David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Complementing Individualism with The Social Identity Approach
By Martijn van Zomeren
22-04-2008
The Illustrative Case of Individuals' Moral Conviction
Have you ever thought about where your strong moral convictions (if any) come from? For example, let's assume you feel strongly about the sacredness of the Qur?an, and feel outraged when someone mocks your Holy Book. Or, alternatively, you feel strongly about freedom of speech, and hence feel outraged when those mocking a holy book are threatened and attacked by those who perceive this as a transgression of their sacred values. Is it, in these cases, a strictly personal part of who you are that reacts so strongly, or is your conviction perhaps derived from important groups you are a member of? Although strong moral conviction may, from an outside perspective, appear to be very much of an individual thing, I suggest in this article that we should consider the possibility that, in reality, this is not always the case. By proposing that moral convictions can also stem from the multitude of groups that individuals are members of, I will illustrate the larger point that individualism, which I define loosely here as a line of thought that attributes individuals' behavior to their personality characteristics, is complemented with the so-called social identity approach.
The key reason for this is that groups are part and parcel of our social lives. Groups fulfill our needs for belongingness, affiliation, and meaning, and they can help us get what we need, want, and feel entitled to (e.g., Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). Evolutionary psychologists claim that we have evolved as social animals (e.g., Caporael, 1997, 2007), and indeed, it seems we have come to be particularly "herdy" ones: We only too easily conform to majorities, and obey authorities (e.g., Asch, 1955; Milgram, 1963). We are very sensitive to group norms (Turner, 1991), and fear social exclusion (e.g., Kurzban & Leary, 2001). Perhaps for these reasons, individuals will like those who are like us and dislike those unlike us (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Yet, many psychological theories that explain human functioning and behavior do not seem to care much for this important element of social life. After all, if an individual looks and sounds like an individual, then certainly his or her thoughts, feelings, tendencies, and behavior must be characteristic of that individual. Right?
Not quite. Almost four decades of theory and research have shown that the individual self is not always primary, nor is it alone in the psychological universe. Individuals can perceive themselves as group members, and hence act on the basis of a group self (Tajfel, 1978). Depending on how individuals perceive themselves, the outrage expressed by those viewing the anti-Islam movie 'Fitna'1, for example, may reflect either individuals' personal outrage, or their group-based outrage. This difference is important because people will often attribute such outrage to individuals' personality characteristics (e.g., a mad, irrational, dangerous extremist). However, according to the social identity approach (for a recent overview, see Hornsey, 2008), the individual and group selves are neither static nor fixed ? rather, individuals actively construct and define them through the interactive influence of personal and contextual variables. More specifically, in this line of thought social identity theory (e.g., Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) emphasizes the socio-structural antecedents of identification with a group, whereas self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) focuses on how individuals situationally become psychological group members. Together, the social identity approach suggests that individualist approaches to psychology run the risk of being reductionist because they do not acknowledge the group self and with it, a distinct realm of psychology.
Like many fundamental principles, the general idea is actually quite simple: It is individuals' self-perception that determines how they perceive their social world, and hence how they respond to events in their social world (Turner et al., 1987). When individuals see themselves as unique individuals (e.g., I like peanutbutter, a particular Dutch singer, and theories of embodiment), they see themselves as very different from others who do not share their appetite, taste, and interest. Hence, any thought, feeling, tendency, or action derives from, or is based in, their self-perception as a unique individual. However, if individuals see themselves as group members (e.g., as a peanutbutter lover, or as a fan of a particular Dutch singer, or as an embodiment researcher), their social world is divided into an in-group (that includes the self) and out-group (that excludes the self). As a consequence, individuals will like those who are like us more than those unlike us, and easily discriminate between them. As noted, such self-categorizations can occur flexibly and dynamically, and their salience is influenced by how fitting a group membership is to a particular situation (i.e., how "groupy" the situation is), and by how accessible group membership is for an individual. The movie 'Fitna', for example, is likely to make the Muslim group identity among Muslim individuals more relevant ? even among those who do not necessarily identify strongly with their group and for whom the Muslim group identity is already more accessible. In this way, the social identity approach allows individuals to become psychological group members, and it suggests that shifts in self-categorization can occur as a function of personal and situational factors (Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). This ultimately implies that although someone may look and sound like an individual from an outside perspective, this person may actually self-categorize as a group member, and hence his or her perception of, and responses to, the social world should be interpreted differently. Depending on which self is salient, the same act (e.g., threatening Geert Wilders because of Fitna1) can be viewed as the action of an individual madman, or as a statement on behalf of a group.
From this line of thought, it follows that psychological theories that take the individual as their point of departure run the risk of being reductionist in their individualism. The clearest cases of reductionism pertain to psychological theories that assume that what explains individual behavior automatically also explains collective behavior. In the literature on collective action, for example, the classic idea has been for long that individuals are rational actors (i.e., homo economici) that are able to carefully weigh the pros and cons of joining a protest march, or signing a petition (e.g., Olson, 1968). Thus, only if individual benefits outweigh individual costs does collective action ensue. The more modern idea, captured in a recent quantitative research synthesis of this literature (Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, in press), is that a sense of social identity is crucial for collective action to occur because it helps relatively powerless individuals to perceive, feel, and act on the group level. Indeed, it might not be irrational to engage in collective action even when one's individual costs outweigh the benefits. After all, these costs and benefits might not be relevant for the individual whose group identity is salient. This already illustrates the general message of this article: That the complementarity of the social identity approach lies in the recognition of the group-based nature of many psychological mechanisms that are often too easily ascribed to the realm of the individual self. Below I briefly review some applications of the social identity approach, and subsequently present a new application of this perspective to one of the pillars of individualism: Individuals' moral conviction.
Applications of the social identity approach
The idea that individuals are rational (and groups are not) is quite an old one. In fact, groups were once thought to result in the loss of everything sacred to the rational individual: Loss of self, loss of self-control, loss of accountability, and loss of rationality (e.g., LeBon, 1895). Group behavior was thus viewed as something clearly irrational, and, by inference and experience, something dangerous. LeBon's (1895) concept of the group mind, a rather supernatural force, was thought to possess individuals in crowds, resulting in their enactment of the impulsive and irrational passions of the collective. Much later, Zimbardo's (1969) influential deindividuation theory still suggested this core idea: That deindividuated individuals are likely to fall prey to anti-social behavior (see also Zimbardo, 2008). A quantitative research synthesis suggested however that there was little empirical support for deindividuation theory across the board (Postmes & Spears, 1998). Postmes and Spears (1998) found that results were more in line with a group norm account: Deindividuation appeared to result in conformity to group norms. If these norms were anti-social, anti-social behavior resulted, but when these norms were pro-social, pro-social behavior resulted. Thus, adherence to group norms seemed more influential than individuals' state of deindividuation.
A similar development can be found in research on relative deprivation, which is defined as the experience that one is denied something that one feels entitled to (e.g., Crosby, 1982). This tradition was also rooted in ideas about the irrational nature of collective action, in which relative deprivation was thought to contribute to the so-called breakdown of the social order through motivating irrational and aggressive outbursts of action. Not unlike LeBon's dangerous crowds that were possessed by the group mind, individuals' sense of relative deprivation was thought to result in riots and inter-group aggression. Later research and another quantitative research synthesis however suggested that it is group-based rather than individual deprivation that predicts collective action (H.J. Smith & Ortiz, 2002). Defining one's deprivation as something collective appeared to lift the burden of individuals' lonely and relatively powerless shoulders, and actually helped to engage in actions that aim to fight their deprivation (Van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). The result was that group-based deprivation actually fitted better with solidarity accounts of collective action (in which groups constructively fight for their interests) than with breakdown accounts (in which groups fight to break down the social order).
Moreover, recent theorizing suggests that even individuals' emotions are not always experienced on the basis of the individual self. Mackie, Devos, and Smith (2000), for example, showed that participants could be induced to feel anger and fear on the basis of a relevant group membership. In a similar vein, Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, and Manstead (1998) showed that individuals can feel guilt for past wrongdoings of fellow group members. In other words, one can experience emotion on the basis of a group membership that connects one to a past never experienced (see (Zebel, Pennekamp, Van Zomeren, Doosje, Van Kleef, Vliek, & Van der Schalk, 2007). Thus, although your emotions may feel very much your own, they are not always based in your individual self. In at least some instances, they are much more ours than they are uniquely yours.
The larger point here is that psychological phenomena that appear to be irrational from an individualist perspective (e.g., riots) may actually be quite functional when viewed from the social identity approach. From this point of view, crowd behavior is not irrational and impulsive, but functionally guided by group norms. Furthermore, the experience of group-based deprivation functionally motivates collective action to fight the group's disadvantage together with fellow group members. And finally, the experience of emotions more generally on behalf of the collective is equally functional: Group-based guilt motivates reparation behavior towards those oppressed in the past, and group-based anger and fear motivate approach and avoidance of the out-group, respectively. It seems, then, that we have indeed evolved as social animals that are particularly "herdy": We even have a psychological mechanism available that allows individuals to become psychological group members. Therefore, there is no reason to reside with reductionism.
The case of individuals' moral conviction
Psychology has recently shown renewed interest in the domain of morality ? like emotion a realm traditionally governed by the individual self. Whereas recent theorizing has started on universal elements of, and processes associated with, morality (see (Haidt, 2007, for a review; for earlier perspectives see (Bandura, 2000.; (Kohlberg, 1984; for an intercultural perspective, see (Triandis & Suh, 2002), others have developed theoretical accounts of moral conviction: The extent to which individuals hold beliefs on an issue that they subjectively deem to be "absolutely true" (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005; (Turiel, 2002). Theory and research suggests extremely negative responses to threats to individuals' moral conviction (Skitka et al., 2005; (Tetlock, 2002)). The general line of thought is that because individuals' convictions are strong and absolute individual attitudes, threats to their conviction threaten the very core of who they are (i.e., their individual self). Thus, one could become enraged because others mock the Qur?an, or one could become enraged because those who mock the Qur?an aim to restrict others' freedom of speech. As a consequence, their responses will be as extreme as their conviction (e.g., attacking those who mock sacred values).
From an outside perspective such extreme acts or responses are of course typically condemned, and perhaps as a consequence perceived as irrational, impulsive, and unreasonable. Similarly, extremists are often viewed as individuals who are so determined that they cannot be reasoned with, and hence they must be either crazy, or dangerous (e.g., terrorists). If this sounds familiar to you, then I might remind you that this sounds quite akin to how LeBon (1895) looked down upon the masses crowding together, and from which he concluded that these individuals must have lost everything what made them rationally human. From the perspective of the social identity approach, however, we should beware of such reductionism and consider the possibility that what might appear to be a madman (e.g., a terrorist) might in fact be a group member attempting to achieve group goals. Please note that this line of thought does not legitimize or excuse extremist actions --- it is simply to understand them better, so that ultimately such actions can be prevented.
Now, this is a good example of where the complementarity of the social identity approach becomes theoretically important and socially consequential. From a reductionist individualism perspective, the strong, extreme, and "universal" elements associated with individuals' moral conviction makes them highly resistant to change, and hence to any social influence. After all, there is little point in talking to a terrorist when we assume he or she has made up his or her mind and is willing to die for it. Or, alternatively, why talk to Muslims if you believe such individuals to be inherently evil? If we assume this individual to be thus, it will be hard to have any effect on him or her. However, we can also consider viewing individuals' moral conviction as something that is not necessarily based in the individual self, but in the group self. For example, my response to 'Fitna' may derive from my Dutch rather than my personal moral conviction regarding freedom of speech. If this can be the case, then the social identity approach suggests that social influence is possible: Namely when it comes from fellow group members. It follows that when the group does not (or no longer) support individuals' group-based moral conviction, negative responses to moral threat should be reduced.
This prediction was recently borne out in two experiments in which Dutch non-Muslim participants were asked to respond to the alleged foundation of a new political party for Muslims in the Netherlands (Van Zomeren, 2008). Before the experiment, participants' filled out measures of their individual moral conviction (i.e., their personal opinion), and their collective moral conviction (i.e., as a Dutchman in this case) on a moral issue (freedom of speech in the first study, and abortion in the second study). Subsequently, participants read a description of the new party's statement against freedom of speech, and abortion, and they read that a representative survey among the non-Muslim Dutch in the Netherlands disagreed with this statement. However, the level of support was manipulated such that the group validated individuals' collective moral conviction (i.e., a 95 % support condition), or that it did not validate their conviction (i.e., a 65 % support condition). Did this group norm manage to influence the responses to the political party among those with collective convictions? Results suggested an affirmative answer: Their negative responses to this party decreased when group support was lower. Put differently, when moral conviction was viewed as collective, group norms influenced how those with collective convictions responded to moral threats. Note that these results are difficult to explain from an individualist perspective, which would not predict social influence effects at all.
It seems, then, that the social identity approach even complements individualism in one of its most traditional domains. But note that this does not imply that moral conviction cannot be based in the individual. From the perspective of the social identity approach, the basis of moral conviction should be viewed in the light of the social context that makes salient individuals' individual or social identity. If individuals' personal identity is salient, their individual moral convictions may be difficult to change, and their negative responses to moral threats difficult to prevent. However, if individuals' social identity is salient (as was presumably the case in the studies I described), then their collective moral convictions as well as their responses to moral threats may be influenced by what fellow group members think, feel, and do. In other words, the social identity approach truly complements individualism, even when it comes to psychological phenomena that are often deemed to be at the very core of who we individually are. As I have argued in this article, this has an important implication for psychologists. If we want our theories to be more predictive of every-day life (where groups are all but absent), we need to incorporate the social identity approach in our thinking. In fact, there is no reason not to acknowledge its importance in psychology, and beyond.
Glossary
social identity is that part of individuals' self-concept that derived from their "knowledge of their membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and the emotional significance of that membership" (Tajfel, 1981, p. 255)
group self is that part of the individuals' self-concept that is derived from their group membership(s)
self-perception is perception of the self as an individual or group member (in the context of self-categorization processes)
group mind is defined as LeBon's supernatural force possessing those who dare to join a crowd
deindividuation is a psychological state in which the self is arguably lost, individual norms fade out, and impulsive, anti-social behavior follows (but see (Postmes & Spears, 1998)
relative deprivation is the perception and/or experience of lacking something that one feels entitled to
moral conviction is the strong and "absolute" individual attitude on a moral issue
References
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Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 67, 371 ? 378.
Olson, M. (1968). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Postmes, T. & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and anti-normative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 238-259.
Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C.W., & Mullen, E. (2004). Political tolerance and coming to psychological closure following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: An integrative approach. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 743-756.
Skitka, L. J., Bauman, C. W., & Sargis, E, G. (2005). Moral conviction: Another contributor to attitude strength or something more? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 895 ? 917.
Smith, H. J. & Ortiz, D. J. (2002). Is it just me? The different consequences of personal and group relative deprivation. In I. Walker & H. J. Smith (Eds.), Relative Deprivation: Specification, Development, and Integration (pp. 91 ? 115). Cambridge: University Press.
Tajfel, H. (1978). The achievement of inter-group differentiation. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Differentiation between Social Groups (pp. 77-100). London: Academic Press.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of inter-group conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The Social Psychology of Inter-Group Relations (pp. 33-47). Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Tetlock, P. E. (2002). Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: Intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors. Psychological Review, 109, 451-71.
Triandis, H. C., & Suh, E. M. (2002). Cultural influences on personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 133 ? 160.
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Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Perspective. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Van Zomeren, M. (2008). On conviction's collective consequences. Unpublished manuscript.
Van Zomeren, M., Spears, R., Fischer, A. H., & Leach, C. W. (2004). Put your money where your mouth Is!: Explaining collective action tendencies through group-based anger and group efficacy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 649?664.
Van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (in press). Toward an integrative Social Identity Model of Collective Action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin.
Zebel, S., Pennekamp, S. F., Van Zomeren, M., Doosje, B., Van Kleef, G. A., Vleik, M. L. W., & Van der Schalk, J. (2007). Vessels with gold or guilt: Emotional reactions to family involvment associated with glorious or gloomy aspects of the colonial past. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 1, 71 ? 86.
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Footnotes
1 Editor?s Note: Fitna is the title of a movie recently released by Dutch parlementarian Geert Wilders. In the movie, Wilders links the Qur?an to terrorism, Islamic rule, and Islam in the Netherlands, and equates Islam with violence. It has now been renounced by the Dutch government.
By Martijn van Zomeren
22-04-2008
The Illustrative Case of Individuals' Moral Conviction
Have you ever thought about where your strong moral convictions (if any) come from? For example, let's assume you feel strongly about the sacredness of the Qur?an, and feel outraged when someone mocks your Holy Book. Or, alternatively, you feel strongly about freedom of speech, and hence feel outraged when those mocking a holy book are threatened and attacked by those who perceive this as a transgression of their sacred values. Is it, in these cases, a strictly personal part of who you are that reacts so strongly, or is your conviction perhaps derived from important groups you are a member of? Although strong moral conviction may, from an outside perspective, appear to be very much of an individual thing, I suggest in this article that we should consider the possibility that, in reality, this is not always the case. By proposing that moral convictions can also stem from the multitude of groups that individuals are members of, I will illustrate the larger point that individualism, which I define loosely here as a line of thought that attributes individuals' behavior to their personality characteristics, is complemented with the so-called social identity approach.
The key reason for this is that groups are part and parcel of our social lives. Groups fulfill our needs for belongingness, affiliation, and meaning, and they can help us get what we need, want, and feel entitled to (e.g., Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). Evolutionary psychologists claim that we have evolved as social animals (e.g., Caporael, 1997, 2007), and indeed, it seems we have come to be particularly "herdy" ones: We only too easily conform to majorities, and obey authorities (e.g., Asch, 1955; Milgram, 1963). We are very sensitive to group norms (Turner, 1991), and fear social exclusion (e.g., Kurzban & Leary, 2001). Perhaps for these reasons, individuals will like those who are like us and dislike those unlike us (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Yet, many psychological theories that explain human functioning and behavior do not seem to care much for this important element of social life. After all, if an individual looks and sounds like an individual, then certainly his or her thoughts, feelings, tendencies, and behavior must be characteristic of that individual. Right?
Not quite. Almost four decades of theory and research have shown that the individual self is not always primary, nor is it alone in the psychological universe. Individuals can perceive themselves as group members, and hence act on the basis of a group self (Tajfel, 1978). Depending on how individuals perceive themselves, the outrage expressed by those viewing the anti-Islam movie 'Fitna'1, for example, may reflect either individuals' personal outrage, or their group-based outrage. This difference is important because people will often attribute such outrage to individuals' personality characteristics (e.g., a mad, irrational, dangerous extremist). However, according to the social identity approach (for a recent overview, see Hornsey, 2008), the individual and group selves are neither static nor fixed ? rather, individuals actively construct and define them through the interactive influence of personal and contextual variables. More specifically, in this line of thought social identity theory (e.g., Tajfel, 1978; Tajfel & Turner, 1979) emphasizes the socio-structural antecedents of identification with a group, whereas self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) focuses on how individuals situationally become psychological group members. Together, the social identity approach suggests that individualist approaches to psychology run the risk of being reductionist because they do not acknowledge the group self and with it, a distinct realm of psychology.
Like many fundamental principles, the general idea is actually quite simple: It is individuals' self-perception that determines how they perceive their social world, and hence how they respond to events in their social world (Turner et al., 1987). When individuals see themselves as unique individuals (e.g., I like peanutbutter, a particular Dutch singer, and theories of embodiment), they see themselves as very different from others who do not share their appetite, taste, and interest. Hence, any thought, feeling, tendency, or action derives from, or is based in, their self-perception as a unique individual. However, if individuals see themselves as group members (e.g., as a peanutbutter lover, or as a fan of a particular Dutch singer, or as an embodiment researcher), their social world is divided into an in-group (that includes the self) and out-group (that excludes the self). As a consequence, individuals will like those who are like us more than those unlike us, and easily discriminate between them. As noted, such self-categorizations can occur flexibly and dynamically, and their salience is influenced by how fitting a group membership is to a particular situation (i.e., how "groupy" the situation is), and by how accessible group membership is for an individual. The movie 'Fitna', for example, is likely to make the Muslim group identity among Muslim individuals more relevant ? even among those who do not necessarily identify strongly with their group and for whom the Muslim group identity is already more accessible. In this way, the social identity approach allows individuals to become psychological group members, and it suggests that shifts in self-categorization can occur as a function of personal and situational factors (Ellemers, Spears, & Doosje, 2002). This ultimately implies that although someone may look and sound like an individual from an outside perspective, this person may actually self-categorize as a group member, and hence his or her perception of, and responses to, the social world should be interpreted differently. Depending on which self is salient, the same act (e.g., threatening Geert Wilders because of Fitna1) can be viewed as the action of an individual madman, or as a statement on behalf of a group.
From this line of thought, it follows that psychological theories that take the individual as their point of departure run the risk of being reductionist in their individualism. The clearest cases of reductionism pertain to psychological theories that assume that what explains individual behavior automatically also explains collective behavior. In the literature on collective action, for example, the classic idea has been for long that individuals are rational actors (i.e., homo economici) that are able to carefully weigh the pros and cons of joining a protest march, or signing a petition (e.g., Olson, 1968). Thus, only if individual benefits outweigh individual costs does collective action ensue. The more modern idea, captured in a recent quantitative research synthesis of this literature (Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, in press), is that a sense of social identity is crucial for collective action to occur because it helps relatively powerless individuals to perceive, feel, and act on the group level. Indeed, it might not be irrational to engage in collective action even when one's individual costs outweigh the benefits. After all, these costs and benefits might not be relevant for the individual whose group identity is salient. This already illustrates the general message of this article: That the complementarity of the social identity approach lies in the recognition of the group-based nature of many psychological mechanisms that are often too easily ascribed to the realm of the individual self. Below I briefly review some applications of the social identity approach, and subsequently present a new application of this perspective to one of the pillars of individualism: Individuals' moral conviction.
Applications of the social identity approach
The idea that individuals are rational (and groups are not) is quite an old one. In fact, groups were once thought to result in the loss of everything sacred to the rational individual: Loss of self, loss of self-control, loss of accountability, and loss of rationality (e.g., LeBon, 1895). Group behavior was thus viewed as something clearly irrational, and, by inference and experience, something dangerous. LeBon's (1895) concept of the group mind, a rather supernatural force, was thought to possess individuals in crowds, resulting in their enactment of the impulsive and irrational passions of the collective. Much later, Zimbardo's (1969) influential deindividuation theory still suggested this core idea: That deindividuated individuals are likely to fall prey to anti-social behavior (see also Zimbardo, 2008). A quantitative research synthesis suggested however that there was little empirical support for deindividuation theory across the board (Postmes & Spears, 1998). Postmes and Spears (1998) found that results were more in line with a group norm account: Deindividuation appeared to result in conformity to group norms. If these norms were anti-social, anti-social behavior resulted, but when these norms were pro-social, pro-social behavior resulted. Thus, adherence to group norms seemed more influential than individuals' state of deindividuation.
A similar development can be found in research on relative deprivation, which is defined as the experience that one is denied something that one feels entitled to (e.g., Crosby, 1982). This tradition was also rooted in ideas about the irrational nature of collective action, in which relative deprivation was thought to contribute to the so-called breakdown of the social order through motivating irrational and aggressive outbursts of action. Not unlike LeBon's dangerous crowds that were possessed by the group mind, individuals' sense of relative deprivation was thought to result in riots and inter-group aggression. Later research and another quantitative research synthesis however suggested that it is group-based rather than individual deprivation that predicts collective action (H.J. Smith & Ortiz, 2002). Defining one's deprivation as something collective appeared to lift the burden of individuals' lonely and relatively powerless shoulders, and actually helped to engage in actions that aim to fight their deprivation (Van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004). The result was that group-based deprivation actually fitted better with solidarity accounts of collective action (in which groups constructively fight for their interests) than with breakdown accounts (in which groups fight to break down the social order).
Moreover, recent theorizing suggests that even individuals' emotions are not always experienced on the basis of the individual self. Mackie, Devos, and Smith (2000), for example, showed that participants could be induced to feel anger and fear on the basis of a relevant group membership. In a similar vein, Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, and Manstead (1998) showed that individuals can feel guilt for past wrongdoings of fellow group members. In other words, one can experience emotion on the basis of a group membership that connects one to a past never experienced (see (Zebel, Pennekamp, Van Zomeren, Doosje, Van Kleef, Vliek, & Van der Schalk, 2007). Thus, although your emotions may feel very much your own, they are not always based in your individual self. In at least some instances, they are much more ours than they are uniquely yours.
The larger point here is that psychological phenomena that appear to be irrational from an individualist perspective (e.g., riots) may actually be quite functional when viewed from the social identity approach. From this point of view, crowd behavior is not irrational and impulsive, but functionally guided by group norms. Furthermore, the experience of group-based deprivation functionally motivates collective action to fight the group's disadvantage together with fellow group members. And finally, the experience of emotions more generally on behalf of the collective is equally functional: Group-based guilt motivates reparation behavior towards those oppressed in the past, and group-based anger and fear motivate approach and avoidance of the out-group, respectively. It seems, then, that we have indeed evolved as social animals that are particularly "herdy": We even have a psychological mechanism available that allows individuals to become psychological group members. Therefore, there is no reason to reside with reductionism.
The case of individuals' moral conviction
Psychology has recently shown renewed interest in the domain of morality ? like emotion a realm traditionally governed by the individual self. Whereas recent theorizing has started on universal elements of, and processes associated with, morality (see (Haidt, 2007, for a review; for earlier perspectives see (Bandura, 2000.; (Kohlberg, 1984; for an intercultural perspective, see (Triandis & Suh, 2002), others have developed theoretical accounts of moral conviction: The extent to which individuals hold beliefs on an issue that they subjectively deem to be "absolutely true" (Skitka, Bauman, & Sargis, 2005; (Turiel, 2002). Theory and research suggests extremely negative responses to threats to individuals' moral conviction (Skitka et al., 2005; (Tetlock, 2002)). The general line of thought is that because individuals' convictions are strong and absolute individual attitudes, threats to their conviction threaten the very core of who they are (i.e., their individual self). Thus, one could become enraged because others mock the Qur?an, or one could become enraged because those who mock the Qur?an aim to restrict others' freedom of speech. As a consequence, their responses will be as extreme as their conviction (e.g., attacking those who mock sacred values).
From an outside perspective such extreme acts or responses are of course typically condemned, and perhaps as a consequence perceived as irrational, impulsive, and unreasonable. Similarly, extremists are often viewed as individuals who are so determined that they cannot be reasoned with, and hence they must be either crazy, or dangerous (e.g., terrorists). If this sounds familiar to you, then I might remind you that this sounds quite akin to how LeBon (1895) looked down upon the masses crowding together, and from which he concluded that these individuals must have lost everything what made them rationally human. From the perspective of the social identity approach, however, we should beware of such reductionism and consider the possibility that what might appear to be a madman (e.g., a terrorist) might in fact be a group member attempting to achieve group goals. Please note that this line of thought does not legitimize or excuse extremist actions --- it is simply to understand them better, so that ultimately such actions can be prevented.
Now, this is a good example of where the complementarity of the social identity approach becomes theoretically important and socially consequential. From a reductionist individualism perspective, the strong, extreme, and "universal" elements associated with individuals' moral conviction makes them highly resistant to change, and hence to any social influence. After all, there is little point in talking to a terrorist when we assume he or she has made up his or her mind and is willing to die for it. Or, alternatively, why talk to Muslims if you believe such individuals to be inherently evil? If we assume this individual to be thus, it will be hard to have any effect on him or her. However, we can also consider viewing individuals' moral conviction as something that is not necessarily based in the individual self, but in the group self. For example, my response to 'Fitna' may derive from my Dutch rather than my personal moral conviction regarding freedom of speech. If this can be the case, then the social identity approach suggests that social influence is possible: Namely when it comes from fellow group members. It follows that when the group does not (or no longer) support individuals' group-based moral conviction, negative responses to moral threat should be reduced.
This prediction was recently borne out in two experiments in which Dutch non-Muslim participants were asked to respond to the alleged foundation of a new political party for Muslims in the Netherlands (Van Zomeren, 2008). Before the experiment, participants' filled out measures of their individual moral conviction (i.e., their personal opinion), and their collective moral conviction (i.e., as a Dutchman in this case) on a moral issue (freedom of speech in the first study, and abortion in the second study). Subsequently, participants read a description of the new party's statement against freedom of speech, and abortion, and they read that a representative survey among the non-Muslim Dutch in the Netherlands disagreed with this statement. However, the level of support was manipulated such that the group validated individuals' collective moral conviction (i.e., a 95 % support condition), or that it did not validate their conviction (i.e., a 65 % support condition). Did this group norm manage to influence the responses to the political party among those with collective convictions? Results suggested an affirmative answer: Their negative responses to this party decreased when group support was lower. Put differently, when moral conviction was viewed as collective, group norms influenced how those with collective convictions responded to moral threats. Note that these results are difficult to explain from an individualist perspective, which would not predict social influence effects at all.
It seems, then, that the social identity approach even complements individualism in one of its most traditional domains. But note that this does not imply that moral conviction cannot be based in the individual. From the perspective of the social identity approach, the basis of moral conviction should be viewed in the light of the social context that makes salient individuals' individual or social identity. If individuals' personal identity is salient, their individual moral convictions may be difficult to change, and their negative responses to moral threats difficult to prevent. However, if individuals' social identity is salient (as was presumably the case in the studies I described), then their collective moral convictions as well as their responses to moral threats may be influenced by what fellow group members think, feel, and do. In other words, the social identity approach truly complements individualism, even when it comes to psychological phenomena that are often deemed to be at the very core of who we individually are. As I have argued in this article, this has an important implication for psychologists. If we want our theories to be more predictive of every-day life (where groups are all but absent), we need to incorporate the social identity approach in our thinking. In fact, there is no reason not to acknowledge its importance in psychology, and beyond.
Glossary
social identity is that part of individuals' self-concept that derived from their "knowledge of their membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and the emotional significance of that membership" (Tajfel, 1981, p. 255)
group self is that part of the individuals' self-concept that is derived from their group membership(s)
self-perception is perception of the self as an individual or group member (in the context of self-categorization processes)
group mind is defined as LeBon's supernatural force possessing those who dare to join a crowd
deindividuation is a psychological state in which the self is arguably lost, individual norms fade out, and impulsive, anti-social behavior follows (but see (Postmes & Spears, 1998)
relative deprivation is the perception and/or experience of lacking something that one feels entitled to
moral conviction is the strong and "absolute" individual attitude on a moral issue
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Footnotes
1 Editor?s Note: Fitna is the title of a movie recently released by Dutch parlementarian Geert Wilders. In the movie, Wilders links the Qur?an to terrorism, Islamic rule, and Islam in the Netherlands, and equates Islam with violence. It has now been renounced by the Dutch government.
