Social Categorization, Intergroup Behaviour and Self-Esteem: Two Experiments

Migrant Ethnic Identity and Psychological Distress

Although a considerable amount of research has addressed aspects of refugee and migrant adjustment to their new country of residence, little attention has been given to the causal impact of migrant ethnic identity on the adjustment process. To assess this issue, a model of migrant psychological distress was developed in which ethnic identity was predicted to influence personal coping resources (i.e., self-esteem, self-mastery, interpersonal trust) and external coping resources (i.e., tangible, appraisal, esteem, and sense of belonging social support) that, in turn, were predicted to influence migrants' psychological well-being. The model was tested on a sample of 270 male and female Vietnamese migrants. The results revealed that ethnic identity was a significant but not a strong predictor of migrant distress, via self-esteem. The implications of the findings for theories of identity and migrant adaptation are discussed.

Labelling and discrimination: do homophobic epithets undermine fair distribution of resources?

This research investigated the behavioural consequences of homophobic epithets. After exposure to either a category or a homophobic label, heterosexual participants allocated fictitious resources to two different prevention programmes: one mainly relevant to heterosexuals (sterility prevention), the other to homosexuals (AIDS-HIV prevention). Responses on allocation matrices served to identify strategies that favoured the ingroup over the outgroup. Results indicated stronger ingroup-favouritism in the homophobic than in the category label condition. This study shows that discriminatory group labels have tangible effects on people's monetary behaviours in intergroup contexts, increasing their tendency to favour the ingroup when distributing resources.

Threats to group value, domain-specific self-esteem and intergroup discrimination amongst minimal and national groups

The research reported in this investigation sought to examine the self-esteem hypothesis (SEH) using measures of domain-specific and public collective self-esteem (CSE). Two studies were conducted. Each tested both propositions of the SEH. The first study revealed that minimal group members (a) experienced an increase in that domain of self-esteem judged to be relatively more important to the in-group, following the display of in-group favouritism and (b) that minimal group members with low public CSE (and who thus believed that the in-group was negatively evaluated by the out-group) showed enhanced levels of in-group favouritism. The second study, which utilized the members of real social categories (i.e. New Zealanders and Australians) and negative outcome allocations (i.e. white noise) revealed identical findings. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

The meaning maintenance model: on the coherence of social motivations

The meaning maintenance model (MMM) proposes that people have a need for meaning; that is, a need to perceive events through a prism of mental representations of expected relations that organizes their perceptions of the world. When people's sense of meaning is threatened, they reaffirm alternative representations as a way to regain meaning-a process termed fluid compensation. According to the model, people can reaffirm meaning in domains that are different from the domain in which the threat occurred. Evidence for fluid compensation can be observed following a variety of psychological threats, including most especially threats to the self, such as self-esteem threats, feelings of uncertainty, interpersonal rejection, and mortality salience. People respond to these diverse threats in highly similar ways, which suggests that a range of psychological motivations are expressions of a singular impulse to generate and maintain a sense of meaning.

Social identity theory's self-esteem hypothesis: a review and some suggestions for clarification

Distinctions are made between global and specific, personal and social, and trait and state self-esteem, and these are used to structure a review of over 40 studies concerning social identity theory's hypothesis that (a) intergroup discrimination elevates self-esteem and (b) low self-esteem motivates discrimination. It is observed that researchers have tended to employ measures of global personal trait self-esteem in their investigations of this self-esteem hypothesis, and it is argued that measures of specific social state self-esteem are more consistent with social identity theory's assumptions. Although no convincing evidence is found for the self-esteem hypothesis in its full and unqualified form, it is argued that this is due to a lack of specificity in its formulation and it is suggested that a more qualified and specific version of the hypothesis may be more appropriate.