PSY 230 Lecture : PSY 230 - Chapter 9 Notes
Chapter 9 Notes
● Virtually every human on the planet identifies with at least one cultural group, whether it
is a small tribe or a billion-person nation; identify with groups based on common genes,
geography, ideology, causes, goals, broad social interests, shared experiences, and
hobbies
● If you ask people to define groups, they generally agree that groups come in four types:
intimacy groups (e.g., family, romantic partners, or friends), task groups (committees,
orchestras, teams), social categories (women, North Americans, Jewish people), and
loose associations (people in the same neighborhood, people who like classical music);
also share the intuition that some groups are more “group-y” than others
● Entitativity - the degree to which a collection of people feel like a cohesive group; the
term comes from groups feeling like real, solid entities
● Common bond - the degree to which group members interact with and depend on each
other to meet their needs and attain their goals; sometimes based on communal sharing
(what’s mine is yours)
● Market pricing - “I’ll wash your back if you wash mine”; might be how you interact with
classmates on an assignment
○ In both of these types of interactions, common bonds create a sense of
entitativity/cohesion
● Common identity - groups often form among individuals who share similar
characteristics, and people also come to feel a certain “we-ness,” or shared attachment, to
groups that they belong to; can stem from the same gender, race, age, appearance,
symbol; especially likely to arise when individuals face a shared threat/challenge
● The group-binding power of a common enemy is so powerful that leaders sometimes
invent an enemy figure—a “them”—to cement the perception of “us” and transform a
collective into a group
● For most of human history, the groups people were born into largely defined what a
person could be and do, was not possible to voluntarily exist those groups and join
different ones; ethnicity, social class, nationality, family, and gender are ascribed by
others to people at birth and still influence how people think and behave
● Today, have more freedom to deice which groups to join; can move up the career ladder
to join a higher social class
● Belonging to groups has been crucial to the development and survival of humans as a
species; humans depended on social networks to acquire and share food, transmit
information, rear children, and avoid predators and other threats; individuals with
characteristics that helped them get along with others had better chances of living long
enough to pass on their genes to future generations; modern humans might possess an
innate desire to belong to groups and to avoid being kicked out of them
● People form close bonds within kinship groups and with non-kin in the vicinity because
they would not survive very long without the cooperation of others, to accomplish goals
they would be unlikely to accomplish on their own
● Bringing one’s membership in a group to mind causes them to feel more in control of
their lives and capable of acting effectively, especially if the group is stable
● The sense of personal control gained from group identification improves people’s
satisfaction with life and wards off unhealthy feelings of helplessness and depression
● Uncertainty-identity theory - people join and identify with groups to reduce these
negative feelings of uncertainty about themselves and others
● Groups reinforce people’s faith in their cultural worldview and their valued place within
it; confidence in beliefs comes from social consensus, the more people share a belief, the
truer it seems; being in a group provides consensus through explicit routes (e.g., formal
codes of conduct) and implicit routes (e.g., value-laden rituals), helping group members
feel certain about how the world works
● Norms - rules for how all group members ought to behave, most are unspoken, but can
also be explicit
● Roles - expectation for how people who hold certain positions in the group ought to
behave
○ Group members do not have to wonder how they’ll act in a given situation
● Increasing uncertainty about the self increased group identification, but only when the
group was high in entitativity
● Norms and roles reduce uncertainty about other people; group-based expectations can
lead to harmful stereotyping
● Radicalization, falling under the influence of extremist groups - when threats to personal
significance make people feel uncertain about themselves, they become especially
attracted to ideologies that promise clear-cut guidelines for how to live
● Social identity theory - belonging to groups is an important source of self-esteem; a
person’s understanding of who they are is shaped by a group; if groups are a source of
identity, and if people are motivated to view themselves in a positive light, people
motivated to view their groups positively as well
Document Summary
Entitativity - the degree to which a collection of people feel like a cohesive group; the term comes from groups feeling like real, solid entities. Common bond - the degree to which group members interact with and depend on each other to meet their needs and attain their goals; sometimes based on communal sharing (what"s mine is yours) Market pricing - i"ll wash your back if you wash mine ; might be how you interact with classmates on an assignment. In both of these types of interactions, common bonds create a sense of entitativity/cohesion. The group-binding power of a common enemy is so powerful that leaders sometimes invent an enemy figure a them to cement the perception of us and transform a collective into a group. Today, have more freedom to deice which groups to join; can move up the career ladder to join a higher social class.
