Group Membership, Group Change, and Intergroup Attitudes: A Recategorization Model Based on Cognitive Consistency Principles.

Jenny Roth,Vivian L Vignoles,Melanie C Steffens

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00479

Abstract

The present article introduces a model based on cognitive consistency principles to predict how new identities become integrated into the self-concept, with consequences for intergroup attitudes. The model specifies four concepts (self-concept, stereotypes, identification, and group compatibility) as associative connections. The model builds on two cognitive principles, balance–congruity and imbalance–dissonance, to predict identification with social groups that people currently belong to, belonged to in the past, or newly belong to. More precisely, the model suggests that the relative strength of self-group associations (i.e., identification) depends in part on the (in)compatibility of the different social groups. Combining insights into cognitive representation of knowledge, intergroup bias, and explicit/implicit attitude change, we further derive predictions for intergroup attitudes. We suggest that intergroup attitudes alter depending on the relative associative strength between the social groups and the self, which in turn is determined by the (in)compatibility between social groups. This model unifies existing models on the integration of social identities into the self-concept by suggesting that basic cognitive mechanisms play an important role in facilitating or hindering identity integration and thus contribute to reducing or increasing intergroup bias.

Highlights

We focus on basic cognitive processes that contribute to social identity and to intergroup attitudes
We argue that this recategorization model offers an integrative and dynamic understanding of how changing group membership affects the integration of new groups into the self-concept and intergroup attitudes
We presented a parsimonious model on how changes of group membership are reflected in cognitive representations of the self, traits, and the group’scompatibility that in turn can alter implicit and explicit intergroup bias

Summary

INTRODUCTION

We propose that explicit as well as implicit intergroup attitudes can be affected by changing group membership and that this effect depends on mentally associating groups to the knowledge structure of the self. We suggest that this process depends on cognitive consistency principles. We argue that this recategorization model offers an integrative and dynamic understanding of how changing group membership affects the integration of new groups into the self-concept and intergroup attitudes. The present model complements van Veelen et al.’s (2015) model on identification processes by adding that self-stereotyping and self-anchoring are processes leading to identification that can be understood as two mechanisms based on the balance–congruity principle

A Recategorization Model

CONCLUSION