Group-based Identities Research Articles

When Group Appeals Backfire: Explaining the Asymmetric Effects of Place-Based Appeals

Abstract Group-based identities are an important basis of political competition. Politicians consciously appeal to specific social groups, and these group-based appeals often improve the evaluation of parties and candidates. Studying place-based appeals, we advance the understanding of this strategy by distinguishing between dominant and subordinate social groups. Using two survey experiments in Germany and England, we show that group appeals improve candidate evaluation among subordinate (rural) voters. By contrast, appeals to the dominant (urban) group trigger a negative reaction. While urban citizens’ weaker local identities and lower place-based resentment partly explain this asymmetry, they mainly dislike group-based appeals because of their antagonistic nature. If the same policies are framed as benefiting urban and rural dwellers alike, candidate evaluation improves. Thus, people on the dominant side of a group divide reject a framing of politics as antagonistically structured by this divide, even if they identify with the dominant group.

Extracting intersectional stereotypes from embeddings: Developing and validating the Flexible Intersectional Stereotype Extraction procedure.

Social group-based identities intersect. The meaning of "woman" is modulated by adding social class as in "rich woman" or "poor woman." How does such intersectionality operate at-scale in everyday language? Which intersections dominate (are most frequent)? What qualities (positivity, competence, warmth) are ascribed to each intersection? In this study, we make it possible to address such questions by developing a stepwise procedure, Flexible Intersectional Stereotype Extraction (FISE), applied to word embeddings (GloVe; BERT) trained on billions of words of English Internet text, revealing insights into intersectional stereotypes. First, applying FISE to occupation stereotypes across intersections of gender, race, and class showed alignment with ground-truth data on occupation demographics, providing initial validation. Second, applying FISE to trait adjectives showed strong androcentrism (Men) and ethnocentrism (White) in dominating everyday English language (e.g. White + Men are associated with 59% of traits; Black + Women with 5%). Associated traits also revealed intersectional differences: advantaged intersectional groups, especially intersections involving Rich, had more common, positive, warm, competent, and dominant trait associates. Together, the empirical insights from FISE illustrate its utility for transparently and efficiently quantifying intersectional stereotypes in existing large text corpora, with potential to expand intersectionality research across unprecedented time and place. This project further sets up the infrastructure necessary to pursue new research on the emergent properties of intersectional identities.

Peer Network Processes in Adolescents' Health Lifestyles.

Combining theories of health lifestyles-interrelated health behaviors arising from group-based identities-with those of network and behavior change, we investigated network characteristics of health lifestyles and the role of influence and selection processes underlying these characteristics. We examined these questions in two high schools using longitudinal, complete friendship network data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Latent class analyses characterized each school's predominant health lifestyles using several health behavior domains. School-specific stochastic actor-based models evaluated the bidirectional relationship between friendship networks and health lifestyles. Predominant lifestyles remained stable within schools over time, even as individuals transitioned between lifestyles. Friends displayed greater similarity in health lifestyles than nonfriend dyads. Similarities resulted primarily from teens' selection of friends with similar lifestyles but also from teens influencing their peers' lifestyles. This study demonstrates the salience of health lifestyles for adolescent development and friendship networks.

Contributions and Challenges in Health Lifestyles Research.

The concept of health lifestyles is moving scholarship beyond individual health behaviors to integrated bundles of behaviors undergirded by group-based identities and norms. Health lifestyles research merges structure with agency, individual-level processes with group-level processes, and multifaceted behaviors with norms and identities, shedding light on why health behaviors persist or change and on the reproduction of health disparities and other social inequalities. Recent contributions have applied new methods and life course perspectives, articulating health lifestyles's dynamic relationships to social contexts and demonstrating their implications for health and development. Culturally focused work has shown how health lifestyles function as signals for status and identity and perpetuate inequalities. We synthesize literature to articulate recent advances and challenges and demonstrate how health lifestyles research can strengthen health policies and inform scholarship on inequalities. Future work emphasizing health lifestyles's collective nature and attending to upstream social structures will further elucidate complex social processes.

Gone For Good: Deindustrialization, White Voter Backlash, and US Presidential Voting

Globalization and automation have contributed to deindustrialization and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs, yielding important electoral implications across advanced democracies. Coupling insights from economic voting and social identity theory, we consider how different groups in society may construe manufacturing job losses in contrasting ways. We argue that deindustrialization threatens dominant group status, leading some white voters in affected localities to favor candidates they believe will address economic distress and defend racial hierarchy. Examining three US presidential elections, we find white voters were more likely to vote for Republican challengers where manufacturing layoffs were high, whereas Black voters in hard-hit localities were more likely to vote for Democrats. In survey data, white respondents, in contrast to people of color, associated local manufacturing job losses with obstacles to individual upward mobility and with broader American economic decline. Group-based identities help explain divergent political reactions to common economic shocks.

A gender framework for understanding health lifestyles.

A health lifestyles approach holds promise for understanding change in women's and men's health behaviors and reducing gendered health disparities. The emerging theoretical and empirical literature on health lifestyles (individuals' bundled health behaviors that are shaped by group-based identities and norms) helps elucidate complex disparities in health behaviors, but research is needed on how gender shapes the development of health lifestyles. This study proposed and assessed a dynamic multilevel framework for understanding health lifestyles that draws on insights from contemporary gender and life course scholarship. Using the transition from adolescence into adulthood as an empirical case, we analyzed US data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health; N=6605), which followed adolescents through young adulthood, collecting information on their health behaviors and social contexts. Latent class analyses showed that health lifestyles differed significantly by gender. Results supported the dynamic multilevel framework, finding more variation in health lifestyle behaviors within genders than between, high levels of change across ages, intersections of gender with age, and socioeconomic status as a structural pathway for gender's influence. Taken together, these findings suggest that conceptualizing gender as a dynamic multilevel system intersecting with other social statuses is fruitful for understanding how health lifestyles form and change. These findings can inform more effective policies to change health behaviors.

Making Sense of Changing Hats: A Study of the Nigeria, Vietnam, and Azerbaijan/Kazakhstan Projects within the Norwegian Statoil and British BP Strategic Alliance

To explore group-based identities and collective sensemaking in the context of a cross-border alliance, a qualitative exploratory study was initiated. The emphasis was on interpretation of issues, within and around an interfirm partnership and the alliance process, perceived by those involved as important. The BP and Statoil strategic alliance, formed to carry out joint oil and gas exploration and development in Nigeria, Vietnam and Azerbaijan/Kazakhstan, provided 52 interviews with staff from both partner headquarters and team members from the three projects. By studying an alliance process from multiple perspectives, it was possible to identify differences in sensemaking across different groups of employees. The organizational level (the alliance business unit level and the alliance team level) proved to be more important for shared sensemaking of the alliance process than group identities, such as nationalities, companies or locations. The alliance business unit level had been tasked with strategically developing and shaping the alliance, while the alliance teams had the operational responsibility for the project. The main theoretical implication is the primacy of project team-based identity to sensemaking regarding critical issues, emphasizing the importance of developing an alliance “supra-identity”. Implications for interfirm partnerships in Africa and Asia are also addressed.

Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1897–1959

Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Northeastern Pennsylvania, 1897–1959

Preventing Balkanization or Facilitating Racial Domination? A Critique of the New Equal Protection

The Supreme Court requires that equal protection plaintiffs prove defendants acted with discriminatory intent. The intent rule has insulated from judicial invalidation numerous policies that harmfully impact racial and ethnic minorities. Court doctrine also mandates that state actors generally remain colorblind. The colorblindness doctrine has led to the judicial invalidation of policies designed to ameliorate the conditions of racial inequality. Taken together, these two equality doctrines facilitate racial domination. The Court justifies this outcome on the ground that the Constitution does not protect “group rights.”Constitutional law theorists have criticized these aspects of equal protection doctrine. Recently, however, some theorists have defended the Court’s discarding of group-based equal protection. They argue that social justice advocates should pursue redress for vulnerable groups by asserting dignity-based liberty claims under the Due Process Clause. In a widely cited article, Professor Kenji Yoshino argues, in fact, that dignity is the “New Equal Protection.” Applying insights from “social capital theory,” Yoshino contends that group-based equal protection causes “pluralism anxiety” — or a fear of “balkanization” among the justices. Dignity arguments, by contrast, do not present such concerns because they rest on appeals to universal justice.This Article contests the view that the Court should discontinue class-based equal protection in order to maintain social cohesion. Leading social capital theorists find that multiculturalism, though temporarily divisive (if at all), provides many long-term benefits. Also, numerous social psychology studies find that racial and ethnic inequality cause far more social disruption than group-based identities. This empirical research also demonstrates that the Court’s equality doctrine mirrors the views regarding race relations held by most whites, while contradicting the perspectives of most persons of color. The enforcement of white majoritarian viewpoints should not serve as the foundation for an equality doctrine. Anti-subordination theory, by contrast, would provide more egalitarian outcomes and should inform Court doctrine.

Morality and behavioural regulation in groups: A social identity approach

In recent years social psychologists have displayed a growing interest in examining morality—what people consider right and wrong. The majority of work in this area has addressed this either in terms of individual-level processes (relating to moral decision making or interpersonal impression formation) or as a way to explain intergroup relations (perceived fairness of status differences, responses to group-level moral transgressions). We complement this work by examining how moral standards and moral judgements play a role in the regulation of individual behaviour within groups and social systems. In doing this we take into account processes of social identification and self-categorisation, as these help us to understand how adherence to moral standards may be functional as a way to improve group-level conceptions of self. We review a recent research programme in which we have investigated the importance of morality for group-based identities and intra-group behavioural regulation. This reveals convergent evidence of the centrality of moral judgements for people’s conceptions of the groups they belong to, and demonstrates the importance of group-specific moral norms in identifying behaviours that contribute to their identity as group members.

Morality in Groups: On the Social‐Regulatory Functions of Right and Wrong

AbstractApplying what we know about group‐based identities and concerns allows us to improve our understanding of the ways in which morality is relevant to social judgments of right and wrong. We distinguish between three different social functions of moral standards and moral judgments. The identity defining function of morality indicates where people want to belong, and how they are regarded by others. The group dynamic function indicates consensual definitions of what is right and wrong that guide individual behavioral choices. The intergroup relations function of group morality, speaks to the way people tend to communicate with and behave towards members of other groups that have different moral standards.

A social identity framework of American hip-hop cultural performance

The sociocognitive processes of marginalized-group social identity negotiation within a wider hegemonic sociocultural context can appear counterintuitive. Employing social identity theory to extend our understanding of the tension between racial and economic group-based identities, the mutations of three notable hip-hop referents serve as case studies that illuminate a framework of the intra- and intergroup relations facilitated by hip-hop's cultural performance within a racialized society.

Education and the Dangerous Memories of Historical Trauma: Narratives of Pain, Narratives of Hope

The purpose of this article is to explore the meanings and implications of dangerous memories in two different sites of past traumatic memories: one in Israel and the other in Cyprus. Dangerous memories are defined as those memories that are disruptive to the status quo, that is, the hegemonic culture of strengthening and perpetuating existing group-based identities. Our effort is to outline some insights from this endeavor—insights that may help educators recognize the potential of dangerous memories to ease pain and offer hope. First, a discussion on memory, history and identity sets the ground for discussing the meaning and significance of dangerous memories in the history curriculum. Next, we narrate two stories from our longitudinal ethnographic studies on trauma and memory in Israel and Cyprus; these stories are interpreted through the lens of dangerous memories and their workings in relation to the hegemonic powers that aim to sustain collective memories. The two different stories suggest that collective memories of historical trauma are not simply “transmitted” in any simple way down the generations—although there are powerful workings that support this transmission. Rather, there seems to be much ambivalence in the workings of memories that under some circumstances may create openings for new identities. The final section discusses the possibilities of developing a pedagogy of dangerous memories by highlighting educational implications that focus on the notion of creating new solidarities without forgetting past traumas. This last section employs dangerous memories as a critical category for pedagogy in the context of our general concern about the implications of memory, history and identity in educational contexts.

The Value of Group Identity in Preventing the Spiral of Silence: An Examination of Freelance Photographers and Usage Rights

We examined whether group-based identities would impact an individual's desire to speak out more so than the fear of isolation as posited in the spiral of silence. Survey data collected from a group of freelance photographers (N = 234) revealed that the later stages of the spiral of silence were affirmed in the overall prediction of whether individuals would speak out on the issue of usage rights and copyright. However, individuals were more likely to speak out on the issue when their group identity was made salient. Also, the use of group-based media predicted both personal opinion and willingness to speak out on the issue, even when controlling for all stages of the spiral. Theoretical and professional implications are discussed.

Social Identity, Intergroup Conflict, and Conflict Reduction

How are group-based identities related to intergroup conflict? When and how do ethnic, religious, and national identities lead to oppression, violence, rebellion, war, mass-murder, and genocide? How do intergroup conflicts change people's identities? How might social identity be harnessed in the service of reducing conflict between groups? The chapters in this book present a sophisticated and detailed interdisciplinary analysis of the most topical and fundamental issues involved in understanding identity and conflict.

Negative Emotion and Coping Responses within Identity Control Theory

We examine the role of emotion in recent developments in identity control theory using individuals' reports of anger in the 1996 General Social Survey emotions module. We find that group-based identities, which are more intimate, are associated with more intense anger while role-based identities, which are less intimate, are related to anger that lasts longer: Further, identities carry a certain amount of power; persons with a low-status identity report more intense and longer-lasting anger. We also examine how individuals cope with their anger. Group-based identities are more likely to be associated with cognitive responses, while role-based identities are more likely to be associated with behavioral responses. These results develop identity control theory beyond its current scope by proposing that different identities are related to the different dimensions of negative emotion and the different ways in which people cope with their feelings.

The Role of Spirituality in Culturally Relevant and Transformative Adult Education

Spirituality is an important part of human experience. So is culture. Most discussions of spirituality focus on the individual dimension of spirituality. But we believe that there is a cultural dimension to spirituality and a spiritual dimension to culture. By drawing on the connection between the two, adult educators can create educational experiences that are both culturally relevant and transformative. Culture is the common beliefs, values, language, images, symbols, and behaviors shared by a particular social group (Guy, 1999). Nearly all human knowledge and experience, including spiritual experience, will be shared and given expression through culture--in language, in music, in art, or in symbol making. Indeed, people construct knowledge and make meaning in powerful and ways through symbol, music, art, metaphor, and ritual--what faith development theorist James Fowler (1981) refers to as and unconscious structuring (p. 103). These aspects of knowledge production and ways of knowing are at the of the way spiritual knowing is often expressed. But such manifestations of knowing through symbolic and processes are also deeply cultural. Thus, they connect us back to our cultural selves, which is why spirituality can have an important role to play in culturally relevant education that draw on learners' cultural and group-based identities in the learning environment. We are making certain assumptions as we try to teach for social transformation and cultural relevance. First, it is important to define what we mean by spirituality. As we've discussed elsewhere (Tisdell, 2003; Tolliver & Tisdell, 2001), spirituality is related to: (a) a connection to what many refer to as the Life-force, God, a higher power or purpose, Great Mystery, or Buddha Nature; (b) a sense of wholeness, healing, and the interconnectedness of all things; (c) meaning-making; (d) the ongoing development of one's identity (including one's cultural identity) moving toward greater authenticity; (e) how people construct knowledge through largely and symbolic processes manifested through image, symbol, and music, which are often cultural. In addition, spirituality is different from, but for some people, related to religion. Finally, spiritual experiences often happen by surprise. Understanding how these dimensions of spirituality play out in our own lives and those of adult learners with whom we work offers new direction to culturally relevant adult education. Second, based on our experience as educators, we are assuming people are more likely to have transformational experiences if they are engaged on three levels of their individual being: the cognitive, the affective, and the symbolic or spiritual. Clearly, people do not have transformative learning experiences about issues of race, gender, or culture and power disparities therein, only through rational discourse or critical reflection. While we agree, as Mezirow (1995) suggests, that critical reflection is necessary, we believe that it is EQUALLY necessary to engage people on the affective or heart level. Further, transformative learning is perhaps better anchored if we engage on the spiritual level as well, and draw on how people construct knowledge through processes. Thus, in our classes, participants often create and share a poem, an art piece, a story, a symbol that gives further meaning to their learning journey at the end of the course. This sometimes connects the cultural, the spiritual, the affective, and the cognitive dimensions of who they are. It's important for educators to both set the stage for connecting spirituality and culture and to provide some role modeling. We often begin our classes with a greeting or ritual that encourages learners to make contact with every other person in the group. As a woman of African descent, Derise (Tolliver) also incorporates African proverbs as a way to reflect upon the content of a course, the process of the work, or the energy of the group. …

Women as Wives, Servants and Slaves: Rethinking the Public/Private Divide

Critiques of the public/private divide in Western political thought do not go far enough in analyzing the full range and character of relations in the private sphere as demonstrated in this article, which analyzes John Locke's theorisation about the relative authority of wives, servants and slaves. A third-wave feminist analysis is used to illustrate the theoretical relevance of group-based identities that, far from having a uniform relation to the political power afforded to free (male) citizens, are hierarchically stratified. Thus it is demonstrated that a basic problem within second-wave feminist analysis of Lockean, and more broadly defined liberal thought, is the tendency to categorize women as ''wives'' of free citizens, and not to analyze adequately other dimensions of identity, thereby ignoring the explicit divisions and hierarchy among different groups of women in one of the earliest accounts of the private sphere in liberal theory.