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Theories in Social Psychology

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Chadee_ffirs.indd iiChadee_ffirs.indd ii 12/13/2010 2:12:49 PM12/13/2010 2:12:49 PM

Theories in Social Psychology

Edited by

Derek Chadee

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

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This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing

program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Theories in social psychology / edited by Derek Chadee.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3122-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3123-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Social psychology. I. Chadee, Derek.

HM1033.T434 2011

302.01–dc22

2010041341

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10/13 Minion by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

1 2011

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To my daughter, Rúhíyyih – providing another perspective

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List of Contributors ix Acknowledgments xiv

Introduction 1

Part I Social Cognition 11

1 Toward Freedom: Reactance Theory Revisited 13 Derek Chadee

2 Inconsistency in Cognition: Cognitive Dissonance 44 Paul R. Nail and Kurt A. Boniecki

3 Attribution Theories: How People Make Sense of Behavior 72 Bertram F. Malle

4 The Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion: Thoughtful and Non-Thoughtful Social Influence 96

Benjamin C. Wagner and Richard E. Petty

Part II Social Comparison 117

5 Social Comparison: Motives, Standards, and Mechanisms 119 Katja Corcoran, Jan Crusius, and Thomas Mussweiler

6 Relative Deprivation: Understanding the Dynamics of Discontent 140 Jenny Carrillo, Alexandra F. Corning, Tara C. Dennehy,

and Faye J. Crosby

Part III Social Reinforcement 161

7 Evaluating Fairness: Critical Assessment of Equity Theory 163 Denise M. Polk

Contents

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viii Contents

8 Interdependence in Social Interaction 191 Ann C. Rumble

Part IV Self 209

9 Self-Categorization and Social Identification: Making Sense of Us and Them 211

Katharina Schmid, Miles Hewstone, and Ananthi Al Ramiah

10 Social Categorization Theories: From Culture to Cognition 232 Richard J. Crisp and Angela T. Maitner

11 Symbolic Interactionism: From Gestalt to Cybernetics 250 Andreas Schneider

12 Impression Management: Influencing Perceptions of Self 280 Meni Koslowsky and Shani Pindek

Author Index 297 Subject Index 301

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Contributors

Derek Chadee is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Director of the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. His current research interests include the social psychology of fear of crime and general fear, antecedents of emotions, copycat behavior, the media, HIV/AIDS and jury decision-making. In 2004, he was a Fulbright Scholar undertaking research on fear of crime in two American universities. He has maintained a cross-cultural research agenda.

Ananthi Al Ramiah is a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, and her research interests lie broadly in the area of intergroup conflict and cooperation. One line of her research assesses how social identity, threat, and status differentials contribute to intergroup conflict. In addition, her research aims to uncover the role that ethno-religious diversity plays in explaining percep- tions of intergroup trust and the extent to which these relationships are moderated by intergroup contact. Another line of work assesses how the intergroup context is perceived and contributed to by members of majority- and minority-status groups in an effort to find models of intergroup harmony in diverse settings.

Kurt A. Boniecki is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Arkansas and gained his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Florida in 1997. His research primarily examines the causes of prejudice and stereotyping. He also has academic interests in the teaching of psychology, interpersonal attraction, and the home-field advan- tage in sports.

Jenny Carrillo is Senior Vice President of External Affairs and Organizational Effectiveness at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England (PPSNE). Her work at PPSNE is consist- ent with her doctoral research at Yale University on women’s and immigrant health and the acculturative process. Prior to this, she worked with adolescents focused on social justice and education. She is active as a board member in several non-profit organizations that

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x Contributors

center on health, education, and racial disparities. She previously worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Co. and at Pace University.

Katja Corcoran (née Rüter) currently works as an Assistant Professor at the University of Cologne, Germany. She studied psychology in Tübingen and Berlin in Germany, and Amherst, USA. She gained her Ph.D. at the University of Würzburg, Germany, in 2004, and spent one year at Northwestern University, USA, with a Feodor Lynen fellowship granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research focuses on social comparisons, especially on standard selection processes and aspects of efficiency. She has published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, and Social Cognition.

Alexandra F. Corning is professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Notre Dame. Her research is concerned with problems that affect groups unevenly. Much of her work is aimed at identifying and explaining the mechanisms underlying the perception of discrimina- tion; in particular, how people arrive at the conclusions that discrimination has or has not taken place when the situation is ambiguous. Taking a social-cognitive approach, her research is focused on identifying individual-difference as well as situational factors that influence these perceptions. She also conducts research aimed at identifying the processes that influence young women’s and girls’ body dissatisfaction and eating problems.

Richard J. Crisp is Professor of Psychology in the Centre for the Study of Group Processes, University of Kent. He completed his BA in experimental psychology at Oxford University and his Ph.D. at Cardiff University. He has published widely on the psychology of prejudice, social categorization, group processes, and intergroup relations. He is a past winner of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues Louise Kidder Early Career Award and was the 2006 recipient of the British Psychological Society’s Spearman Medal. He is cur- rently Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and in 2009 he was elected an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Faye J. Crosby is Professor in the Psychology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a scholar, writer, consultant, and social activist. She received her Ph.D. in 1976. Previous faculty appointments include Rhode Island College, Yale University, the Kellogg School of Management, and Smith College. Crosby has authored or coauthored five books and has edited or co-edited a further ten volumes, and over 150 articles and chapters. Most of her work concerns sex and race discrimination and focuses on remedies. She is the recip- ient of numerous awards and is the founder of Nag’s Heart, an organization whose mission is the replenishment of the feminist spirit.

Jan Crusius is an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Cologne, Germany. After studying psychology in Jena, Germany, and Seville, Spain, he finished his doctoral degree in Social Psychology at the University in Cologne in 2009. He is interested in the role of social comparisons in emotion, judgment and decision making, and con- sumer behavior.

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Contributors xi

Tara C. Dennehy is a graduate student in the Mind, Brain, & Behavior Program at San Francisco State University. She received her BA in 2007 with highest honors in psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her main research interests lie in the inter- section between cognitive psychology and social cognition. Specifically, she conducts research examining the relationship between categorization and psychological essentialism, and research on the action-related determinants of entry into attentional awareness.

Miles Hewstone is Professor of Social Psychology and Fellow of New College, University of Oxford. He has published widely on the topics of social cognition and intergroup relations. He was awarded the British Psychological Society’s Spearman Medal in 1987 and its President’s Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in 2001. He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California 1987–8 and 1999–2000, and is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Meni Koslowsky is Professor at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University and is presently a Professor in the Psychology Department of Bar-Ilan University. His main focus of research includes organizational behavior, the stress–strain relationship, social power, and methodological issues. He has written more than 100 articles, authored and edited five books, and has presented at nearly 100 conferences.

Angela T. Maitner is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Broadly, her research investigates intergroup relations from a social cognitive perspective. More specifically she investigates the impact of exposure to diversity and multiple categorization on person perception and stereotyping, and the regu- latory role of emotion in intergroup relations.

Bertram F. Malle is Professor in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Brown University. He received his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1995 and joined the University of Oregon Psychology Department. He received the Society of Experimental Social Psychology Outstanding Dissertation award in 1995 and a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 1997. His research focuses on social cognition and the folk theory of mind, exploring such issues as intentionality judgments, mental state inferences, behavior explana- tions, and moral judgments. Malle is currently writing a book on Social Cognitive Science.

Thomas Mussweiler has been Professor at the University of Cologne since 2004. His research examines a variety of issues in social cognition, social judgment, and decision making, in particular how comparison processes shape human judgment, affect, and behavior. He has published in the Psychological Review, Psychological Science, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, among others. His research has been recognized by awards including the European Science Foundation’s European Young Investigator Award, the German Science Foundation’s Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz award, and the European Association of Social Psychology’s Jos Jaspars award.

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xii Contributors

Previously Mussweiler taught at the University of Würzburg, Germany, was a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University, USA, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Trier, Germany.

Paul R. Nail has been Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Central Arkansas since 2005 and holds a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Texas Christian University (1981). Previously, he was a Professor at Southwestern Oklahoma State University for 25 years. He has published articles in the Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Basic and Applied Social Psychology, among others. Besides cognitive dissonance theory, his research interests include social influence in groups, contemporary theories of racism, political psychology, and indi- vidual differences in psychological defensiveness. He is currently an Associate Editor of the interdisciplinary journal Social Influence.

Richard E. Petty is Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University. He received his BA from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. from Ohio State. His research focuses on understanding changes in attitudes and behaviors. He has published eight books and over 250 articles and chapters. Honors received include the Scientific Impact Award from the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, Distinguished Scientific Contribution Awards from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) and the Society for Consumer Psychology, and service as President of SPSP and the Midwestern Psychological Association. He is past Editor of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Shani Pindek is a doctoral student in the Psychology Department of Bar-Ilan University, with particular interests in impression management, organizational citizenship behavior, and altruism.

Denise M. Polk is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching and research areas focus mainly in the areas of interpersonal communication, work–family integration, conflict resolution, and health communication. She has focused mostly on romantic and family relationships. She holds a BA from Baldwin-Wallace College, a Master’s from Miami University, and a Ph.D. from Kent State University.

Ann C. Rumble is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Ohio University-Chillicothe. She received her Ph.D. from Washington State University in 2003, with a specialization in inter- dependent behavior and social dilemmas. She continued her work with Marilynn Brewer at Ohio State University as a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral fellow, following which she accepted a position at Ohio University-Chillicothe.

Katharina Schmid is currently a Research Fellow and Lecturer in Psychology at New College, University of Oxford. She previously held appointments at the Max-Planck-Institute for the study of ethnic and religious diversity in Germany, and at Royal Holloway University of

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Contributors xiii

London, and completed her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests lie broadly in the areas of social identity and intergroup relations. Her research focuses in particular on the role of multiple categorization processes, and espe- cially social identity complexity, in intergroup relations.

Andreas Schneider is Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas Tech University. While study ing social psychology, sociology, management, and marketing at Mannheim University, Germany, he visited Indiana University in 1987 and became fascinated with the new emerg- ing cybernetic symbolic interactionist model of Affect Control Theory. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Indiana University, Bloomington, in 1997. His publications in Social Psychology Quarterly, the Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Quality & Quantity, and Organization Studies demonstrate his research interests in the methodological development of symbolic interactionism and the cross-cultural application in the fields of deviance, sex- uality, and management.

Benjamin C. Wagner is a doctoral candidate in social psychology at Ohio State University, studying under Richard E. Petty. His research interests include attitudes and persuasion, embodied cognition, metacognition, moral reasoning, and emotion. In 2007, he earned his Master’s degree in psychology from Ohio State, having completed his BA two years earlier at Denison University, Granville, Ohio.

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This book would have been impossible were it not for the assistance of the following persons and institutions. Thanks to the staff at Wiley-Blackwell, in particular, Andrew McAleer, Annie Rose, Karen Shield, and Juanita Bullough, for their efficiency and help at every stage. To all the contributors, I am grateful for your contributions. Specifically I express my gratitude to Ananthi Al Ramiah, Kurt Boniecki, Jenny Carrillo, Katja Corcoran, Alexandra Corning, Richard Crisp, Faye Crosby, Jan Crusius, Tara Dennehy, Miles Hewstone, Meni Koslowsky, Angela Maitner, Bertram Malle, Thomas Mussweiler, Paul Nail, Richard Petty, Shani Pindek, Denise Polk, Ann Rumble, Katharina Schmid, Andreas Schneider, and Benjamin Wagner. I am grateful for and acknowledge the comments by the publisher’s anonymous reviewers, which were instructively helpful in the preparation of the final manuscript.

I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Ramesh Deosaran for his valuable mentorship, and to the University of the West Indies for its support, particularly the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre, of whose academic output this publication is a part. I am grateful to and thank everyone who provided the necessary technical and other support leading up to final publication, and wish to express my deepest gratitude for the assistance of anyone whom I may have inadvertently left unacknowledged.

Acknowledgments

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Gordon Allport (1968) defined social psychology as “an attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imag- ined or implied presence of others.” As limited as definitions are, this definition of social psychology captured the dynamism, focus, and direction of the discipline. Important to an understanding of social psychological behavior is taking into consideration not only what is happening socially to the person but also what is occurring internally and cognitively to the individual which, in turn, affects social behavior. From its genesis rooted in the work of William James’s Principles of Psychology to current development of the discipline, there has always been an emphasis on the individual within the social interaction paradigm. Theorization, therefore, within the discipline has fallen within this paradigm, which is now extended to include the neurological functioning of human beings within the social psy- chological context.

The early works on social psychology by the psychologist William McDougall (1908) and the sociologist Edward Ross (1908) weighted social behavior on instinctual or social factors, respectively. Later, Floyd Allport (1924) emphasized a behaviorist stimulus–response para- digm for the understanding of social psychological behavior. Theories of psychology and sociology during this early period seem to have been competing to understand a realm that had neither the theorization nor the research sophistication to claim discovery status. Much of the work undertaken in social psychology has been done within the discipline of psy- chology, with sociological social psychology contributions being relatively sparse. Notably, the discipline of sociology has contributed tremendously to the early development of the concept and theorization of self, especially via theories of symbolic interactionism, phe- nomenology, and, later, ethnomethodology. On the other hand, psychological social psy- chology’s contributions have been crucial to the genesis and development of both the pure and applied branches of the discipline.

Introduction

Theories in Social Psychology, First Edition. Edited by Derek Chadee. © 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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2 Introduction

Social psychology has seen numerous studies testing hypotheses drawn from concepts or theories. However, less frequent in the literature is the emergence of theories – a renaissance that is much needed for the development and impetus of the discipline. However, many of the theories that currently exist within social psychology are as important to the discipline as they were over forty years ago. A renaissance starts with a reassessment of the efficacy of current theories.

Theories have the power of insight and understanding, allowing scientists to see phe- nomena that previously they would have been unable to conceptualize. Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “Whether or not you can observe a thing depends on the theory you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.” The assumptions, proposi- tions, hypotheses, and supporting confirmed “facts” all provide the theory with a power of vision. The assumptions are givens that the theorist is allowed to utilize in the con- struction of his theory. They are like the basic tools of a carpenter. These assumptions are grounded on some philosophy or principle, and are often not the bases on which a theory is criticized. However, assumptions give a theory direction. On the other hand, a theory’s power of vision is myopic, limited by the same tools that give the theory its power. This is a dilemma that the finite scientist must explore in any discipline. However, the beach-ball approach to the understanding of the world within one’s discipline is a compromise accepted by social psychologists. That is, it is recognized that a theory is an academic creation, in this sense, and has limitations. The adoption of a number of theo- retical positions provides a more comprehensive understanding of the multidimensional nature of a phenomenon.

A theory can be criticized on a number of grounds, including consistency – how logically well the theory holds together with its propositions and hypotheses; external – standing up to criticisms of other theories (theory A vs. theory B); historical – temporal perseverance of the theory (e.g., does Freud’s psychoanalytical theory or Heider’s attribution theory still hold today?); applicability – the generalizing of findings from research to social situations; and methodological – the strengths and weakness of the methodology used in the construc- tion of the theory, especially if the theory is an empiricist one.

The recent social psychological literature has been lacking a volume systematically dedi- cated to a range of theories within the discipline. The emphasis of this book, therefore, is on social psychological theories, with an evaluation of some of the main theories still discussed and relevant to understanding behavior. The volume is divided into four parts. Part I presents critical assessments of social cognitive theories – from their genesis to their current development.

Derek Chadee revisits Brehm’s theory of psychological reactance, identifying the genesis of this theory in the womb of cognitive dissonance theory. However, the baby grew with many different characteristics from the mother. Both theories of cognitive dissonance and psychological reactance are theories of motivational arousal and reduction. The theory of psychological reactance, however, attempts to explain people’s reactions to perceived or actual threat to loss of freedom. The theory builds on several assumptions of human behav- ior, with a major underlying assumption of human persistence in maintaining free behav- iors and the consequences that arise as a result of threats to importantly defined free behaviors. The early emphasis of reactance theorizing and research was on psychological

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Introduction 3

reactance as being aroused by the situation. However, later studies have given emphasis to reactance as dispositional – a reactant personality. Numerous instruments have been designed to measure reactance as a disposition. The merit and demerits of these measures are discussed.

This first chapter critically assesses the relationship between reactance and dissonance, proposing reactance as a special case of dissonance though identifying the distinctness of reactance. Critical to this chapter is the identification of the systematic void in the literature concerning any discussion on affect in reactance. The last part of the chapter evaluates the relat

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