Social Identity Literature Research Articles

Norms as a rhetorical competition: Soviet–American confrontations over Cuba, 1970–85Michael Griesdorf is a political affairs officer with the United Nations. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 2006.

After going to the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962 President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev resolved the crisis by establishing an ambiguous ‘Understanding’, the terms of which were never publicly signed or ratified. In the absence of an explicit agreement in 1962, over the next 20 years the United States and the Soviet Union continued to compete over Cuba by seeking to portray revisionist behaviour as consistent or in concordance with the ’62 Understanding. I argue that this interaction is indicative of rhetorical-oriented conception of norms. Against constructivist approaches that focus on social identity and contractual institutionalist literature that focuses on focal points and convergent expectations, this approach emphasizes how states use norms to compete under circumscribed conditions. Under this perspective, norms are organic entities, which like the concept of judicial review, evolve in meaning in conjunction with their practical use.

Reputation, Social Identity and Social Conflict

We interpret the social identity literature and examine its economic implications. We model a population of agents from two exogenous and well defined social groups. Agents are randomly matched to play a reduced form bargaining game. We show that this struggle for resources drives a conflict through the rational destruction of surplus. We assume that the population contains both unbiased and biased players. Biased players aggressively discriminate against members of the other social group. The existence and specification of the biased player is motivated by the social identity literature. For unbiased players, group membership has no payoff relevant consequences. We show that the unbiased players can contribute to the conflict by aggressively discriminating and that this behavior is consistent with existing empirical evidence.

SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY AND THE REDUCTION OF INEQUALITY: CAN CROSS-CUTTING CATEGORIZATION REDUCE INEQUALITY IN MIXED-RACE GROUPS?

A strategy to modify racial inequality in task groups was tested. Based on social identity literature: If members of a group are encouraged to think of other group members as individuals instead of representatives of a larger group, cross-cutting categorization may decrease the effects of race. Thirty groups of one Black woman and two white women, were randomly assigned to either a condition in which group members knew only that some people did better than others on the task (baseline condition), or a condition in which individualization of group members was emphasized (cross-cutting condition). The task was exactly the same in both conditions; only the description of it varied. Relative to the baseline condition, the cross-cutting condition does not significantly decrease the inequality between Black and white group members. Implications of these results for future research on group racial dynamics are considered.

When Am I My Group? Self-Enhancement Versus Self-Justification Accounts of Perceived Prototypicality

The tendency to view the self as a prototypic member of a group is thought to be at the foundation of many social psychological phenomena. Two opposing accounts of perceived prototypicality have been suggested in the psychological literature. The self-justification account portrays this as a defensive tendency that occurs in response to threatened group status. The self-enhancement account portrays this as a strategic tendency to associate the self with positively viewed groups. These competing views were tested using both a minimal group (Study 1) and a naturalistic group (Study 2). Both studies showed that perceived prototypicality increased with increasing group status. Moreover, the effect of status was moderated by group importance (Study 1) and behavioral choice (Study 2). Both interaction patterns supported the self-enhancement view, suggesting that people view themselves as prototypic group members when doing so will promote a positive identity. These findings contradict common statements in the social identity literature.

Defining What You Are by What You Are Not: Negational Identity and Needs Fulfillment

The social identity literature has traditionally examined affirmational identities, that is, groups defined by what they are (e.g., are management scholars), but has largely overlooked negational identities, that is, groups defined by what they are not (e.g., are not Republicans) as a source of social identification. There are two notable exceptions that have used very different methodologies and samples to examine negational identities at different levels (McGuire & McGuire, 1986; Elsbach & Bhattacharya, 2001). However, the prevalence, antecedents, and consequences of negational identification are yet to be understood. In this paper we establish the prevalence of negational identification and examine the meaning of negational identification to group members, i.e., what needs do negational identities fulfill?

Spanning Two Worlds: Social Identity and Emergent African-American Leaders

The literature that explores African-American leadership has largely examined the institutional and societal factors that threaten the likelihood that African-Americans will emerge or be successful as leaders. However, in recent years, the emergence of African-Americans in key executive positions within the Fortune 500 suggests that select individuals are managing to overcome external threats to success. I argue that the social identity literature provides fresh theoretical perspectives for understanding the determinants of behavior that enable minorities to navigate institutional barriers to advancement. This literature enables the examination of leadership as a function of ingrouplout-group membership. This paper focuses on choice in identification as an antecedent of leadership attributions, and possibly, success. This is an important perspective because it enables the analysis of African Americans as members of multiple constituents groups, specifically, various work groups and political coalitions (which all nascent leaders must negotiate) and the African-American ethnicity (into which they are born and may feel some degree of duty). The role of social context is also explored.

Racial Identity, Electoral Structures, and the First Amendment Right of Association

This article develops a provocative approach for thinking about the role of race in democratic politics. I identify the Supreme Court's descriptive and normative struggles with racial identity, which have led many on the Court to question the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. I rely upon the social identity literature in social psychology, as well as the race and politics literature in political science, to demonstrate empirically the relationship between racial and political identity. I then use the right of assciation, particularly as developed by the Supreme Court in the party and ballot access cases, to argue that the First Amendment protects the right of votes of color to associate as voters of color where race and political identity are correlated. In so doing, I characterize the Court's attempt to grasp the proper role of race in democratic politics as a deeper struggle between equality and liberty values. I conclude by suggesting a framework for balancing liberty and equality concerns in the design of electoral institutions.

Organizational Politics and Work Identity as Predictors of Organizational Commitment

Building on the organizational‐politics (Kaemar & Baron, 1999) and social‐identity (Hogg & Terry, 2000) literatures, we examined the moderating effect of work identity on the organizational‐politics/organizational‐commitment relationship. Data collected from 500 employees of a data‐reporting organization and 943 employees of a customer‐service organization indicate that employees who identified primarily with their occupations were less affected by the level of perceived politics in the organization in the consideration of their commitment than were employees who identified primarily with their employing organizations or one of its units. Implications for research and management practice are discussed.