We constantly interact with people from different social groups to our own: cultures, ethnic groups, genders, ages, occupations, organizations, even clubs. We may wish to affiliate with another person or group, or to distinguish ourselves from them. We express this motivation through language and communication, and through our interpretation of others’ communication. The main communication
Exercising power over others is a common human experience. Children override the better judgment of their parents, displaying temper tantrums or simply nagging them to exhaustion. Parents in turn control their children using reason mixed with bribes and brute force, or the threat of it. In seemingly equal relationships such as that between spouses, people
Organizations are intergroup in nature in that they are collections of people working together to achieve a common set of objectives. These objectives are typically around the creation of innovative products and services that meet the needs of customers, and organizations are always searching for new ways to deliver products and services that offer better
Intergroup contact occurs when a member or members of one social group come into contact with member(s) of another social group. Research has focused on whether such contact can influence attitudes about social groups, and whether certain types of contact yield the most positive prejudice-reduction outcomes. Typically, the specific group memberships have significance in the
Relationships and communication between social groups of all kinds is an increasingly pressing topic in a globalized world in which there are conflicts of resources, religions, and ideologies. Discursive psychology’s distinct contribution is to try to understand this topic through studying how discourse works in the practical settings in which intergroup issues become live. These
Social groups, such as adolescents, police, and ethnic groups, very often have their own distinctive cultures that include such ingredients as specialized foods and utensils, customs and rituals, dress styles, art, music, dance, rituals, literature, and so forth, while other intergroup situations (e.g., artificially constructed laboratory groups) constitute social categories that cannot claim such cultural
Intergroup relations involve the feelings, evaluations, beliefs, and behaviors that groups and their members have toward another group and its members. Negative intergroup relations typically involve prejudice (negative feelings and evaluations), stereotypes (beliefs about groups and their members), and discrimination (unfair treatment). However, intergroup bias does not necessarily require negative orientations. Bias may reflect unusually
Intergroup Anxiety Definition People often feel uncomfortable when interacting with others who belong to a different social group than they do. Intergroup anxiety is the term used to describe this discomfort. When interacting with members of a different social group (called an outgroup), people often anticipate a variety of negative outcomes, such as being taken
Intergroup Emotions Definition Intergroup emotions refer to the specific emotional reactions that people feel toward a social group and its members. Intergroup emotions are closely related to the concept of prejudice. Both intergroup emotions and prejudice involve individuals’ feelings about social groups to which they do not belong; however, these two terms differ in the
Social psychological research on intergroup relations concerns the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors humans express when they think of themselves and others as members of social groups. All humans belong to many different types of social groups, ranging from smaller groupings of people (such as one’s circles of friends) to larger social categories (such as gender