Abstract
Empirical findings suggest that members of socially disadvantaged groups who join a better-valued group through individual achievement tend to express low concern for their disadvantaged ingroup (e.g., denial of collective discrimination, low intent to initiate collective action). In the present research, we investigated whether this tendency occurs solely for individuals who have already engaged in social mobility, or also for individuals who psychologically prepare themselves, that is ‘anticipate’, social mobility. Moreover, we examined the role of group identification in this process. In two studies, we looked at the case of ‘frontier workers’, that is people who cross a national border every day to work in another country where the salaries are higher thereby achieving a better socio-economic status than in their home-country. Study 1 (N = 176) examined attitudes of French nationals (both the socially mobile and the non-mobile) and of Swiss nationals toward the non-mobile group. As expected, results showed that the mobile French had more negative attitudes than their non-mobile counterparts, but less negative attitudes than the Swiss. In Study 2 (N = 216), we examined ingroup concern at different stages of the social mobility process by comparing the attitudes of French people who worked in Switzerland (mobile individuals), with those who envisioned (anticipators), or not (non-anticipators), to work in Switzerland. The findings revealed that anticipators’ motivation to get personally involved in collective action for their French ingroup was lower than the non-anticipators’, but higher than the mobile individuals’. Moreover, we found that the decrease in ingroup concern across the different stages of social mobility was accounted for by a lower identification with the inherited ingroup. These findings corroborate the deleterious impact of social mobility on attitudes toward a low-status ingroup, and show that the decrease in ingroup concern already occurs among individuals who anticipate moving up the hierarchy. The discussion focuses on the role of the discounting of inherited identities in both the anticipation and the achievement of a higher-status identity.
Highlights
Individuals are members of inherited social groups defined, for instance, by their gender, ethnicity, or age
Consistent with Hypothesis 1, Swiss participants reported lower concern and lower motivation to get personally involved in social action for the French working in border regions of Switzerland, compared to the French working in these regions themselves
As discussed in the Introduction, we argue that this attitudinal difference between French mobile and Swiss participants may have been due to a motivation of Swiss participants to maintain their distinctiveness, potentially threatened by the arrival of mobile individuals
Summary
Individuals are members of inherited social groups defined, for instance, by their gender, ethnicity, or age. They belong simultaneously to more malleable categories qualified by their educational and professional achievements. The present work is interested in how individuals cope with such multiple group memberships, in particular when these memberships are associated with different value and prestige (i.e., social status). We first consider how they cope with the contradicting demands arising from such multiple group memberships, by investigating their concern for the inherited low-status group members who did not achieve social mobility (Study 1) and more generally toward the inherited low-status ingroup (Study 2). We investigate whether the anticipation of social mobility already leads to a decreased ingroup concern
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