Social Categorization and Intergroup Relations

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Broad social-psychological analyses of intergroup relations incorporate theory from many diverse substantive domains within the field. This research takes one of these theoretical segments and attempts to develop further its application to group relations. Specifically, it examines the effects of factors that regulate the salience of the category to which members of interacting groups belong. It assesses the effects of social category salience on various measures of bias, hostility, and social acceptance. It assumes that negative affect and prejudice, when directed toward members of social categories, are dysfunctional to group productivity and contribute to intergroup conflict. The research builds on a theoretical model concerned with social category salience and intergroup relations and an experimental laboratory paradigm for studying its effects when members of two or more groups work cooperatively to solve a group problem. Some studies will create two artificial groups from a set of strangers brought into the laboratory. To integrate their outcomes with "real-world" situations, other studies will conceptually replicate them with members of natural social categories -- e.g. racial ethnic groups, commuter students versus fraternity row students. Non- voluntary facial electromyographic responses and other psychophysiological measurement procedures that minimize the intrusion of self presentational concerns will be examined in studies coordinated with the intergroup experiments. The studies employ multiple dependent measures to illuminate underlying process better, but also in response to the fact that theoretical models differ in their predictions for different response systems. Additionally, the studies consider theoretical issues raised in recent conceptual analyses of intergroup relations. Practical applications of the variables stressed as important by the theoretical model do not require that highly trained personnel maintain direct interaction with the individuals in a workteam over the course of time in order to improve intergroup relations. Instead, they translate into simple rules concerning procedures for forming and instructing workteams.