Status And Intergroup Threat Perception-The Mediating Effect Of Self-esteem

We live in a world with diversities, we categorize our society via different criteria,such as ethnic, nation, skin color, gender, social class and so on. People regard others with a common sense of belongingness, and same feelings as their ingroup members,and the rest are called outgroup members. Individuals gain psychological benefits from belonging to a group, and they also gain a sense of value in group comparisons. In the process of intergroup competition, when the existence, development and goals of their ingroup are weaker than or damaged by the outgroup, intergroup threat happens.Intergroup threat includes three different types: realistic group threat, symbolic group threat and social identity threat. Intergroup threat is the subjective perception of group members, regardless of the authenticity or reality of the threat, the perceived threat always causes negative consequences.However, the extent of threat is very different between high and low status group members. In general, members of low status groups are assumed to have a higher sense of threat. But different results showed that high status group members experience a higher level of threat than low status group members in some situations.Many studies attribute the contradiction to group boundary permeability. Boundary means that there is a difference, distinction or border between groups. In particular, the boundary is the limit of individuals and matters, and the scale of distinguishing self and others. Group boundary is the concept refer to the existence of group distinctions, which is a consensus of the social reality. Because of the difference of the nature and evolutionary history, group boundary can also be divided into permeable boundaries(e.g. urban and rural) and impermeable boundaries(e.g. male and female). For that intergroup threat is a subjective experience, and no matter whether the damage exists,the members of the ingroup will experience a sense of threat. Therefore, although the high status group members own more power and resources, but the threat exists that social class does not have the absolute closure, the composition of the group members might change. And during this dynamic change, when the boundary of high and low status groups becomes permeable, high status groups are more likely to feel threatened,because dominant groups need to pay more to maintain the existing status unchanged.In the meantime, low economic status of group members will show strong motives to become high economic status. Therefore, high status group members might perceive higher threat while facing social changes than low status group members; Negative attitudes such as prejudice is also more intense among high status group members than that among low status group members. Because the high status group has more resources, the motivation of preventing the loss of resources might be more intense. It is crucial for high status group to block the challenges of low status group members.Self-esteem might be another cause for this conflict. Because one’s awareness of being in a weaker group might influence one’s collective self-esteem. Compare to low status group members, high status group members would commonly sense a higher level of individual self-esteem. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between self-esteem and perfectionism tendency, the higher level of one’s self-esteem, more constraints and standards might be forced onto oneself, more dependence of using success and achievement to define oneself, higher self-criticism tendency, higher fear of failure. High status of one’s ingroup promotes the ingroup members’ self-esteem,however, high self-esteem might become the root of the ingroup members’ fear of failure. Thus, we assume that high self-esteem of high status ingroup members might play a role in the relations of group status and perceived intergroup threat.Our research explored the differences between perceived intergroup threat of high status and low status group members, and the role of group members’ self-esteem.Through two quasi experiments and one true experiment, we tend to study the mediation role of group member’s self-esteem between group status and intergroup threat in three threat situations: realistic threat, symbolic threat, and social identity threat. In Study 1 and 2, we designed two quasi experiments. The results showed that, in the competitive situation, after priming participants’ group identity(rural and urban), the perceived threat of low status college students(rural) is lower than that of high status college students(urban), whether in realistic threat situation or symbolic threat situation.Group members’ self-esteem showed partial mediating effect during this process. Study3 we designed a true experiment, we used the heart rate to measure the extent of group members’ perceived social identity threat. The results showed that when the group status is challenged, the ranges of heart rate variation of high status group members was significantly bigger than that of the low status group, indicating that perceived threat ofhigh status group members is stronger than that of low status group members, and self-esteem also play a role of partially mediating this process.Our conclusions:(1) perceived intergroup threat of high status group members is stronger than that of low status group members in all three different threat situations:realistic group threat, symbolic group threat, and social identity threat.(2) During this process, self-esteem played a partially mediating role between group status and intergroup threat.