Social Identity Affect Intergroup Attitudes: The Function Of Intergroup Boundary And Intergroup Threat

Humans survival in the society as groups,everyone lives in different groups of different styles,such as family,friends,community groups,religion groups,nationality and country.Individual interaction with others often under the background of the group.People not only exists as an individual,Also on behalf of their own social groups.Individuals will be classified as a group,and get a sense of belonging,a sense of security,and creative an emotional links with their in-groups.When the individuals form a positive social identity to their own group,they would like promote self-esteem and maintain self-image through the intergroup comparison.Different social groups have their own culture,norms and value system.There will be formed different attitudes in the intergroup interaction process.The intergroup attitudes as indicators of intergroup relations,predicting intergroup social stability.The intergroup attitudes are influenced by the interaction of various factors,has been studied from different social identity.Previous studies explore the influence of intergroup attitudes from different angles,such as intergroup boundary characteristics and intergroup threaten situation.There are two shortcomings.First,on the social identity affects intergroup attitudes,results are not consistent;second,many other factors have interaction in affect intergroup attitudes process,but still not be involved.Based on the above reasons,current research take ethnic groups,college students and community in university as subjects-the boundary permeability from low to high,through three experiments,explore the influences of social identity,intergroup boundary permeability and intergroup threat on intergroup attitudes.Study 1 In low permeability intergroup boundary groups(ethnic),explore the influence of social identity and intergroup threat on intergroup attitudes.The study includes four experiments,experiment1 take Tibetans as subjects,with 2(degree of social identity: high,low)* 3(be evaluated group: in-group,out-group,control group)* 2(picture valence: positive,negative)mixed design,with the Linguistic Intergroup Bias as the dependent variable.The experiment2 Start a threat scenario,the experimental design is the same as experiment1.Experiment3,experiment4 take Han as subjects,the experimental design are the same as experiment1 and experiment2.The result showed that in the low intergroup boundary permeability groups,subjects who have high social identity of in-group behave a clear in-group favoritism on positive behavior,but not on the negative behavior.subjects who have low social identity of in-group did not show the in-group favoritism and out-group bias.But in the intergroup threat situation,regardless of the level of society identity,There is a significant in-group favoritism and out-group bias.Study 2 According to study1,in medium permeability intergroup boundaries(University groups)group members,to investigate the effect of social identity and intergroup threat on intergroup attitudes.The study2 included two experiments,experimental design is the same as study1.The results showed that in no intergroup threat situation,the individual did not appear in-group favoritism and out-group bias,no matter the level of social identity.In intergroup threat situation,individuals have high social identity appeared obvious in-group favoritism and out-group bias.Low social identity individuals also appeared in-group favoritism,but only on the positive behavior of in-group members.Study 3 According to study 2,the last study select subjects in the high permeability group boundary groups.Study 3 includes two experiments,experimental design is the same as study1.It was found that when there was no threat,individuals have high social identity appeared obvious in-group favoritism on positive behavior,but not on negative behavior;individuals have high social identity did not appear in-group favoritism,and occurred derogatory on in-group negative behavior.In intergroup threat situation,there appeared obvious in-group favoritism in high social identity subjects,no matter the behavior is positive or not.Low social identity members does not appear in-group favoritism,and not appear in-group derogatory.Through the analysis of the three research results,the current research mainly draw the following conclusion:(1)The degree of social identity,permeability of group boundary and intergroup threat affect intergroup attitudes interactively.(2)In the situation not be threated,the higher degree of social identity,the more preference for the in-group.(3)In the threatening situation,as the intergroup boundary permeability in the process of from low to high,social identity and intergroup threat on the effect of intergroup attitudes are changing.(4)In the threatening situation,the lower the permeability of intergroup boundary,the less affected by the degree of social identity on intergroup attitudes.The higher of the permeability intergroup boundary,the more obvious influences of the intergroup threats and social identity on intergroup attitudes.(5)In the threatening situation,individuals have high social identity appeared obvious in-group favoritism unconditional,and individuals have low social identity only appeared in-group favoritism for positive behavior,but the negative behavior are not protected.In conclusion,intergroup attitudes are the result of multiple factors.The results have great significance in maintain intergroup harmony and promote social stability.