Social Categorisation

1. Social Categorisation PSY 203s Dr. Chiwoza R. Bandawe

2. World is complex and categorisations enables simplifying of environment and provide a guide for action • Categories are “nouns that cut slices” through our environment (Allport, 1954, p.174)

3. Short-cuts developed to process vast information in environment. People categorise objects and people into groups (cognitive process) • Socio-cultural history: “race”, sex, class, religion, language most commonly used criteria of classification (de la Rey, 1991)

4. Social construction of reality: People learn how to define reality from other people: • “What we see does not have meaning until we learn from others and our own experiences how to interpret and make sense out of our perceptions” (Eitzen & Zinn, 1998, p.90)

5. Definitions of social categorisation • “The ordering of the social environment in terms of social categories, that is of groupings of persons in a manner which is meaningful to the subject” (Tajfel, 1974) • Social categorisation must first be present for intergroup behaviour to occur • Hatred and discrimination arises from “us” vs. “them” which is categorisation

6. Child taught who to like/dislike • Child constructs own web of “social affiliations” as shown in “we” “they” • “Intergroup categorizations of all kinds may bring into play what seems to the individual to be the appropriate form of intergroup behaviour” (Tajfel, 1970, p.98) • People are taught to develop “norms” of behaviour towards outgroup

7. Consequences of generic norms towards outgroup • 1. Discrimination will exist towards outgroup even in absence of reason or person’s interest • 2. Discrimination may come to exist even in absence of historical context • 3. Discriminatory behaviour may happen before the development of any hostile attitudes

8. Behaviour determined • Learning process based on manipulation of symbols & abstractions. Requires adaptation to each unique situation. Appropriate behaviour is a powerful social motive (Fiske, 2004) • “Judgments of what is appropriate are determined by social norms, or sets of expectations” (Tajfel, 1970, p.102)

9. Principle of accentuation • Similarities within groups and differences between groups are exaggerated or accentuated. “They all look alike”. “We are not like them, we are different” • Categorisation of people accompanied by: emotive (feelings of love & hate) & evaluative (good vs. bad) component • We can identify selves through group (SIT)

10. Salience • Importance of an identity in given situation • Categories of social identity include: • Social groupings: Blacks, Women, Jews • Political/cultural: Feminists, gays, ANC • Work/Occup: Miners, managers, students • Recreational: Football players, bikers • Health: Diabetics, HIV+, anorexics

11. Types of distortion(Foster, 1997) • Bias in external reality • 1. The categories accentuate group differences (whites: 7% black) • 2. Categories may be over-inclusive (NP opponents referred to as Communists) • 3. People evaluated on the basis of their group membership

12. Categorisation in N. Ireland • Cairns (1980) Cues used to determine the religion of another: • Area of residence • School attended • Names • Appearance (clothing and face) • Speech (accent & content)

13. Many children in N. Ireland aware of cues by 7 years, all aware by 11years • Stereotyped cues in N. Ireland need to be slowly learned as opposed to perceptual cues in racial context • Categorisation in N.I therefore is a “social construction of ethnicity which is historically based” (Cairns, 1982, p.281)

14. Conditions necessary for social categorisation • 1. The social world is divided into two clearly distinct and non overlapping categories • 2. One cannot cross to the other group • Behaviour determined by group which categorizes through comparison, differentiation and social identity

15. In such categorizations people “do not see the world through spheres of work, religion, politics, education etc but in terms of the two distinct spheres of Catholic and Protestant” (Easthope, 1976 cited in Cairns, 1982, p.281) • Terminal identity (Black, white/ Cath, Prot) embraces and integrates lesser identities

16. Polarity of groups established from birth • “Mixed marriages” leads to outcasts as parents may feel unsuccessful in transmitting categorization to offspring

17. Research • Tajfel & Wilkes (1963): Judgements of physical stimuli (vertical lines). • Control group: Estimates close to length of lines • Experimental group: Group 1 & Group 2: • Exaggeration of differences between groups • Underestimation of differences within gps

18. Wide replication of study to other areas: impressions of faces, speech categories. • Eiser (1971): Permissiveness of series of attitude statements re recreational use of drugs • Experimental: The Gazette vs. The Messenger. Great differences made • Control: No newspaper label. Differences between permissive & restrictive small.

19. Differentiation & assimilation • Doise et al (1978): School children presented with photos of 3 boys & photo of 3 girls. Series of adjectives applied to photos. • Gp 1: Told of boy vs girl photos • Gp 2: Not told • Gp 1: Different adjectives to describe boys & girls. Identical adjs to describe same gender

20. Rabbie & Horwitz (1969): Dutch school children divided into groups of 4: “Green” & “Blue” • Gp 1: One of gps was to receive reward • Gp 2: Not told • Results: Gp 1: Ingroup rated more favourably than outgroup • Gp 2: No such bias

21. Conc (1969): Mere classification not enough to influence intergroup judgments, but feeling of interdependence. • Conc (1982): Ingroup – outgroup differentiation seen in control group. Hence “placing people into one of two, albeit pretty meaningless, categories could have predictable effects on their judgements of real peers” (Brown, 1995,)

22. Observations • Some categories are acceptable others are not. • We categorise categorising through evaluation. • We can recategorise people depending on knowledge we have

23. Minimal Group Paradigm • Tajfel et al (1971): Does simply belonging to a group instigate behavioural prejudice? • Groups set up that were stripped of aspects of group life: Face to face interactions, internal group structure, norms, pre existing attitudes. • Subjects: 64 British school boys from a public school in Bristol, UK.

24. Separate groups of 8 from same form, house and school • First Part: Intergroup categorisation. Assigned to meaningless groups by way of flashing dots estimation. Assigned to “over-estimators” and “under-estimators” or “Better accuracy” and “worse accuracy” • Put in cubicle to give rewards to others

25. Results: • Boys gave more money to ingroup members than to outgroup members • Second experiment: paintings (Klee & Kandinsky) determine groups: • Results: • More money given towards ingroup members by passing maximum joint profit

26. Cross cultural applications • Weatherell (1982) Collectivist background vs. individualist background? • Subjects: 38 Polynesian children, 75 whilte New Zealander children • Polynesian children favoured ingroup but were more sympathetic to outgroup that Western children who acted at expense of outgroup

27. Critic of categorisation theory • Categorisation helps us make sense of complex world and process vast information, information reduction • Oakes et al (1994): “categorisation itself elaborates rather than reduces the information available in a stimulus. It ..brings together our general understanding of the world and the material reality in which we live” (p.113)

28. Categorising provides us with information. • Perceptual selectivity is not denying us valuable information, it is active engagement with the environment “such that the perceiver constructs it in the most appropriately informative manner” Oakes et al, 1994, p.114) • Selection a positive process not a negative one.

29. Categorisation seeks to bring together stored knowledge in a form which makes sense of the world and facilitates our goals within the world. • It is a sensitive, dynamic process of imputing meaning to action. • Categorisation does not distort reality (Oakes et al, 1994) it helps people negotiate their understanding of the world