The Effect Of Social Identity Threat To The Level Of Trust

Trust is a reaction of people to the situation, it is individual psychology and behavior determined by the situation stimulate. It is psychological expectation and appropriate action come to one thing might happen. Trust is an unstable variables and the level of individual trust changes with the context, one of the context is social identity threat. Except that individuals want to acquire a positive personal identity, they also try to acquire positive social identity. When such needs can not be met, social identity threat will come (Ellemers, Spears, Doosje,2002). Social identity threat is refers that compare with the other group, individuals cannot get affirmation, positive evaluation, cannot decide oneself in certain social group, social category or social category (Tajfel, Turner, 1986). Social identity threat mainly includes two types of threat:value threat and uniqueness threat. The value threat is one of social identity threats becaused of value being vilified by detractors, such as the group individuals be underestimated, disadvantaged compared with outside groups, etc. The uniqueness threat is refers to the threat caused of differences within the group.When social identities of individuals in groups are threatened, their cognition, emotion will change, and they will feel a psychological alienation, sense of deprivation and inferiority. Trust is individual psychology and behavior determined by the situation stimulate, and trust is also influenced by social identity threat.Liu as a domestic researcher thought that trust was a kind of positive emotion, and inspected the effect of social identity threat on trust emotions. The results showed when internal member underwent the social identity threat from outside group, the confidence level improved significantly to internal groups and descended to outside groups.Although it explored the sociai identity threat effect on confidence. No further investigation about group identification as a likely independent factor to this process. Moreover, Branscombe found that not every one internal groups was consistent to social identity threat. The response of internal groups was related with social identity to this group. When internal group members experience the identity threat from outside groups, the members with low social identity would combat with threats in the way of "attitude of separation from internal groups, more with individual identity not group member status", whereas group members with high social identity would attempt to defend for the integrity of this group and resisted threat through its group member status. In addition, Jetten showed that When the reputation of subordinate community was damaged, the members who identified community would put more attention on the values the community attach importance to. If the value of community value was not agreed with members of the community, they could break community tenet. Recent studies also found that individual differences may affect the expression of people,such as the differences of social identity. These studies proved that the reaction of different social identity individuals to social identity threat was not consistent. Social identity as antecedent put effect on social identity threat processing, so, this study introduce social identity as a new variable to probe the effect.of social identity to trust.We adopted different identity threat in the study to inspect social identity threat scenarios group member trust level internal, and investigated the influence of social identity in threats and trust between the regulatory role on the basis of previous studies. In experiment one, schools were regarded as a group unit through operating value threat scenes and unique threat. The results showed that the trust level of internal group subjects was significantly higher than that of outside group. Social identity threat had significant main effects in the trust level of internal groups, while there was no significant effect in outside groups. The adjusting effect of social identity was significant between social identity threat and the trust level of internal group individual in social identity, whereas the adjusting effect of social identity was significant between social identity threat and the trust level of outside group individual in social identity.In experiment one, schools were regarded as a group unit and the boundary of school was openness. Moreover, their choice for undergraduates was not autonomy with a certain degree. So in experiment two, we used boundary airtight group from north and south China as subjects, and further investigated the influence of social identity threat on internal group members' trust level. Results showed that:the trust level of 1 internal group was significantly higher than outside group. Social identity threat had significant main effects in the trust level of individuals. When the individual underwent social identity threat, the trust level promoted significantly. while there was no significant effect in outside groups. The adjusting effect of social identity was not significant between social identity threat and the trust level.In sum, two experiments showed that:before or after the social identity threat, individuals'trust to internal group was higher than to out-group, and the main effect of the social identity threat to internal group members'trust level was significant. There was differences in modulation of the social identity between those two experiments. In addition, the modulation of the social identity was significant in experiment one, but social identity regulation effect was not significant in experiment two.