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Effects of deterrence on intensity of group identification and efforts to protect group identity

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Abstract

Group identification serves important functions such as motivating group members to work towards group goals and sustaining their efforts to maintain a positive group identity. Thus increasing or decreasing group identification has implications for group members’ commitment to achieving group goals. We propose that group identification and group-level efforts to protect group identity can be reduced or enhanced by deterrents to feeling identified with the ingroup. To test this idea, we exposed participants to different types of deterrents to group identification: a reason for not liking the ingroup (Study 1), difficulty of achieving an ingroup goal (Study 2), and a threat to ingroup positive identity (Study 3). Group identification and strength of efforts to achieve a group goal increased with the strength of deterrence, to the point where it decreased in the strong deterrent condition. Implications for intergroup motivation and social identity are discussed.

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Notes

  1. As part of an exploratory analysis, we measured the following emotional responses: good mood, bad mood, uncomfortable, guilty, ashamed, angry, happy, frustrated, helpless, hopeless, excited, sad, regret, calm, outraged, pride, discouraged, and apathetic. We previously theorized that Brehm’s emotional intensity paradigm could be used to detect specific emotional responses instigated in a situation because only the experienced emotion would show a cubic pattern from deterrence (Miron et al. 2011). Thus, we expected that only the primary emotion elicited would reveal a cubic pattern following the deterrence manipulation. Out of all specific emotions, only pride showed a significant cubic effect, F(1, 40) = 5.62, p = .02, MSE = 3.37. Pride decreased from the control (M = 5.29, SD = 1.94) to low deterrence (M = 3.82, SD = 1.94), t(40) = 1.99, p = .05, increased from low to moderate deterrence (M = 5.67, SD = 1.94), t(40) = 2.12, p = .05, but did not decrease significantly from moderate to high deterrence (M = 4.70, SD = 1.42), t(40) = 1.15, p = .26. While this finding should be interpreted with caution since only one in 18 emotions was significant, it remains possible that pride was the only emotion experienced by the participants. This could further suggest that group identification is strongly associated with feelings of ingroup pride; these two measures were indeed highly correlated in Study 3, r = .67, p < .001. Taken together, the results seem consistent with previous work (Brewer 1999; Cialdini et al. 1976) and support our view of identification as mobilizing group members’ commitment to achieving ingroup goals.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UniSR-Social.Lab, San Raffaele University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    Giuseppe Pantaleo

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, 800 Algoma Blvd., Oshkosh, WI, 54901, USA

    Anca M. Miron

  3. University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, Stevens Point, WI, USA

    Mark A. Ferguson

  4. University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Scott D. Frankowski

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  1. Giuseppe Pantaleo
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Correspondence to Anca M. Miron.

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Pantaleo, G., Miron, A.M., Ferguson, M.A. et al. Effects of deterrence on intensity of group identification and efforts to protect group identity. Motiv Emot 38, 855–865 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9440-3

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