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The instrumental use of group prototypicality judgments
[journal article]
Abstract 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,... view more
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 1 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. [author's abstract]... view less
Classification
Social Psychology
Free Keywords
Group prototypicality; Ingroup projection; Instrumental; Social identity; Self-categorization; Independence
Document language
English
Publication Year
2008
Page/Pages
p. 1425-1435
Journal
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44 (2008) 6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.05.007
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
PEER Licence Agreement (applicable only to documents from PEER project)