguous – is it sincere acknowledgment of wrong-doing or merely
a cynical ploy to exculpate themselves (Blatz et al. 2009; Wohl et al. 2012; Zaiser and Giner-Sorolla
2013)? Or is the apology made in such a way as to address the victims’ emotional needs, as we dis-
cussed earlier (Nadler and Shnabel 2008)? Are the apologies also accompanied by genuine attempts
to make reparation for the harm inflicted on the victim group (Giner-Sorolla et al. 2008; Giner-Sorolla
et al. 2010)? How much can the victims trust the perpetrators not to exploit any subsequent reconcil-
iatory gesture that they might make (Nadler and Livitian 2006)? Even perpetrator groups themselves
may be divided about the appropriateness of the apology made on their behalf and argue among
themselves about the motives for it (McNeill et al. 2014).
Living Together or Living Apart: The Challenges of Diversity

and Multi-culturalism
Europe and the Middle East are experiencing the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Every day, tens of thousands flee from war, famine, and natural disaster and seek shelter in other
countries, principally Turkey, Bangladesh, Lebanon, and Iran, but increasingly in Southern Europe.
And considering migration more generally, 244 million people are now living in a country other than
that of their birth, 41% more than in 2000 (UNHCR 2016). Although humans have probably always
been a migratory species, there is little doubt about the accelerating trend of international migration
in the first two decades of the twenty-first century.
The movement of so many people around the world inevitably brings people with different cultural
backgrounds into contact with one another, and much societal and psychological change occurs as a
result. In this final section of the chapter, we discuss some of those adaptations. We turn the spotlight
first on migrant or minority groups and examine some of the factors that contribute to their well-
being, or its lack. Then, consistent with the bilateral focus of the rest of this chapter, we look at some of
the intergroup implications of acculturation, the mutual accommodations of both receiving (majority)
and migrant (minority) groups to the new situations they find themselves in.
Acculturation and Well-Being in Minority Groups

What is meant by the word ‘acculturation’? As long ago as 1936, three American anthropologists
captured the concept well:
Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having
different cultures coming into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the
original cultural patterns of either or both groups.
(Redfield et al. 1936, p. 149)
There are two aspects to this definition which make it especially useful for our purposes: it empha-
sises the intergroup nature of acculturation – both majority and minority groups are implicated; and
with the focus firmly on ‘changes’, it underlines its dynamic aspect.
Within social psychology, the most well-known theoretical interpretation of this vision of accultur-
ation has been proposed by Berry (e.g. 1997). Berry has mostly been concerned with acculturation
from the immigrant group’s perspective, although, as we shall see, the receiving society is seldom
absent from his analysis. Berry considers that members of migrant groups typically face two main
challenges when they settle in a new country. The first concerns the extent to which they wish (or are
allowed) to retain aspects of their heritage culture. If they come, let us say, from an Islamic culture in
Asia where Urdu is the main language and where certain norms concerning how to dress prevail, will
they want (or be able) to continue to practise their religion, speak Urdu and dress in their culturally
preferred way if they move to a more secular or Christian culture in Europe? Berry calls this aspect of
the acculturation process, ‘desire for culture maintenance’ (CM). The second challenge concerns the
extent to which they wish (or are allowed) to have contact with members of the receiving (majority)
group. Will they want (or be permitted) to participate fully in receiving country’s activities, seek-
ing out members of the majority group for friendship (or more)? Berry labels this aspect, ‘desire for
intergroup contact’ (DC).
If one combines these two attitudes (‘high’ or ‘low’ on each), one arrives at a fourfold classification
of acculturation strategies or preferences: ‘Integration’ (high on both), ‘Assimilation’ (high on DC but
low on CM), ‘Separation’ (high on CM, low on DC) and ‘Marginalisation’ (low on both) (Berry 1997;
see Figure 9.8). All things being equal (but they seldom are!), Berry (1997) argues that immigrants
will generally opt for ‘integration’ and that this will be better for their adaptation, health, and well-
being since they then have the possibility of drawing on two sets of cultural resources and social
networks, their own heritage culture, and that of the majority receiving culture. They may thus be
Issue 1
Is it considered to be of value to
maintain one’s identity and
characteristics?
“Yes” “No”
Issue 2
“Yes” Integration Assimilation
Is it considered to be
of value to maintain
relationships with
larger society? Separation/
“No” Marginalization
segregation
Figure 9.8 Berry’s acculturation framework. Source: Berry (1997), figure 1. Reprinted with permission of John Wiley
and Sons.
better adjusted because they are more adept in navigating both cultures. However, Berry (1997) is also
careful to note that minority group strategies will also greatly depend on the attitudes of the majority
in the receiving society. If these are unsympathetic to ‘integration’, then immigrants may well choose
(or be forced to choose) an ‘assimilated’ or ‘separatist’ strategy.
Before we examine the evidence for Berry’s hypothesis, one further issue needs to be intro-
duced. Some acculturation researchers have suggested that it would be theoretically neater to replace
Berry’s desire for contact dimension with ‘desire for (majority) culture adoption’ (CA) (Bourhis et al.
1997; Ward and Kennedy 1994). In that way, the four acculturation strategies more precisely reflect
people’s wishes to identify with their heritage culture, the majority culture, or both (Benet-Martinez
and Haritatos 2005; Hutnik 1991; Liebkind 2001; Phinney et al. 2001).
There is now quite a large literature on the relationship between acculturation and adaptive
well-being (Brown and Zagefka 2011; Nguyen and Benet-Martinez 2013; Rudmin 2003). Nguyen
and Benet-Martinez (2013) conducted a meta-analysis of the relationship between biculturalism
(‘integration’) and adjustment and calculated that, on average, the relationship was positive.5
However, they also noted that there was considerable variation around the mean positive value, with
5 Quite how positive is a matter of debate. Nguyen and Benet–Martinez favoured reporting the results of a ‘random effects’
analysis which yielded an average correlation of +0.51. However, they also note that an alternative method – ‘fixed effects’
analysis – yielded a much lower correlation of +0.10. The arguments for and against each of these two methods are quite
technical. However, a visual inspection of Appendix B of their paper, which reports the average effect sizes of the 83 studies
at least one study reporting a substantial negative correlation between biculturalism and adjustment.
In other words, it seems likely that the relationship between integration and successful adjustment
among minority group members may be a bit more complex than was first thought. By way of
illustration of some of that complexity, let us take a brief look at three recent studies of acculturation
and adjustment.
The first is a large cross-national study of adolescent acculturation preferences and adaptation con-
ducted in 13 different countries (Berry et al. 2006). Looking just at the immigrant respondents, the
first result of interest was that their modal acculturation preferences varied wildly. In seven coun-
tries it was indeed ‘integration’, as Berry (1997) suggested would usually be the case. However, in two
countries it was ‘separation’ in one, ‘assimilation’, and in two, ‘marginalisation’. The overall relation-
ships between these acculturation preferences and adaptation were also not quite as straightforward
as one might have expected from Berry’s (1997) model. It is true that ‘integration’ was positively
correlated with adaptation but the relationship was quite weak (about + 0.10). ‘Separation’ was also
observed to be positively correlated with adaptation (to about the same extent, if not a little stronger).
A much stronger correlate of adaptation than both of these effects turned out to be the amount of
discrimination that these minority adolescents felt that they experienced from the majority society.
The importance of experienced discrimination was examined in the second of our sample studies
(Baysu et al. 2011). This research focussed on the educational achievement of Turkish immigrants
in Belgium (educational achievement is a form of socio-cultural adaptation). The participants in
the study (over 500 Turkish adults) were asked to indicate the highest level of education they had
achieved. They were then asked how often they had experienced hostility or unfair treatment because
of their ethnic background; this was the measure of discrimination. Finally, they were asked how
strongly they identified with being Turkish (CM) and with being Belgian (CA). From these identity
questions it was possible to classify each respondent according to Berry’s fourfold typology, depend-
ing on whether they preferred a dual identity (‘integration’) or just one (‘assimilation’ or ‘separation’).
The results were clear. The dual identity people had done better at school if the school climate was
relatively benign (low discrimination); in more hostile school environments (high discrimination),
those with an ‘assimilationist’ or ‘separatist’ outlook did better (see Figure 9.9).
These two studies used cross-sectional designs which are always problematic for inferring causal-
ity. The third of our demonstration studies rectified this defect by adopting a longitudinal approach
(Brown et al. 2013). In this study, the participants were young British-Asian children (5–11 years old).
As usual, their acculturation preferences were elicited, and also various measures of well-being were
administered. This was repeated 6 and 12 months after the start of the study. The vast majority of
these minority group children preferred ‘integration’, though this preference was a little less strong in
younger children (less than eight years). Consistent with Berry’s (1997) hypothesis, these ‘integration’
attitudes led to greater peer acceptance and higher self-esteem 12 months later; children adopting an
‘assimilation’ or ‘separation’ strategy showed little or no change.
It is apparent, then, that there is no single acculturation style which is optimal for well-being in all
minority groups. To understand properly when ‘integration’ (or some other approach) is beneficial
(or harmful) for successful adaptation, it is necessary to take account of the particular social climate
in which it is being pursued. Are the acculturation norms in the classroom, workplace, community,
included in the meta-analysis, would suggest that the lower figure is nearer to the mark. The highest average effect size
reported in that Appendix is 0.47, and many of them are actually close to 0.
0.60
0.50
Separated identity
Probabilities
0.40
Assimilated identity
0.30
Dual identity
0.20
Residual
0.10
0.00
Low discrimination High discrimination
Experienced discrimination in secondary school (threat)
Figure 9.9 Dual identity can be a two-edged sword: the interaction of acculturation preferences and perceived
discrimination affecting the educational attainment of Turkish immigrants to Belgium. Source: Baysu et al. (2011),
figure 1, the y-axis shows the probability of a higher level of educational attainment. Reprinted with permission of
Sage Publishers Ltd.
or society sympathetic (or inimical) to multiculturalism? The analysis of the effects of a contextual
variable like social norms can greatly benefit from the use of a technique known as multi-level mod-
elling (e.g. Hox 2002). This technique takes account of the fact that social psychological data collected
in field settings often has a ‘nested’ structure: for example, school students in classes within schools
within neighbourhoods within cities. By computing average values of one’s key variables at these
different levels, one can sometimes discover quite different relationships than exist at the ‘usual’ indi-
vidual level of analysis (as we found, for example in studying the relationship between national iden-
tification and prejudice – positive at an individual level, but negative at a country level; Pehrson et al.
2009b). More relevant for our current purposes would be to investigate if the relationship between
individual acculturation preferences and well-being was moderated by certain contextual variables
(for instance societal endorsement of multiculturalism policies or class-room norms favouring toler-
ance of diversity). We shall discuss one such study in the next section.
Acculturation and Intergroup Relations

There are two sides to every story, so it is said. So far we have discussed acculturation only from the
minority group’s perspective. What about things from the majority group’s side? And do accultura-
tion attitudes have implications not just for individual well-being but also for social well-being – the
quality of the intergroup relationship between minority and majority group?
Before answering these questions, we first need to mention two extensions of Berry’s (1997) frame-
work by Bourhis et al. (1997) and Piontkowski et al. (2002). Both share the idea that in order to be able
to predict the likely intergroup outcomes one needs to consider the degree of (mis)match between
majority and minority group acculturation attitudes. In other words, how much agreement is there
between what the majority group thinks is appropriate regarding whether minorities should ‘inte-
grate’, ‘assimilate’ (or whatever), and what the minorities themselves want? Both theories concur that
mutual agreement is usually beneficial for intergroup relations and disagreement is harmful. It is
also worth noting that the degree of concordance need not be between the groups’ actual accultura-
tion attitudes; equally important is what we perceive the other group to endorse (Brown and Zagefka
2011). As we shall see, such perceptions may sometimes be at variance with reality.
Before we examine how agreement or disagreement between majority and minority acculturation
preferences affects their views of each other, we should record that acculturation attitudes themselves
are consistently associated with various kinds of prejudice. Zagefka and Brown (2002) were among
the first to notice this. They collected data from German majority group members and Russian and
Turkish minority group members living in Germany. In both groups, those endorsing an ‘integration’
outlook tended to have more favourable intergroup attitudes than those favouring a ‘separation’ or
‘marginalisation’ position (see also, Pfafferott and Brown 2006).This was only a cross-sectional study,
but longitudinal research has confirmed that acculturation preferences (especially ‘integration’ and
‘assimilation’) do lead to more favourable intergroup attitudes at least for the majority group (Zagefka
et al. 2009, 2014).
Zagefka and Brown (2002) also asked each group what they believed the other group’s preferred
acculturation was. These (mis)perceptions revealed some interesting differences between the two
groups. The minority group’s view of the majority group’s preferences was reasonably accurate. Here
is the breakdown of the majority group into the four Berry acculturation types, with the minor-
ity group’s estimates in brackets: ‘integration’ 61% (56%), ‘assimilation’ 18% (24%), ‘separation’ 2%
(8%), and ‘marginalisation’ 19% (12%). On the other hand, the majority group’s perceptions of what
the minority group wanted were rather less accurate. Once again, here are the minority group’s
actual preferences, this time with majority’s estimates in brackets: ‘integration’ 75% (66%); ‘assimi-
lation’ 18% (3%); ‘separation’ 5% (28%); and marginalisation 2% (3%). Notice how the majority group
underestimated how much the minorities wanted to integrate or assimilate but grossly overestimated
their wish to separate (see, Rohmann et al. 2006 and Van Oudenhoven et al. 1998 for similar results).
Whenever we hear politicians complaining that minority groups do not wish to integrate with main-
stream society, perhaps we should bear these findings in mind.
These perceptions of outgroup acculturation preferences are also systematically related to inter-
group attitudes. In general, majority group members seem to want minorities to ‘assimilate’ or
‘integrate’ and are more favourably disposed towards them when they are perceived to do so (Celeste
et al. 2014; Matera et al. 2011, 2012; Van Oudenhoven et al. 1998; Zagefka et al. 2007). The crucial
point here seems to be that the minorities be seen to wish to have contact with members of the major-
ity group or adopt at least some aspects of the mainstream culture. Such perceptions reduce feelings
of threat in the majority and hence lead to less antagonistic intergroup attitudes (Celeste et al. 2014;
Matera et al. 2011). The effects of minority group perceptions of majority acculturation preferences
have been much less studied but, again, the most favourable reactions tend to be elicited when they
perceive the majority to favour integration (Celeste et al. 2014).
So far, we have considered the connection between acculturation preferences (whether one’s own
or those perceived to be held by the outgroup) and intergroup attitudes only in isolation. But recall
that Bourhis et al. (1997) and Piontkowski et al. (2002) believe that it is the similarity between
majority and minority acculturation strategies that is crucial. Several studies support this hypothesis.
Zagefka and Brown (2002) examined the difference between their respondents’ own acculturation
orientation and that which they believed the outgroup held. These discrepancies were classified
as ‘consensual’ if their own and the perceived outgroup’s were the same (e.g. both ‘assimilation’).
However, if they mildly disagreed – for example ‘assimilation’ versus perceived ‘integration’ – they
were termed ‘problematic’. And if they completely disagreed (e.g. ‘integration’ versus perceived
‘separation’), they were called ‘conflictual’ (Bourhis et al. 1997). For both the majority (German) and
minority (Turkish or Russian) groups, ingroup bias was highest in the ‘conflictual’ case (see also,
Piontkowski et al. 2002 and Rohmann et al. 2006).
5
Consensual Problematic Conflictual
4.5
3.5
2.5
1.5
1
Realistic threat Symbolic threat Intergroup anxiety
Figure 9.10 Intergroup attitudes are affected by the perceived discrepancy between one’s own acculturation
preferences and those of the outgroup. Source: Rohmann et al. (2006), table 3. Reproduced with permission of Elsevier.
These were all correlational studies and so we cannot be certain that it was the discrepancy between
own and (perceived) other acculturation preferences that caused the adverse reaction. However,
experimental work by Rohmann et al. (2006) reassures us on that point. In these studies, the degree
of disagreement between the participants’ own acculturation attitudes and those of an outgroup was
manipulated by having participant read a short newspaper article about research into ‘the daily life
of immigrants’. In fact, there were four different articles, each conveying a different impression about
immigrants’ preferred life-style (‘integration’, ‘assimilation’, ‘separation’ or ‘marginalisation’). By taking
account of participants’ own acculturation preferences, it was possible to create three groups vary-
ing in the extent of their acculturation discrepancies. Confirming the correlational results reported
above, those seeing major discrepancies (‘conflictual’) felt more threatened and were somewhat more
anxious than those seeing only minor (‘problematic’) or no discrepancies (‘consensual’) (see Fig-
ure 9.10).
As a final illustration of the importance of having a good ‘fit’ between one’s own acculturation
orientation and the orientation which is normative in a particular context, a study by Celeste et al.
(2016) will serve us well. In this research, the focus was on adolescents of Turkish or Moroccan origin
in Belgium (these are the two principal minority groups in that country). A large sample of these
school students was surveyed and their acculturation preferences (heritage CM and mainstream CA)
were elicited. The key measure of well-being was the extent to which they felt rejected by their peers.
An interesting feature of this study was its multilevel design: the individual students (over 680 of them)
were clustered into 230 classrooms within 50 schools. By computing the average endorsement of both
CM and CA in each classroom, it was possible to infer what the peer norms for each of these two
acculturation dimensions were. In fact, the researchers were able to calculate both co-ethnic norms
(fellow minority group members) and cross-ethnic norms (those of majority group students). The
latter are of particular interest here: were the minority students’ feelings of peer rejection affected
by the (mis)match of their own individual acculturation preferences and the normative acculturation
expectations of their majority peers? The results showed clearly that they were. In classrooms where
the Belgian majority students had an above-average expectation that ethnic minorities should adopt
the mainstream Belgian culture, minority students preferring ‘integration’ experienced more peer
rejection than minority students more inclined towards ‘assimilation’. In classrooms with a below
average majority expectation of CA the situation was reversed: now ‘integrationists’ fared better and
‘assimilationists’ worse.
In the first case (high majority expectation of CA), the ‘integrationist’ minority students were swim-
ming somewhat against the tide. Remember that they want both to maintain their own culture and
take on aspects of the Belgian culture (High CM, High CA). It is the former which may have caused
them some problems in the high CA classrooms. Perhaps their typical mode of dressing (wearing
a hijab) or their meal preferences at lunchtime (no pork) was seen as something of a threat by the
majority students who believed that minorities should fully adopt Belgian ways. The ‘assimilationists’
would have experienced less difficulty since they were behaving more in line with the majority’s
expectations.
In the low-CA classrooms, on the other hand, presumably the atmosphere was more tolerant of
diversity and there the ‘integrating’ minority students’ own acculturation orientation was a better
‘fit’ and they were more accepted as a result. The ‘assimilationists’ were now the fishes out of water
because their apparent desire to become fully fledged Belgians was less appreciated in the more mul-
ticultural classrooms.
This study, the last we will have occasion to present, encapsulates rather well the central arguments
of this book. As we have tried to show throughout its pages, people’s social life is intimately bound
up as much with the groups they belong to as with those they do not. To understand their well-being,
their feelings, their attitudes, and their behaviour (whether towards their own group or others), we
need to take account of their social identities, and these social identities are embedded and expressed
in particular social contexts – whether the micro-context of an ethnically mixed classroom (as here)
or the macro-context of a multicultural society (as in other studies in this section). And a proper study
of this interplay between individuals, groups and contexts often requires the use of different levels of
analysis simultaneously.
Summary
1. One of social psychology’s most important contributions to the reduction of intergroup prejudice
has been the contact hypothesis. This proposed that contact between members of different groups
that takes place under pleasant, equal status and cooperative conditions and that is supported by
institutional authorities will lead to improved mutual intergroup attitudes. Much evidence sup-
ports this hypothesis, even if the effects of contact are usually not very strong.
2. Theoretical elaborations of the contact hypothesis sought to improve its scope by improving
its ability to predict generalised attitude change, beyond these outgroup members immediately
encountered. Models of ‘decategorisation’, ‘recategorisation’, and ‘category salience’ offer contrast-
ing proposals for the design of prejudice reduction interventions. Each has received empirical
support although none is without its theoretical or practical drawbacks. A combination of all three
models may offer a solution.
3. These theoretical developments have advanced our understanding of how contact works to
reduce prejudice. Although some cognitive processes are implicated, the primary drivers of the
References 295
contact–prejudice relationship are emotional in nature. Contact reduces intergroup anxiety,

increases intergroup trust and empathy, and these affective changes tend to reduce prejudice.
4. Contact need not be direct. Three forms of indirect contact can also contribute to the reduction
of prejudice: Extended contact, knowing other ingroup members who are friends with outgroup
members; Vicarious contact, experiencing contact ‘second hand’ through books, radio or film; and
Imagined contact, simply thinking about positive contact with an outgroup member. Indirect con-
tact is less powerful than direct contact and may not produce very durable effects. Nevertheless,
it can be useful in contexts where there are few opportunities for direct contact.
5. Social psychology can also contribute to post-conflict peace-building and reconciliation. Success-
ful intergroup reconciliation must take account of the different socio-emotional needs of victim
and perpetrator groups. Victims need to be re-empowered; perpetrators need to be re-accepted.
Group based emotions of guilt, shame and victimhood play important – and diverging – roles in
the reconciliation process.
6. In an age of mass migration, groups with different cultural backgrounds frequently encounter each
other, and mutual accommodation of both groups to each other results. This process is known as
acculturation. From the immigrant (minority) group perspective, successful adaptation usually
depends on them both maintaining aspects of their heritage culture whilst engaging positively
with the new mainstream (majority) culture. However, such an acculturation strategy depends in
part on the willingness of the mainstream culture to tolerate diversity.
7. The acculturation preferences of both majority and minority groups are related to their mutual
intergroup attitudes. In general, an ‘integrationist’ outlook (maintenance of minority culture com-
bined with adoption of majority culture) on both sides leads to more favourable mutual intergroup
attitudes, However, the degree of match (or mismatch) between majority and minority accultura-
tion preferences is also important. Intergroup attitudes are more positive when majority–minority
acculturation preferences are concordant rather than discordant.
Further Reading
Brown, R. and Hewstone, M. (2005). An integrative theory of intergroup contact. Advances in
Brown, R. and Zagefka, H. (2011). The dynamics of acculturation: an intergroup perspective. Advances in
Iyer, A. and Leach, C.W. (2008). Emotion in intergroup relations. European Review of Social Psychology
19: 86–125.
Mackie, D.M. and Smith, E.R. (2015). Intergroup Emotions. American Psychological Association.
Pettigrew, T.F. and Tropp, L. (2011). When Groups Meet: The Dynamics of Intergroup Contact.
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309
Name Index
a Armstrong B. 135, 154

Abakoumkin G. 159 Armstrong T. L. 222
Abeles R. P. 229, 253 Árnadóttir K. 276, 296
Abelson, R. 43 Aron A. 306
Aboud F. 40, 44, 262, 295 Aronson E. 34, 43, 154
Abrams D. 65, 67, 68, 76, 78, 80, 81, 149, 154, Aronson K. M. 272, 296
209, 220, 267, 299 Arsenault P. 104, 120
Acquisti A. 172, 186 Asbrock F. 275, 296
Adams R. B. 301 Asch S. E. 3, 12, 59–61, 63–64, 79, 86, 87, 117,
Adang O. 190 194
Adorno T. W. 192, 218, 220 Aschenbrenner K. 24, 43
Aiello J. R. 126, 154 Ashton N. 134, 159
Ainsworth S. E. 154 Atkin R. S. 155
Ajzen I. 54, 79, 80 Averill J. R. 230, 253
Alexander H. 189 Avolio B. J. 103, 118
Alexander M. G. 201, 202, 221 Ayers S. 158
Allen V. L. 60, 65, 79
Allport F. H. 2, 3, 12, 125, 154, 194 b
Allport G. W. 192, 193, 201, 221, 262, 270, 271, Back K. 45, 50
275, 279, 295 Bahnik S. 301
Allpress J. A. 247, 253, 284, 296 Bales R. F. 2, 12, 41, 43, 105, 118
Alnabulsi H. 147, 154 Balow B. 154
Altemeyer B. 70, 79, 218, 221, 267, 296 Banaji M. R. 44, 210, 211, 223
Alvaro E. M. 91, 117 Bandura A. 203, 221
Amir Y. 262, 296 Banks C. 187
Anderson A. B. 38, 43 Banuazizi A. 168, 186
Andreoli V. A. 306 Banyard P. 167, 186
Annest J. L. 119 Barak A. 172, 187
Anthony T. 83 Barbaranelli C. 221
Arai M. 60, 82 Barkan E. 87, 118, 287, 216
Ariyanto A. 70, 79 Barlow F. K. 275, 276, 296, 300
Arkes H. R. 211, 221 Baron R. S. 62, 72, 76, 79, 81, 82, 126, 154
310 Name Index
Baron S. H. 82 Blazer D. G. 155

Barquissau M. 301 Bligh M. C. 103, 118
Barreto M. 209, 221 Block C. H. 160
Barrington-Levy C. P. 150, 156 Blumberg H. H. 119
Bar-Tal D. 198, 221 Blumer H. 245, 254
Bartsch R. 27, 43 Bobo L. 244, 245
Basanez M. 156 Bogart L. 27, 48
Bass B. M. 102, 118 Boh L. 158
Batalha L. 214, 221 Bohner G. 92, 118–120
Batson C. D. 269, 296 Bohra K. A. 122
Batts V. 257 Bolce L. 257
Bauer E. 121 Bollier T. 222
Bauman Z. 203, 221 Bonanno G. A. 146, 154
Baumeister R. F. 137, 154, 276, 296 Bond C. F. 125, 126, 154
Baumgardner M. H. 121 Bond M. 14, 83
Baysu G. 290, 296, 297 Bond R. 60, 61, 79
Becker J. C. 209, 221, 233, 240–242, 250, 251, Bono J. E. 104, 120
253, 259 Borden R. J. 12
Becker M. 9, 10, 12 Bornstein F. 24, 44
Bekhuis H. 276, 296 Borsari B. 52, 79
Bem D. J. 84 Bourhis R. Y. 24, 25, 44, 45, 48, 49, 289, 291, 292,
Benet-Martinez V. 289, 296, 302 297
Bennett S. 306 Bovard E. W. 58, 79
Berkowitz L. 82, 231, 253, 254 Bowers R. J. 73, 80
Bernstein M. J. 301 Bown N. 78
Berry J. W. 60, 61, 79, 288–291, 296 Branscombe N. R. 80, 82, 157, 225, 283, 284–286,
Berry P. C. 160 297, 298, 301, 306
Best R. 188 Branthwaite A. 24, 44
Bettencourt A. 264, 296 Bratslavsky E. 296
Bettencourt B. A. 264, 296 Bratt C. 298
Bialosiewicz S. 258 Brawley L. 44
Bickman L. 82, 177, 186 Bray R. M. 110, 118
Biernat M. 82 Brazier G. 188
Bigler R. S. 275, 296 Brenner M. 158
Bilali R. 273, 286, 296, 306 Brewer M. B. 24, 44, 69, 79, 196, 221, 264–266,
Billig M. 23, 43, 49, 193, 196, 206, 207, 221 278, 296, 297, 302
Binder J. 266, 269, 297, 306 Brickner M. A. 134, 154
Birum I. 222 Brodbeck F. C. 159
Blader S. L. 116, 118 Broquard M. 307
Blalock H. M. 277, 297 Brotherton C. J. 71, 83
Blanchar J. C. 243, 254 Brown J. 119
Blaney N. 154 Brown K. 121
Blanton H. 242, 254 Brown M. 207, 224
Blatz C. W. 287, 297 Brown P. M. 119
Blaylock D. L. 121 Brown R. P. 287, 297
Name Index 311
Brown Roger, 78, 242, 254 Cashman J. 118

Brown Rupert, 2, 4, 6–8, 12, 13, 23, 24, 26, 27, 33, Cassidy C. 188, 189
39, 40, 44, 49, 50, 82, 157, 158, 180, 186, 188, Castano E. 27, 44, 297, 299
189, 190, 193, 197, 200, 210, 221, 223–225, 232, Catrambone R. 125, 158
242, 247, 253, 254, 260, 262, 265–267, 269–272, Čehajić S./Čehajić-Clancy S. 247, 254, 257, 270,
278, 279, 284, 287, 289–292, 295–303, 306, 307 282, 284, 285, 297, 301
Brown Y. 121 Celeste L. 292, 293, 298
Bruneau E. 224 Chaiken S. 95, 118, 119
Bruner J. S. 20, 44 Charlton K. 291
Brunsman B. 79 Cheung W. 258
Bruun S. 132, 157 Child P. 13
Bryan D. 121 Chilstrom J. T. 118
Bryson J. 259, 305 Chiu C-Y. 46
Bugelski R. 231, 257 Cho D. 172, 186
Buhl T. 25, 44 Choi J. N. 144, 154
Burgess D. 223 Christ O. 271, 272, 277, 279, 298, 303, 304, 306
Burns J. 102, 118 Cialdini R. B. 9, 12
Burnstein E. 72, 73, 75, 79, 84, 160, 231, 254 Cihanger S. 158
Bushman B. 275, 297 Clark N. K. 159
Buunk B. P. 305 Clark R. D. 91, 93, 118, 120
Buys C. J. 146, 154 Clark S. 245, 255
Byrne D. 79, 262, 297 Clement R. 22, 47
Coch L. 55, 79
c Cochrane S. 78
Cacioppo J. T. 95, 121 Cockburn C. 259
Cadinu M. 257 Cocking C. 45, 155, 186
Caine A. 112, 123 Codol J.-P. 72, 79
Cairns E. 300, 302 Coenders M. 296
Cakal H. 249, 254 Cohen G. L. 160
Cameron L. 262, 272, 297, 305 Cohrs J. C. 219, 221, 286, 298
Campbell D. T. 1, 12, 20–22, 44, 54, 79, 194, 196, Collins A. 188
221, 224 Collins M. E. 262, 263, 298
Cantor N. 48 Condor S. 12, 221
Cantril H. 68, 80 Congdon C. S. 231, 258
Capara G.V. 221 Conolley E. S. 80
Capozza D. 305 Cook S. W. 262, 263, 298, 306
Carey K. B. 52, 79 Cooper J. 76, 81
Carless S. 37, 44 Cooper-Shaw L. 46
Carli L. L. 60, 80 Cotterill S. 224
Carlyle T. 103, 118 Cotton J. 48
Carrasco D. 158 Cottrell C. A. 202, 221
Carroll C. 300 Cottrell N. 126, 154
Carron A. 37, 44 Courtright J. A. 145, 154
Cartwright D. 1, 12, 15 Cowen E. L. 231, 254
Carvacho H. 225 Cox O. C. 207, 222
312 Name Index
Crace J. 103, 118 Desmond A. 85, 118

Crandall C. 63, 79 DeSteno D. 69, 83
Crano W. D. 88, 91, 117, 118 Deutsch M. 15, 18, 45, 64, 65, 79, 262, 263, 298
Crisp R. 46, 274, 275, 298, 302, 305 Devaney L. 121
Croak M. R. 296 DeVinney L. C. 258
Crocker J. 254 Devos T. 27, 45, 224, 257
Crosby F. 229, 242, 254, 256, 300 Dhont K. 276, 298
Crowter L. 300 Diehl M. 24, 25, 43, 45, 130, 155, 159
Crowther S. 175, 188 Diener E. 162–164, 169, 186
Crum L. 44 Dierselhuis J. 46, 80
Cruwys T. 151, 152, 154–156 Diez-Medrano J. 156
Cuddy A. J. C. 222 Dietz C. 48
Curtis M. 301 Dingle G. A. 154
Cwir D. 160 Dion K. 37, 43, 45
Dixon J. 208, 222, 224, 249, 255, 278, 279, 298
d Doise W. 4, 12, 22, 45, 71, 80
Dahlberg L. L. 119 Dollard J. 18, 45, 230, 255
Dalal A. K. 122 Donnelan M. B. 301
Dansereau F. 102, 118 Doob L. 45, 255
Dardenne B. 209, 222 Doosje B. 69, 80, 284, 298
Darley J. 174, 186, 187 Doria J. 49
Darwin C. 85, 118 Dornbushc S. 34, 45
Dasgupta N. 21, 44 Doucet N. 189
Dashiell J. E. 125, 154 Douch R. 297
David B. 91, 118 Dougill M. 78
Davies J. C. 228, 242, 254 Douthitt E. A. 126, 154
Davis J. H. 140, 142, 154, 155, 157 Dovidio J. F. 45, 187, 188, 258, 264–267, 279, 298,
Davitz J. 158 299, 304
Day E. A. 160 Downing L. L. 164, 187
de Cremer D. 112, 123 Doyle S. 44
de Dreu C. K. W. 98, 118 Droogendyk L. 250, 255
de Gilder D. 255 Drury J. 16, 31, 45, 49, 146–148, 154, 155, 171,
de Groot D. 187, 189 180, 181, 185, 186, 190, 251, 252, 255
de Groot K. 255 du Plessis I. 222
De Monchaux C. 82, 122 Duck J. M. 119
De Montmollin G. 128, 158 Duckitt J. 70, 80, 216, 218, 219, 222, 225
de Paola C. 37, 44 Dumont M. 209, 222
de Souza M. A. 222 Durkheim E. 30, 45, 280, 299
de Tezanos Pinto P. 269, 271, 298 Durrheim K. 222, 224, 255, 298
de Vries N. K. 92, 94, 98, 118 Dzindolet M. J. 130, 131, 158
DeChurch L. A. 75, 81
Degoey P. 123 e
Demoulin S. 224 Eagly A. H. 60, 80, 95, 119, 208, 222
Derks B. 238, 239, 255 Earley P. C. 139, 155
Deschamps J. C. 12, 23, 44, 45 Easterbrook J. A. 97, 119
Name Index 313
Easterbrook M. J. 157 Fischer F. 47

Ebbeson E. B. 73, 80 Fischer P. 175, 186
Ebbeson E. E. 38, 45 Fischer R. 83
Eberhardt J. L. 222 Fishbein M. 54, 80
Edwards K. 302 Fisher K. 70, 80
Egerbladh T. 142, 155 Fiske S. T. 200, 201, 205, 208, 222, 223, 240, 255,
Ehrlinger J. 242, 255 256, 278, 299
Eibach R. P. 242, 255 Fleishman E. 106, 119
Eidelman S. 243, 254 Flinder S. W. 119
Eiser J. R. 26, 45 Florack A. 303, 304
Eisman B. 37, 45 Flowers M. L. 144, 155
Ellemers N. 8, 12, 209, 221, 236–238, 243, 254, Fodor E. M. 144, 155
255 Fogelson R. M. 170, 186
Eller A. 267, 299 Folger R. 306
Ellertson N. 48 Ford C. E. 14
Enomoto A. 188 Fowler K. A. 90, 119
Ensari N. 267, 299 Fowler N. 155
Erb H-P. 98, 119 Fox D. 158
Erez M. 139, 155 Fränkel E. G. 229, 256
Espinosa P. 295 Fraser C. 71, 80
Esses V. M. 199, 200, 222 French J. R. P. 55, 79, 100, 101, 115, 119
Estrada M. 109, 119 Frenkel-Brunswik E. 220
Evans D. 188 Freud S. 18, 45
Exline J. J. 297 Frey D. 186
Frings D. 68, 80, 154
f Fujioka T. 13
Faust W. L. 128, 131, 134, 155
Fazio R. H. 211, 224 g
Feather N. T. 230, 255 Gaertner L. 29, 45
Feddes A. R. 271, 299 Gaertner S. 21, 45, 177, 182, 186–188, 264–267,
Federico C. M. 223 278, 279, 298, 299
Fell B. 276, 299 Gagnon A. 25, 44, 45
Feltz D. L. 158 Gallois C. 79
Fernandez S. 299 Gandhi M. 86
Ferraresi L. 300 Gange J. J. 79
Ferreira M. C. 222 Garcia J. E. 108, 122
Festinger L. 15, 34, 38, 40, 45, 51, 54, 59, 62, 63, Gardham K. 26, 46
65, 69, 72, 77, 80, 89, 95, 97, 119, 134, 155, 162, Garner S. 245, 255
186 Garvin D. J. 122
Feuchte F. 301 Guarnieri G. 257
Fiedler F. 47, 106–108, 119 Gausel N. 284, 299, 301
Fielding K. S. 54, 80 George G. 254
Fincham F. 46 George L. K. 150, 155
Finkenauer C. 296 Gerard H. B. 24, 34, 46, 60, 64, 65, 79, 80
Fischer A. H. 14, 234, 255, 259 Gerhardt M. W. 120
314 Name Index
Gershel J. 34, 46 Gurr T. 230, 256

Gheorghiu M. A. 257 Gutenbrunner L. 296
Gibson J. J. 54, 80
Giessner S. R. 112, 119 h
Gilroy P. 170, 187 Haberkorn G. 120
Giner-Sorolla R. 253, 287, 296, 299, 307 Hackman J. R. 132, 156
Giovanni A. 78 Hagendoorn L. 196, 226
Giovannini D. 305 Haileyesus T. 119
Glaser J. 223 Hains S. C. 40, 46
Glassner-Bayerl B. 49 Hains S. S. 111, 119
Glendon A. I. 71, 82 Halabi S. 183, 184, 187, 188, 302
Glick P. 208–210, 222, 240, 255, 256, 278, Halligan M. 257
299 Halperin E. 283, 297, 300
Goff P. A. 204, 205, 222 Hanes E. 278, 300
Goldenberg A. 297 Haney C. 166, 187
Gomez A. 271, 299 Hanna C. 83, 159
González R. 186, 254, 267, 269, 271, 297, 299, Harackiewicz J. M. 138, 160
302, 307 Harari H. 175, 187
Gordijn E. 118 Harari O. 187
Gorodzeisky A. 304 Hardee B. B. 257
Gouge C. 80 Hardie E. 40, 46
Grabow O. 279, 304 Hare A. P. 42, 46, 108, 119
Grace D. 48 Hare S. E. 119
Graen G. 118 Haritatos J. 289, 296
Graf S. 276, 299 Harkins S. G. 131, 132, 134, 136, 154, 156, 157,
Grasselli A. 257 159, 160
Graves J. 156 Harmond-Jones E. 296
Green R. G. 126, 155 Harris L. T. 205, 223
Greenaway K. H. 150, 155 Harrison K. 186
Greenberg J. 136, 156 Hart D. 137, 157
Greenland K. 266, 269, 300 Harth N. S. 246, 247, 256
Greenwald A. G. 121, 211, 223 Hartshone M. 24, 25, 46
Greenwood K. 272, 300 Harvey O. J. 225
Greenwood R. M. 190 Harvey R. D. 284, 300
Gregory D. 48 Harwood J. 270, 300, 302
Greitemeyer T. 186 Haslam C. 151, 152, 156, 157
Groenewoud J. T. 305 Haslam N. 204, 223, 224
Grofman B. N. 229, 256 Haslam S. A. 11–13, 27, 43, 46, 48, 101, 108, 110,
Grönlund K. 73, 80 112–115, 119, 121, 146, 154–157, 167, 168, 187,
Gross J. J. 283, 297, 300 189, 200, 207, 223, 225, 236, 258
Gross N. 37, 46 Hastorf A. H. 68, 80
Gruder C. L. 189 Hatch E. C. 158
Gruenfeld D. 98, 119 Hauenstein N. M. A. 116, 119
Guerin B. 126, 155, 156 Hayward L. E. 276, 300
Guerra R. 267, 299 Heath A. 254
Name Index 315
Heine S. J. 156 Hunter J. 196, 225

Helliwell J. F. 150, 156 Hunyady O. 211, 223
Hennessy P. 143, 156 Hou Y. 116, 123
Henrich J. 138, 156 Hutchison P. 190
Henry P. J. 245, 258 Hutnik N. 289, 300
Henson M. 78
Hepworth J. 231, 256 i
Hermann R. K. 221 Ilies R. 120
Herne K. 80 Imani A. 69, 81
Herrera M. 159 Ingham A. G. 131, 156
Herskovits M. 303 Inglehart R. 150, 156
Hertel G. 135, 138, 156, 158, 160 Innes J. M. 126, 156
Hewstone M. 24, 46, 86, 88, 95, 120, 208, 211, Institute for Social Research, 81
225, 254, 265–267, 269, 270, 279, 285, 295–298, Ip G. 21, 46
300, 302, 304–306 Ireland T. 257
Hill G. W. 127, 156 Irwin B. C. 158
Hinkle S. 210, 223 Isenberg D. J. 71
Hoffmann E. L. 82 Islam M. R. 266, 269, 300
Hofstede G. 9, 12, 61, 80, 138, 156 Iyer A. 69, 202, 223, 247, 248, 256, 257, 283, 284,
Hogg M. A. 14, 27, 32, 37, 38, 40, 43, 46, 49, 295, 300
54–56, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 110, 119, 122, 267, 300
Hollander E. P. 109, 110, 119 j
Holme A. 156 Jackman M. 207, 223, 245, 256
Holzworth D. 46 Jackson L. M. 222
Hopkins N. 31, 43, 48, 114, 122, 157, 160, 180, Jackson M. C. 222
183, 186, 189, 190, 207, 225, 259 Jahoda G. 204, 223
Hopthrow T. 149, 154, 156 James K. 136, 156
Horenczyk G. 303 James T. 182, 190
Hornsey M. J. 69, 78, 79, 80, 81, 267, 287, 300, Janis I. L. 142–145, 156
303, 306 Janoff-Bulman R. 280, 300
Horowitz D. L. 231, 256 Jans L. 30, 41
Horwitz M. 1, 13, 16, 17, 23, 46, 48 Jaspars, J. 46
Hossain R. 297 Jetten J. 56, 69, 78, 81, 146, 149, 150, 152, 156,
House J. S. 150, 156 157, 183, 186
House R. J. 102, 120 Johnson C. 158
Hovland C. 231, 256 Johnson D. 118
Hox J. 10, 13, 291, 300 Johnson D. W. 154
Hoyt M. 24, 46 Johnson G. 187
Huang L.-L. 214, 223 Johnson R. D. 164, 187
Huesmann L. 275, 297 Jones E. E. 26, 27, 47
Hüffmeier J. 135, 138, 156 Jones J. M. 149, 157
Hughes D. C. 155 Jost J. T. 210, 211, 223, 224, 240, 241, 256
Hughes J. M. 275, 296 Judd C. 27, 43, 48
Huguet P. 126, 158 Judge T. A. 100, 103, 104, 120
Hulbert L. 154 Julian J. 39, 47, 109, 110, 120
316 Name Index
Jung D. I. 118 Kramer R. M. 144, 157

Jussim L. 275, 301 Kravitz D. A. 126, 157
Krizan Z. 76, 81
k Krueger A. B. 22, 47, 229, 256
Kahneman D. 89, 122 Kruglanski A. W. 223
Kakuyama T. 158 Kteily N. S. 205, 216, 224
Kamau C. W. 299 Kuepper B. 193, 226
Kanyangara P. 280, 300, 303 Kuhn M. H. 9, 13, 33
Kappen D. M. 225, 297 Kwan J. L. 97, 121
Karau S. J. 132–135, 137, 138, 157, 160 Kyprianides A. 151, 157
Katz-Sidlow R. 46
Kaufman K. 50 l
Kay A. C. 211, 224, 240, 256 Lage E. 87, 121
Keating C. 34, 35, 47 Lakens D. 21, 47
Kelly C. 27, 47, 198, 224 Lamm H. 71, 82, 128, 157
Kelly M. 83 Lämsä A-M. 122
Kelman H. C. 203, 224 LLandes J. 254
Kennedy A. 289, 306 Landis K. R. 156
Kennedy J. K. 108, 120 Lang R. 301
Kenrick D. T. 122 Langer E. J. 151, 157, 159
Kenworthy J. B. 305 Lapidot-Lefler N. 172, 187
Kernaham C. 296 Lassegard M. 14
Kerr N. 132, 142, 155–158 Latané B. 92, 93, 120, 121, 132, 133, 146, 157,
Kerr P. 206, 224 160, 174, 175, 186, 187
Kessler T. 256, 299 Laughlin P. R. 134, 140, 142, 157, 158
Khan S. S. 147, 157, 160 Lazarus R. S. 232, 256
Kihlstrom J. 48 Le Bon G. 3, 13, 16, 47, 162, 163, 169, 187, 232
Kim M. U. 144, 154 Le Texier T. 168, 187
Kirchner T. R. 159 Lea M. 173, 174, 187, 189, 190
Kivetz Y. 256 Leach C. W. 8, 13, 202, 223, 244–247, 256, 257,
Kjos G. 45 259, 283, 284, 295, 299–302
Klandermans B. 235, 243, 248, 256, 258, 259 Lee A. 48
Klar Y. 283, 301, 304 Lee F. 119
Klarman M. J. 246, 256 Lee Y-T. 275, 301
Klein R. A. 275, 301 Leippe M. R. 121
Kluegel J. 245, 254 Lemmer G. 272, 301
Knight C. 151, 157 Leonard D. J. 287, 301
Kocher M. G. 81 Leve C. 160
Koenig K. E. F. 82 Leventoglu-Martin, S. 307
Kogan N. 84 Levin S. 214–216, 224, 226, 305
Köhler O. 133, 135, 157 Levine J. M. 31–33, 44, 47, 48
Kohles J. C. 103, 118 Levine M. 174, 175, 178, 187, 188, 222, 298
Konecni V. 45 LeVine R. A. 194, 224
Koomen W. 229, 256 Levine S. 225
Kortekaas P. 12 Levinger G. 156
Name Index 317
Levinson D. J. 221 Manning R. 174, 188

Lewicki R. 34, 47 Manstead A. S. R. 80, 81, 186, 298
Lewin K. 1, 13, 15, 16, 41, 47, 63, 81 Marquart D. I. 127, 131, 158
Lewis H. B. 284, 301 Marques J. M. 67, 68, 78, 80, 81
Lewis P. 163, 188 Martens V. 306
Leyens J-P. 81, 204, 224 Martin B. 126, 157
Lickel B. 15, 27, 47, 256, 284, 301 Martin P. Y. 120,
Liebkind K. 271, 289, 301, 303 Martin R. 83, 86, 88, 91, 95, 96, 120
Lightbown N. 44 Martin W. 37, 46
Limbert W. M. 121 Marturano A. 104, 120
Lin H-Y. 83 Masser B. M. 80, 120
Linton R. 303 Matera C. 292, 296, 298, 301
Linville, P. 26, 27, 44 Matsui T. 139, 158
Lippitt R. 105 Mathewson G. 34, 46
Liu J. H. 214, 216, 223, 226 Matthews A. 12, 221
Livingston R. W. 221 Mavor K. I. 218, 224, 259
Livingstone A. 190 Mayseless O. 121
Livitian I. 223, 287, 302, 304 Mazziotta A. 276, 282, 301
Lolliot S. 296, 298 McAlister A. 271, 301
Lorge I. 127, 130, 134, 158 McAuliffe B. J. 56, 81
Lott A. J. 37, 47, 63, 81 McBride D. 48
Lott. B.E. 37, 47, 63, 81 McConahay J. B. 245, 257
Loughnan S. 204, 224 McDonald M. M. 275, 301
Louis W. R. 224, 255 McDougall W. 3, 13
Lowry P. B. 172, 188 McFarland S. 218, 224
Lu L. 75, 81 McGarty C. 22, 46, 47, 119, 259, 284, 302
Lubensky M. E. 239, 248–250, 255, 260, 278, 306 McGhee D. E. 223
Luhan W. J. 71, 81 McGonigle T. 119
Lundgren S. 123 McGrath, J. 42, 47
Luzzini J. 45 McGuire C. V. 13, 160
Lyons E. 302 McGuire W. J. 7, 13
McIntosh P. 244, 257
m Mclaughlin-Volpe T. 306
Maass A. 91, 93, 118, 120–122, 245, 257 McLeod P. L. 81
MacDonald M. 235, 257 McNeill A. 286, 287, 298, 302
Machin S. 278, 300 McPartland T. S. 9, 13, 33
Mackie D. M. 8, 13, 76, 81, 94, 120, 202, 224, 232, McRae A. V. 231, 254
257, 283, 295, 301 Mead G. H. 3, 13
Maculan V. 302 Meek D. 157
Magee J. 22, 47 Meertens R. W. 245, 257
Maimer A. T. 13 Meeussen L. 298
Malečková J. 229, 256 Meleady R. 156
Malle B. F. 225 Merei F. 109, 120
Mann J. 45, 299 Merton R. K. 2, 13
Mann L. 60, 81 Mesmer-Magnus J. R. 75, 81
318 Name Index
Messé L. A. 135, 156, 158 Murnane T. 224

Meyer G. 12 Murrell A. 45, 299
Miles E. 274, 275, 302 Myers D. G. 39, 48, 71, 72, 82
Miles R. 207, 224
Milgram S. 60, 61, 81, 82, 169, 188, 203, 224, 246, n
257 Nadler A. 183, 184, 187, 188, 280, 281, 285, 287,
Miller A. 228, 257 301, 302, 304
Miller C. T. 189 Naffrechoux M. 121
Miller D. L. 284, 304 Nakano T. 188
Miller Norman, 264–267, 278, 296, 297, 299 Napier J. L. 223
Miller N. E. 45, 231, 255, 257, 302 NatCen. 82
Mills, J. 34, 43 Nemeth C. J. 92, 97–99, 121
Mintz A. 231, 257 Neuberg S. L. 202, 221
Miranda D. 186 Neville F. 163, 188
Miron A. M. 69, 82 Newbigin C. A. 221
Misumi J. 122 Newburn T. 188
Mladinic A. 208, 222 Newcomb T. M. 38, 48, 52, 58, 82, 186
Moede W. 125, 158 Newman B. 83
Moghaddam F. M. 260 Nguyen A-M. T. D. 289, 302
Moise L. C. 297 Nida S. 174, 175, 187
Mojzisch A. 145, 158, 159 Niedenthal P. 32, 48
Montada L. 247, 257 Nier J. A. 178, 188
Montanari J. R. 145, 158 Nijstad B. A. 130, 158
Monteil J-M. 126, 158 Nikolajuk K. 301
Monteiro M. B. 299 Noack P. 299
Moore J. 85, 118 Noor M. 190, 285, 302
Moore M. J. 172, 188 Norenzayan A. 156
Moorehead G. 145, 158 Norris F. H. 146, 158
Moreland R. L. 31–33, 44, 47, 48, 159 Nosek B. A. 323
Mori K. 60, 82 Novak R. 48
Morris C. G. 132, 156 Novelli D. 155, 186
Morrison B. E. 48 Nowak A. 93, 121
Moscovici S. 71, 82, 85–88, 92, 94, 98, 110, 120, Nuttin J. 82, 122
212, 224
Moskowitz G. B. 118 o
Mosso C. 223 Oakes P. J. 7, 13, 14, 20, 27, 46, 48, 49, 83, 122, 223
Movahedi S. 168, 186 Olson J. M. 211, 224
Moya M. 221 O’Neill A. 302
Mucchi-Faina A. 98, 121 Onglatco M.U. 158
Mughal U. 152, 158 Oppes T. 81
Mugny G. 92, 121 Orina M. 45
Mullen B. 69, 82, 128, 158, 210 Ortiz D. J. 230, 258
Muller E. N. 229, 256 Osborn A. F. 128, 158
Mummendey A. 24, 25, 47, 48 Osborn K. A. 135, 138, 158
Munniksma A. 271, 302 Osgood D. 226
Name Index 319
Ostrom T. M. 26, 48, 154 Phinney J. S. 289, 296, 303

Oswald D. L. 284, 300 Phua J. 52, 63, 82
Otten S. 25, 47 Piccolo R. F. 103, 120
Ouelette J. A. 123 Piebinga L. 221
Ouwerkerk J. K. 12 Piontkowski U. 291, 292, 303, 304
Owe E. 12 Pippin G. M. 258
Platow M. J. 12, 111, 113, 119, 121, 196, 223, 225
p Pollozek F. 186
Paez D. 303 Polycarpou M. P. 296
Pagotto L. 270, 302 Pommer S. 47
Paladino M. P. 44 Porat R. 300
Paluck E. L. 273, 274, 279, 302 Pratkanis A. R. 29, 30, 43, 46, 48, 145, 158, 162,
Paolini S. 271, 276, 296, 299, 300, 302 165, 166, 173, 185, 189, 190, 259
Park S. 125, 158 Pratto F. 9, 13, 208, 212–215, 217, 218, 225, 226,
Pastorelli C. 221 258, 304
Paterson J. L. 9, 13, 202, 224, 225, 262, 271, 272, Prentice-Dunn S. 162–164, 169, 189
280, 297, 303 Prins K. S. 305
Pavelchek M. 32, 48 Prislin R. 88, 89, 118, 121
Paulus P. B. 130, 131, 158 Probasco P. 160
Peckham V. 156 Pruitt D. G. 71, 72, 83
Pederson A. 256, 257, 296, 302 Putnam R. 150, 159, 277, 303
Pehrson S. 8, 10, 13, 116, 121, 180, 188, 189, 216,
225, 245, 257, 302, 303 q
Penny R. 22, 47 Quattrone S. 26, 47, 48
Penrod S. 92, 93, 122 Quillian L. 277, 303
Peomerantz J. 47
Pepitone A. 186 r
Perez J. A. 87, 88, 121 Rabbie J. M. 13, 15–17, 23, 24, 46, 48
Perlmutter H. V. 128, 158, Raijman R. 304
Perreault S. 297 Ramiah A. A. 304
Peterson M. 122 Randsley de Moura G. 78, 80, 156
Peterson R. S. 145, 160 Rank S. 119
Petley R. 297 Rath R. 225
Pettigrew T. F. 10, 13, 27, 49, 193, 225, 229, 230, Ratliff K. A. 301
245, 257–259, 262, 266–269, 271, 275, 295, 303, Raven B. 100, 101, 115, 119
306 Rebelo M. 299
Petty R. E. 95, 121, 132, 134, 156 Redfield R. 288, 303
Petzel T. 70, 83 Reed M. B. 55, 56
Pew, 278, 303 Reicher S. D. 7, 8, 12, 13, 31, 43, 45, 48, 114, 119,
Pfafferott I. 292, 303 121, 122, 155, 157, 162–164, 166–171, 173, 179,
Pfefferbaum B. 158 180, 183, 185–190, 201, 203, 207, 222, 223, 225,
Phalet K. 296, 298 235, 236, 251, 252, 255, 257, 258, 298
Philippot P. 287 Reid F. J. M. 82
Phillips S. 226 Reid S. 76
Philpot C. R. 300, 303 Restle F. 142, 155
320 Name Index
Reynolds K. J. 215, 216, 221, 226, 258 Sanders G. S. 72, 82

Rice R. W. 108, 122 Sanford R. M. 211
Rimé B. 280, 282, 300, 303 Sani F. 114, 122, 150, 159
Ringelmann M. 126, 130, 131, 133, 159 Sanna L. J. 126, 159
Rissman A. K. 155, 157 Sarlet M. 222
Roccas S. 234, 304 Sasaki S. J. 306
Rodgers H. L. 83 Saucier D. A. 183, 189
Rodin J. 151, 157, 159 Sayette M. A. 148, 159
Roediger D. 207, 225 Schachter S. 36, 37, 45, 48, 66, 67, 80, 82, 86, 122
Rogers J. 121 Schaefer R. 24, 43
Rogers R. W. 162–164, 169, 189 Schlenker B. 35, 48
Rogier A. 244, 260 Schmader T. 256, 301
Rohmann A. 292, 293, 301, 303, 304 Schmälzle K. 119
Rohrer J. H. 58, 82 Schmid K. 278, 279, 298, 304
Rokeach M. 192, 225 Schmitt M. T. 215, 216, 225
Romer D. 189 Schneider A. 247, 257
Roper G. 72, 79 Schot J. 48
Ropp S. A. 306 Schreiber M. 190
Roseman I. J. 234, 255 Schriesheim C. A. 108, 122
Rosenbaum M. E. 18, 48, 82 Schulz-Hardt S. 145, 158, 159
Ross M. 297 Schumann K. 297
Rothberger H. 160 Schuurman M. 118
Rubin M. 208, 211, 225, 299, 302 Schwar G. 254
Rubini M. 256 Schwartz J. L.K. 223
Rudman L. 210, 222 Schwartz S. H. 61, 82
Rudmin F. 289, 304 Schwenk C. R. 99, 122
Ruiter S. 296 Seago D. W. 198, 225
Runciman W. G. 229, 258 Seaman F. J. 122
Rutkowski G. K. 175, 189 Sears D. O. 245, 258
Rutland A. 272, 297, 299 Sears R. R. 231, 256
Ryan C. 27, 48, 180, 189 Sechrest L. 160
Semin G. 71, 82
s Semyonov M. 277, 278, 304
Saab R. 247, 248, 258 Senecal S. 297
Saavedra R. 98, 123 Seredio R. G. 81
Sacchi S. 44 Setälä M. 80
Sachdev I. 24, 44, 48 Shaw Marjorie E. 127, 129, 130, 134, 159
Sachet D. E. 254 Shaw Marvin E. 132, 134, 159
Saguy T. 248, 249, 259, 278, 285, 298, 302, 304, Sherif C. W. 2, 13, 52, 56–58, 78, 83, 193
305 Sherif M. 2–4, 13, 39, 48, 52–54, 56, 58, 59, 62,
Sakalli-Ugurlu N. 222 71, 72, 78, 83, 193, 195, 196, 200, 206, 225, 262,
Sakhel K. 189 275, 304
Salas E. 158 Sherman D. K. 46, 80
Salovey P. 47 Sherman J. 121
Sam D. L. 296 Sibley C. G. 216, 218, 219, 222, 224–226
Name Index 321
Sidanius J. 9, 13, 208, 212–215, 217, 224–226, Steinel W. 123

305 Steiner I. D. 128, 130–133, 145, 159
Siegel A. E. 53, 83 Stellmacher J. 70, 83, 303
Siegel S. 53, 83 Stelzl M. 219, 221
Silver E. C. 158 Stephan C. 154, 266, 268, 269, 304
Simon B. 7, 8, 13, 27, 48, 49, 232, 235, 248, 258, Stephan W. G. 266, 268, 269, 304
279, 304 Stephenson G. M. 71, 83, 128, 159
Sinclair S. 305 Stevens S. P. 158
Singh R. 108, 122 Stewart D. D. 75, 83
Siponen M. 188 Stogdill R. M. 104, 106, 122
Sirlopú D. 299 Stoner J. A. F. 70, 71, 83
Skogsberg N. J. 158 Stotland E. 50
Sleebos E. 119 Stott C. 31, 49, 155, 162, 163, 170, 171, 186, 189,
Slugoski B. 297 190, 255
Small E. 46 Stouffer S. A. 229, 258
Smeekes A. 244, 258 Stratenwerth I. 49
Smith A. 44 Stroebe W. 22, 45, 130, 134, 135, 155, 158, 159
Smith H. 123, 229, 230, 258 Strube M. J. 108, 122, 125, 159
Smith C. 82 Sturmer S. 186, 232, 258
Smith E. R. 8, 13, 14, 202, 224, 226, 232, 257, 258, Subasic E. 248, 258
283, 295, 301, 304 Suchman E. A. 258
Smith J. R. 55, 83, 120 Suda T. 188
Smith P. B. 9, 14, 60, 61, 79, 83, 106, 122 Sulloway F. J. 223
Smith P. M. 49 Sumiga L. 76, 82
Smith R. 245, 254 Sumner W. 39, 49
Smith T. 144, 155 Sunderland J. 33, 46
Snider N. 257 Sunshine J. 116, 122
Sniderman P. M. 196, 226 Sunstein C. R. 73, 83
Snyder C. R. 9, 14 Sussmann M. 155
Snyder M. 186 Sutter M. 81
Solomon H. 130, 134, 158 Svensson A. 81
Somech A. 139, 155 Swaab R. 43
Spangler W.D. 120 Swander D. V. 82
Spears R. 12, 13, 48, 80, 81, 158, 162, 166, 169, Swart H. 269, 304
174, 185–187, 189, 190, 258, 259, 298 Swim J. K. 284, 304
Spence K. W. 125, 159 Szamrej J. 121
Spencer S. J. 160 Szymanski K. 131, 132, 136, 159
Spielman D. 24, 49
Stagner R. 231, 258 t
Stallworth L. M. 225 Tabri N. 283, 306
Stark T. H. 302 Tajfel H. 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 14, 18, 22, 22–24, 33, 34, 43,
Stasser G. 74, 75, 78, 83, 140, 145, 146, 159 44, 49, 136, 159, 200, 210, 212, 226, 235, 236,
Stathi S. 262, 305 239, 242, 258, 259, 265–267, 283, 304
Staub E. 203, 204, 226, 280, 304 Takala T. 103, 122
Stefanile C. 296, 301 Tam T. 305
322 Name Index
Tamir M. 300 Tversky A. 89, 122

Tanford S. 92, 93, 122 Tyler J. 49
Tangney J. P. 284, 305 Tyler T. R. 112, 116, 118, 122, 123
Tanttu S. 122
Tata J. 67, 83 u
Täuber S. 183, 190 Ullrich J. 283, 304
Tauer J. M. 138, 160 Umberson D. 156
Tausch N. 234, 239, 250, 253, 258, 259, 267, 268, UNHCR 305
278, 298, 304, 305
Taylor D. M. 39, 49, 237, 260 v
Taylor D. W. 128, 160 Vaes J. 224
Taylor L. A. 83, 159 Valdesolo P. 69, 83
Taylor M. 188 van Bavel J. 187
Taylor M. C. 245, 259 van den Heuvel H. 255
Taylor P. 191, 226 Van der Toorn J. 223, 256
Taylor P. J. 188 van der Zee K. 46
Teger A. I. 71, 72, 83 van Dijke M. 112, 113
Tepper B. J. 122 van Dyne L. 98, 123
Terry D. J. 54, 56, 78, 80, 83 van Gennep A. 34, 46
Tetlock P. E. 144, 160, 211, 221 van Hiel A. 276, 298
Tetrault L. A. 122 van Kleef G. A. 113, 123
Tewari S. 147, 148, 160 van Knippenberg A. 65, 76, 84, 255
Thomae M. 298 van Knippenberg D. 19, 121, 123
Thomas E. F. 247, 248, 259 van Laar C. 226, 255, 268, 305
Thorne A. 12 van Leeuwen E. 183, 190
Tiedens L. 22, 47 van Maanen J. 34, 47
Tindale S. 43 van Oudenhoven J. P. 265, 292, 305
Tip L. 298 van Stekelenburg J. 243, 256, 259
Titus W. 74, 75, 78, 83, 125, 126, 145, 154, 159 van Zomeren M. 13, 230, 233, 235, 243, 250, 259,
Travaglino G. A. 78 283, 305
Tredoux C. 255, 295 Vandello J. A. 79
Triandis H. C. 61, 83, 138, 160 Vedder P. 296, 303
Triplett N. 125, 133, 160 Verkuyten M. 7, 14, 244, 258, 302
Trommsdorff G. 157 Verschueren K. 298
Tropp L. R. 262, 268, 269, 275, 295, 299, 300, 303 Vezzali L. 262, 272, 275, 305
Trost M. R. 90, 122 Vianello M. 301
Tuan M. 245, 254 Vignoles V. L. 12–14, 83, 180, 189, 299, 303
Turner J. C. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12–14, 19, 20, 24, 25, Viki G. T. 205, 220, 226
27, 33, 34, 40, 44, 46, 48, 49, 54, 65, 69, 75, 76, 83, Vinokur A. 72, 73, 75, 79, 84, 144, 160
84, 91, 101, 110, 118, 122, 136, 159, 167, 190, Virtanen A. 122
210, 215, 216, 223, 226, 232, 235, 239, 242, 254, Voci A. 43, 269, 300, 302, 304–306
258, 259, 267, 283, 304 Vohs K. D. 154, 296
Turner M. E. 144, 160 Vollebergh W. 242, 259
Turner P. J. 49 Vollhardt J. R. 273, 285, 286, 296, 298, 306
Turner R. 46, 262, 271, 272, 274, 275, 298, 305 Volpato C. 121
Name Index 323
Vonofakou C. 269, 305, 306 Wolbert A. 190

Vorauer J. 270, 306 Wolf C. 226
Wolf S. 92, 93, 120, 123
w Wolfe D. 50
Wachtler J. 97, 121 Wolpert I. 189
Wade G. S. 159 Wood G. 47
Wagner C. 222 Wood W. 88, 123
Wagner U. 241, 253, 272, 277, 279, 296, 301, 303, Worchel S. 39, 50, 136, 160, 262, 306
306 Wortman P. M. 160
Wakefield J. R. H. 159, 180, 184, 190, 244, 259 Woycke J. 120
Walker I. 229, 230, 259 Wright M. F. 172, 190
Walkley R. P. 306 Wright S. C. 209, 221, 228, 237, 239, 241, 248,
Wallach M. A. 70, 84 249, 250, 253, 255, 259, 260, 270, 271, 278, 301,
Walters M. A. 13, 224, 225, 303 306
Walton G. M. 149, 160
Wang C. 188 x
Wan C. 46 Xu J. 222
Ward C. W. 289, 306
Warwick D. P. 82 y
Waytz A. 224 Yallop D. A. 87, 123
Weber B. 135, 160 Ybarra G. J. 173, 190
West K. 275, 305 Yee M. 39, 50
West M. A. 98, 118 Young S. 224
West S. 231, 256 Yuan Y. C. 81
Wetherell M. S. 75, 78, 84 Yuker H. E. 128, 160
White B. J. 225 Yzerbyt V. 44, 81, 244, 260, 30, 303
White K. M. 83
White R. 105, 187 z
Widmeyer W. 44 Zagefka H. 182, 188, 190, 242, 254, 260, 289, 291,
Wieczorkowska G. 47 292, 295, 297, 303, 306, 307
Wilder D. A. 65, 79, 84 Zaiser E. 287, 307
Wilhelmy R. A. 86 Zajonc R. B. 97, 123, 125, 126, 160
Wilke H. 65, 76, 84, 255 Zander A. 1, 12, 18, 33, 50
Wilkes A. 22, 49 Zavalloni M. 71, 82
Williams K. D. 132–135, 138, 157, 160 Zebel S. 13
Williams M. J. 222 Zeineddine F. B. 257, 301
Williams R. M. 268, 306 Zhang J. 188
Wilner D. M. 263, 306 Zick A. 193, 226
Witte E. 133, 160 Zimbardo P. G. 146, 160, 162, 163, 164, 166–170,
Wittenbraker J. 44 172, 186, 187, 190
Wohl M. J. A. 283, 285–287, 297, 300 Zimmerman A. G. 173, 190
325
Subject Index
a c
acculturation 288–291 categorisation,
culture adoption 288 category accessibility 7, 20
culture maintenance 288 category assimilation 26–28
desire for contact 288 differentiation 22–23
fit 291–294 category fit 20
intergroup relations 291–294 category, rhetorical use of 30–31
preference 289–291 social categorisation 19–31, 91
aggression 161–174, 230–235; see also cautious shift, see polarisation
frustration-aggression hypothesis charisma 102–105
online aggression 172–174 cognitive dissonance theory 35–36, 40
ambivalent prejudice see prejudice, see also sexism cohesion 33, 36–41
anger 201–203, 228–235 collective action 248–252
anti-immigrant sentiment 204, 206, collective guilt 246–248, 283–284
278 collectivism see individualism
authoritarianism 70 common fate 16–17, 20, 181; see also
authoritarian personality 192–193 interdependence of fate
right-wing authoritarianism 70, 218–219, common ingroup identity model 264–267
267–268 conflict 191–219; see also intergroup conflict
autokinetic effect 53–54, 58, 62 conflicting group interests, see realistic group
autonomy oriented helping, see dependency conflict theory
oriented helping conformity, see social influence
contact 239, 248–250, 262–279, 288
b contact hypothesis 262–268
BBC prison study 168–169, 236 imagined contact 274–275
Bennington College 38, 52–53, 58 indirect contact 270–275
black sheep effect 67–69 extended contact 270–271
brainstorming 128, 130–131, 136; see also vicarious contact 271–274
productivity contingency model, see leadership
bystander effect 174–176; see also helping crowd behavior 161–172
behaviour cultural assimilation 288, 292
326 Subject Index
d group environment questionnaire 37

decategorisation 263–268 group formation 15–22
decision-making 140–146 group identification 6–11
dehumanisation 203–205 group joining 31–36
deindividuation 161–171 group norms, see norms
dependency oriented helping 183 group salience 4–9
deviance 65–70, see also dissent group mind 3
discrimination; see also prejudice groupthink 99, 142–146
intergroup discrimination 23–26, 212 guilt 283–284
consensual discrimination 207–208
disgust 201–203, 283 h
displacement 231–232 hate crime 278
divide and rule 206–207 health 150–152
dual identities, see identity helping behaviour 174–184; see also bystander
effect
e outgroup helping 182–184
egoistic deprivation, see relative deprivation hidden profiles paradigm 74–75
elaboration likelihood model (ESIM), 95, 171–172; hierarchy 206–219
see also crowd behaviour homogeneity
emotion 268–270; see also intergroup emotions intragroup homogeneity 26–28
empathy 269–270 outgroup homogeneity 26–28
entitativity 19–22, 27–30 outgroup homogeneity effect 26–28
equal/inequality 191–219 hostile sexism see sexism
f i
fairness identity
distributive 116 common 147, 285–286
procedural 116 definition 6–8
favouritism, see ingroup favouritism; outgroup personal identity 4–6
favouritism salience 4–9
fear 201–203 social identity 1, 6–11, 55–56, 75–76, 283
forgiveness 285–287 social identity theory 8–9, 235–248
fraternalistic deprivation, see relative deprivation threats to identity 237–239
frustration-aggression hypothesis 231–235 bicultural (dual) identity 267, 272, 290
idiosyncrasy credits, see leadership
g illegitimate status differences see legitimacy
Gacaca trials 279–281 image theory 201
generalisation 267 imagined contact, see contact
group implicit association test 210–211
definition 1–2 individual deprivation, see relative deprivation
group bias, see prejudice, ingroup favouritism individual-group relationship 2–6; see also
group cohesion 33, 36–41 interpersonal-intergroup continuum
group deficit 128–133 individual mobility 236–239, 249
group deprivation, see relative deprivation individualism,
group distinctiveness 8–10, 242 individualism-collectivism 138–140
Subject Index 327
inequality 191–219 charismatic leadership 102–105

infrahumanisation 203–205 coercive leadership 100
ingroup contingency theory of 106–108
ingroup favouritism/bias 16–17, 69 democratic 105
ingroup homogeneity, see homogeneity entrepreneurs/embedders 113–115
initiation ceremonies 34–36 ‘great man’ theory of 103–105
innovation in groups 85–117 idiosyncrasy credits 109–110
institutional support 263 laissez-faire 105
integration 288, 292 leader-member exchange theory 102
interaction process analysis 41–42 new psychology of leadership 113–115
interdependence 15–19, 193–194 prototypicality 110–112
negative interdependence 17; see also transactional 102–105
intergroup competition transformational 102–105
positive interdependence 17; see also Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) scale 106–108
intergroup co-operation legitimacy 210–212
interdependence of fate 16–17 legitimising myths 212–213
task interdependence 17–19
intergroup m
intergroup anxiety 269–270 majority influence, see social influence
intergroup assimilation 22–23 marginalisation 288, 292
intergroup comparison 8, 235, 240–243; meta-contrast ratio 20–21
see also relative deprivation minimal group paradigm 23–26
intergroup competition 191–200 minority influence, see social influence
intergroup conflict 191–218 morality of groups 161–184
intergroup contact, see contact motivation gains, see productivity, social labouring
intergroup cooperation 196, motivation losses, see productivity, social loafing
intergroup differentiation 22–23 multiculturalism 287–294
intergroup discrimination, see discrimination multifactor leadership questionnaire (MLQ), 103
intergroup emotions 201–203, 232–234, multilevel analysis 10, 291, 293–294
283–287
n
intergroup sensitivity 69–70
negative interdependence see interdependence
interpersonal-intergroup continuum 4–6,
norms 51–58, 161, 169–171
265–267
individual functions 53–55
Islamophobia 278
latitude of acceptance 56–57
social functions 55–56
j
stability 56–58
J-curve hypothesis 228, 242
o
k opinion shifts, see polarisation
Köhler effect 134–140; see also productivity oppression 206–219
outgroup favouritism 210–212
l
Leadership 100–116 p
Authority 115–116 paternalism; see benevolent sexism
Autocratic 105 permeability 236–239
328 Subject Index
persuasive arguments theory 72–75; see also self-esteem 33, 240

polarisation self-stereotyping 54
perspective-taking 270, 273 separation 288, 292
polarisation 70–77 sexism 208–210; see also prejudice
positive–negative asymmetry effect 25–26, ambivalent sexism 208–210
275–277 benevolent sexism 240–241
power 100–102 hostile sexism 208–209, 240–241
prejudice 57, 231, 278 shame 283–284
ambivalent prejudice 208–210 social action 1, 6–11
prejudice reduction 262–279 social capital 277
privilege 246–248, 283–284 social change 227–252
process gains 129–133; see also productivity social comparisons 72, 229; see also integroup
process losses 129–133; see also productivity comparisons
productivity 125–140 dimensions of comparison 240–242
actual 127, 128–133 downward comparisons 242
potential 127, 128–133 social comparison theory 62–67, 72
pseudo-groups, see statisticized groups social conflict, see intergroup conflict
social competition 243
q social context 1, 6–11
queen bee effect 238–239, 241 social creativity 239–243
social cure 146–152
r social decision schemes 140–142
realistic group conflict theory 192–201, 206–208 social dominance
rebellion 227–252 orientation 213–216
recategorisation 263–268 theory 212–219, 235
reconciliation 279–287 social facilitation 125–126; see also productivity
needs based model 280–282, 285 social identity model of deindividuation effects
relative deprivation 228–230 (SIDE), 169–171, 173–174
egoistic (individual) deprivation vs fraternal social impact theory 92–93, 132, 137
(group) deprivation 228–230 social influence
theory 228–230 latent influence 88, 91
temporal deprivation 228 majority influence 59–65
resentment 244–246 manifest influence 88, 91
resilience 146–150 minority influence 85–100
right-wing authoritarianism, see authoritarianism social identity, see identity
Ringelmann effect 126–128; see also productivity social identity theory see identity
RWA, see authoritarianism social labouring 132, 133–140; see also
productivity
s social loafing 132; see also productivity
salience see category salience social mobility, see permeability
scapegoat theory, see frustration-aggression socio-emotional orientation 41–42; see also
hypothesis leadership
secondary transfer effect 267–268 solidarity 178–182
self-categorisation theory 10–11, 19, 32, 54, of the advantaged 243–244
75–76, 91, 110–112 Stanford Prison experiment 166–169
Subject Index 329
statisticised groups 127 tokenism 237

status quo (rejection of ), 228–235 typicality 267
stereotypes 198–202
stereotype content model 200–201 u
Summer Camp studies 39, 193–197, 206–207 unresponsive bystanders, see bystander effect
superordinate goals 196; see also positive
interdependence v
system justification theory 210–212, 235 victimhood 285–287
violence, see aggression
t
task orientation 41–42; see also leadership w
temporal deprivation see relative deprivation well-being 150–152, 288–291

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Group Processes

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Group Processes

Dynamics within and Between Groups

Rupert Brown and Sam Pehrson

Cover image: Werner Bischot / Magnum photos

1 The Reality of Groups 1

2 Group Formation and Other Elementary Group Processes 15

3 Reaching Agreement in Groups 51

4 Innovation and Change in Groups 85

5 The Effectiveness of Groups 124

Group Decision-Making 140

6 The Morality of Groups 161

7 Conflict and Inequality 191

Social Dominance Orientation 213

8 Rebellion and Social Change 227

9 Bringing Groups Together 261

Name Index 309

The Reality of Groups

The Individual–Group Relationship

There is no psychology of groups which is not essentially and entirely a psychology of

The Interpersonal-Group Continuum

3 Of course, women can have a social identity too!

Group Formation and Other Elementary Group Processes

All in the Same Boat: Interdependence of Fate

it is not similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but interdependence

Working with Others: Task Interdependence

100% positive 80%/20% 50%/50% 20%/80% 100% negative

Productivity (# of blocks) 110.5 84.5 88.4 75.6 69.0

From Individuals to a Group: Entitativity

Cognitive representation Two-group One-group Separate individuals

Two groups 80.0 21.7 16.7

Us and Them: Intergroup Differentiation and Intragroup Assimilation

Figure 2.1 Stimuli that are categorised may be subject to estimation

Table 2.3 Two sample matrices from minimal group paradigm

44 Figure 2.2 Perceived intragroup variability in

themselves as members of a group as a consequence of a short period of interacting with others on a

Joining and Interacting in Groups: Some Elementary Group Processes

Figure 2.4 Effects of severity of initiation on the

permission of American Psychological

Painful experience seen Painful experience

From Getting Together to Sticking Together: Group Cohesion

What Goes on in Groups? Achieving the Task and Maintaining Relationships

Deutsch, M. (1949a). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations 2: 129–152.

Reaching Agreement in Groups

The Acquisition and Development of Group Norms

The Acquisition of Group Norms

Why People need Norms: Individual Functions of Group Norms

Why Groups need Norms: Social Functions of Norms

Stability and Change

The Power of the Majority

The Pervasiveness of Conformity

Why do People Conform?

Standing Out from the Crowd: On being a Deviate

5–15 15–25 25–35 35–45

Going to Extremes: Reaching Decisions in Groups

Explanations of Group Polarisation

Condition +(p) −(n) +(p) −(n) +(p) −(n)

Candidate chosen (%)

Individual preferences (prior to discussion) Shared 67 17 17

Concluding Remarks on Group Polarisation

Innovation and Change in Groups

Majority–Minority Influence is a Dynamic Process

Two Influence Processes or One?

Table 4.1 Minority influence can generate greater creativity

Correct Wrong Correct Wrong Control