Abstract
As we belong to a host of groups, we have a multitude of social identities that are interdependent. Social identity complexity refers to the degree of overlap between cross-cutting group memberships while social identity inclusiveness to the range of people a person identifies with through shared group membership. In this paper, we explored the relationship between the complexity and inclusiveness of social identity, and feelings toward ethnic/religious in-groups, as well as feelings toward out-group members. The research was conducted in two cities in Serbia: Belgrade and Novi Pazar (N = 178; average age 23), allowing for comparisons between young Serbs and Bosniaks, who belonged to the groups with a recent history of conflict. We found that social identity complexity was unrelated, whilst social identity inclusiveness was systematically and positively related to more positive feelings toward religious and ethnic out-groups. This effect was significant across different ethnic groups (Serbs and Bosniaks) and local contexts (Belgrade and Novi Pazar). Both social identity complexity and inclusiveness were unrelated to emotions toward members of the own group. We related these results with the existing data on the social identity structure and intergroup relations, and discussed the importance of inclusive identities for building tolerant societies.
Highlights
As we belong to a host of groups, we have a multitude of social identities that are interdependent
We explored the constellations of three types of social identities: (1) ethnic (2) religious and (3) national among young Serbian citizens living in ethnically homogeneous (Belgrade) and heterogeneous (Novi Pazar) environments, and measured their feelings toward ethnic and religious in-group and out-group members
We could observe that “warmer” feelings are expectedly expressed towards the members of one’s own ethnic and religious group: the participants of Serbian ethnicity expressed more positive feelings toward Orthodox Christians and Serbs than toward Muslims and Bosniaks; the opposite is true for the participants of Bosniak ethnicity
Summary
As we belong to a host of groups, we have a multitude of social identities that are interdependent. We found that social identity complexity was unrelated, whilst social identity inclusiveness was systematically and positively related to more positive feelings toward religious and ethnic out-groups This effect was significant across different ethnic groups (Serbs and Bosniaks) and local contexts (Belgrade and Novi Pazar). Both social identity complexity and inclusiveness were unrelated to emotions toward members of the own group. SII refers to how inclusively or exclusively one defines their in-group from the combination of different potential social identities (van Dommelen, 2011, 2014; van Dommelen, Schmid, Hewstone, Gonsalkorale, & Brewer, 2015) It is commonly explained as a range of people with a different combination of group memberships which a person identifies with. Such exclusive social identity is likely to be accompanied by the perception that any individual who is an out-group member on one dimension is an out-group on all the others
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