Common Ingroup Identity Model

Social Categorization and Bias

Social categorization, the categorization of people into different groups, has another unique feature. When a person categorizes others into groups, these categories are fundamentally differentiated between groups to which the perceiver belongs (ingroups) and groups to which the perceiver does not belong (outgroups). Because people derive their self-esteem in part from the prestige of groups to which they belong, members are motivated to regard their ingroup in a positive light compared to other groups. Upon social categorization, people typically express more positive beliefs, feelings, and behaviors toward ingroup members than toward outgroup members. Hence, social categorization can enable ingroup favoritism to service ego-enhancing motivations as long as the situational context reinforces the importance of the categorical distinction between the groups.

Although a preferential ingroup orientation can evolve into a more destructive, anti-outgroup attitude (i.e., prejudice), the mechanisms of ingroup favoritism can also provide a means to reduce prejudice and discrimination. This latter assertion is the essence of the common ingroup identity model.

Social Categorization and Recategorization

The common ingroup identity model recognizes the fluidity of social categorization processes and the reality that people belong to a variety of groups that are hierarchically organized in terms of inclusiveness. For example, people are members of families, neighborhoods, cities, regions, and nations. Modifying goals, motives, expectations, or factors within the immediate situation provides the opportunity to shift the level of category inclusiveness that will be dominant. This fluidity of social categorization, and consequently, the salience of a particular social identity, are important because of the implications for altering the way people think about others in terms of their ingroup or outgroup membership, and therefore, how positively they feel about them. Specifically, the common ingroup identity model proposes that inducing people to recategorize ingroup and outgroup members within a common boundary inclusive of both groups (e.g., a school, a city, a nation, humanity) redirects the cognitive and motivational forces that drive ingroup favoritism to increase positive attitudes toward others who were previously seen primarily in terms of their outgroup membership.

The development of a common ingroup identity does not necessarily always require each group to forsake its less inclusive group identity completely. It is possible for members to conceive of two groups (for example, parents and children) as distinct units within the context of a superordinate (i.e., family) identity (as “subgroups within one group” or a “dual identity” representation). When group identities and the associated cultural values are central to members' self-identification or when they are associated with high status or highly visible cues to group membership, it may be very threatening for people to be asked to relinquish these group identities or, as perceivers, to be “colorblind.” Indeed, demands to forsake ethnic or racial group identities to adopt a colorblind ideology would likely arouse strong reactance and result in especially poor intergroup relations. There is support, however, for the idea that if people continued to regard themselves as members of different groups—but all playing on the same team (i.e., part of the same inclusive entity), intergroup relations between the “subgroups” would be more positive than if members only considered themselves “separate groups.”

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