We are
usually happy and proud of ourselves when we have positive feedback from our
boss. Still, we tend to feel ashamed when we fall on the street and people are
looking or we usually feel guilty when we misbehave towards a friend.
These are all
common emotions that we can feel whenever we succeed or fail important goals or
standards we have.
But why would
we feel sad when our football team loses a match or feel ashamed and/or guilty
for something we did not do? Why would we simply feel “emotions by
association”, or in different words, why would we feel certain emotions when
confronted with the actions of social groups that we may or may not belong to?
Source: http://www.freefantasyfootballpicks.com/2012/01/40-photos-of-saddest-fans-in-sports.html
These and
other related questions have given way to an immense body of research within
the field of intergroup relations.
In a famous
study by Cialdini and colleagues (1976) it was shown that people “bask in
reflected glory” through their association with successful others, even though
they were not personally involved in the others’ success. Their research showed
that individuals who saw their university team win, would strive to associate themselves with
this success source, by, for example, using terms as “we won”, amongst others.
At the time, the role of emotions was not referred to in these
experiments, but this article, among others, set the basis for a new conceptualization
of the ways in which people associate with others to enhance their self-image
and their self-worth through membership to different social groups.
Source:
http://m.todayonline.com/sports/football/belgium-has-points-how-about-style
We can imagine many instances in which one derives positive feelings from
the association with others: we become ecstatic over the victories of our
sports teams; we are happy when our political party wins the elections; we feel
proud when our university is evaluated number one on a European university
ranking, amongst many other examples. But we might also derive negative feelings from our shared group
memberships. We can get angry or frustrated when our beloved group’s image is
at stake, we might experience fear about the terrorist threat due to our nationality,
or feel guilty about transgressions carried out by other ingroup members in the
past.
Within the domain of intergroup relations, mainly in
the analysis of conflicts, nationalism and crowd behavior, the “hot” side of
such instances of collective behavior is many times referred to. This “hot”
side is, of course, strongly associated with emotions and recent developments
in social psychological research have focused precisely on the role of emotions
in intergroup relations.
It is this general awareness that emotions may arise not only from
inter-individual instances of behavior or comparison, but rather from intra
and/or intergroup processes and relations, that sets the background for the
possibility of studying emotions as intergroup phenomena. In this line, Smith
(1993) formulated the intergroup emotions theory in an attempt to refine the
traditional conceptualizations of intergroup behavior and, especially, negative
forms of prejudice and discrimination.
Intergroup emotions theory relies on social identity and
self-categorization theories, to explain when emotions are likely to occur and
influence group-level processes and relations. When a specific social identity
is made salient, individuals see themselves more in terms of their group
membership than in terms of their individual identities, and their action
tendencies will reflect this group level self-categorization. Most importantly,
individuals will not only “see” themselves in terms of this social identity,
but they will also “feel” in terms of it.
“Intergroup situations eliciting fear or anxiety responses may well
prompt a motive to escape or avoid the outgroup, whereas anger will generate a
willingness to attack or aggress against the outgroup. Disgust and contempt are
also more likely to activate avoidance behaviors, while resentment and
frustration may lead group members to take actions against the outgroup.”
(Devos, Silver, Mackie, & Smith, 2003, p. 113)
In other words, what intergroup emotions theory postulates is that
different emotional reactions derived from group memberships will lead to
distinct action tendencies.
This is the rationale used to explain why, for example, ingroup members
avoid or confront relevant outgroups, depending on the intergroup context. When
the ingroup is appraised as strong and holds an advantaged position over the
outgroup and there is a situational threat against the ingroup, the most likely
emotional experience is anger, which will lead to the desire of aggressing and
confronting the outgroup. However, when the ingroup is appraised as relatively
powerless or lacking the resources to deal with a threat from an outgroup, fear
is the most likely emotional experience, leading to avoidance or escape from
the situation (Devos et al., 2003).
It is, therefore, very important to reinforce that the theory of
intergroup emotions conceptualizes intergroup emotions as differentiated reactions
to outgroups, which are relational in their nature, context specific. These
emotions can be affected by institutionalized power structures between groups
and are derived from subjective interpretations of the situations in which they
come to existence.
Over the past years, there has been much research providing indirect and
direct evidence for the validity and applicability of this theory (for a
detailed review see Devos et al., 2003). By now, there are three well
documented aspects of the phenomenon of emotions that can make them
distinctively intergroup in nature, as opposed to individual or
inter-individual emotions.
The first assumption of intergroup emotions theory is that these
emotions are dependent on the psychological identification with a group.
Therefore, it is argued that emotions will be affected by the process of
identification and the quality and even quantity of that identification. The
authors (Mackie & Smith, 2003; Smith, 1993) further extend the
conceptualization of ingroup identification as being distinct from membership
in a group, in the sense that the first carries within it not only the
awareness of belonging to a group, but also the affective significance attached
to this membership, much like Tajfel (1972) had previously defended.
Secondly, the theory postulates that intergroup emotions arise from
group rather than personal concerns. It is thus the motives, goals and needs
(i.e. concerns) of the ingroup that determine the emotional experience most
likely to occur, independently of how these concerns relate directly with the
individual’s well-being or involvement in the situations or interactions
eliciting them.
Finally, the authors argue that intergroup emotions functionally
regulate intergroup interactions between ingroups and outgroups, given that
they modulate the cognitive, evaluative and behavioral reactions in intergroup
settings.
Summarizing, intergroup emotions theory augments our
understanding of intergroup relations and conflict, through the
conceptualization of these emotions as phenomena which shape and influence
distinct social encounters between groups, as well as the outcomes of such
encounters, in a more differentiated and context specific way than previous
approaches were able to.
So, next time
you see a group of people ecstatic or disappointed about something, you may
wonder what their group membership is.
References:
Cialdini, R. B., Borden, R. J., Thorne, A., Walker, M. R., Freeman, S.,
& Sloan, L. R. (1976). Basking in reflected glory; Three (football) field
studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34,
366-375. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.34.3.366
Devos, T., Silver, L. A., Mackie, D. A., & Smith, E. R. (2003).
Experiencing intergroup emotions. In D. Mackie & E. Smith (Eds.), From
prejudice to intergroup emotions: Differentiated reactions to social groups (pp.
111-134). Sussex: Psychology Press.
Mackie, D. M., & Smith, E. R. (Eds.). (2003). From prejudice to
intergroup emotions: Differentiated reactions to social groups. New York: Psychology Press.
Smith, E. R. (1993). Social identity and social emotions: Toward new
conceptualization of prejudice. In D. M. Mackie & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect,
cognition and stereotyping (pp. 297-315). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Tajfel, H. (1972). La categorization sociale. In S. Moscovici (Ed.), Introduction à la
psychologie sociale: Vol. I (pp. 272-302). Paris: Larousse.
Ana Figueiredo is a postdoc researcher at the Center for Social and
Cultural Psychology at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Great post! Thanks, Ana!
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