The instrumental use of group prototypicality judgments

Denis Sindic, Stephen D. Reicher

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Recently, Waldzus et al. [Waldzus, S., Mummendey, A., Wenzel, M., & Boettcher, F. (2004). Of bikers, teachers and Germans: Groups' diverging views about their prototypicality. British Journal of Social Psychology, 43, 385-400] have shown that ingroup members often tend to judge the ingroup as more prototypical of the superordinate group than other subgroups. In this paper, we argue that, in addition to the motivational processes that have been posited to explain this phenomenon, prototypicality judgments may vary according to instrumental considerations. In particular, those who believe their ingroup interest to be undermined by remaining part of the common group will downplay ingroup's prototypicality as a way to sustain their separatist position. In a first study (N = 63), we found that Scottish respondents who support Scottish independence judged the Scots to be less prototypical of Britain than the English, as compared with Scots who do not support independence. In a second study (N = 191), we manipulated the rhetorical context within which prototypicality judgments were made. Results showed that the pattern found in study I only applied when the issue of independence was made salient. When the issue of the importance of Scottish history in Britain was made salient, the opposite pattern appeared, i.e. supporters of independence judged the Scots more prototypical than the English compared to non-supporters. These results were also interpreted in instrumental terms. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1425-1435
Number of pages11
JournalJournal of Experimental Social Psychology
Volume44
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Nov 2008

Keywords

  • Group prototypicality
  • Ingroup projection
  • Instrumental
  • Social identity
  • Self-categorization
  • Independence
  • REALISTIC GROUP CONFLICT
  • INGROUP PROTOTYPICALITY
  • SELF-REFERENT
  • PERCEPTIONS
  • REPRESENTATIONS
  • DISCRIMINATION
  • PROJECTION
  • CONSENSUS
  • IDENTITY
  • CATEGORY

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