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6 - Intergroup Emotions Theory: Prejudice and Differentiated Emotional Reactions toward Outgroups
- from Part I - General Theoretical Perspectives
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- By Angela T. Maitner, American University of Sharjah, Eliot R. Smith, Indiana University, Diane M. MacKie, University of California, Santa Barbara
- Edited by Chris G. Sibley, University of Auckland, Fiona Kate Barlow, University of Queensland
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Prejudice
- Published online:
- 17 November 2016
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2016, pp 111-130
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Summary
As a man I pity you, but as an official I must show you no mercy; as a politician I regard him as an ally, but as a moralist I loathe him.
William James (1890/1983, p. 43)Emotions, William James tells us, are embedded in identity. How I feel about you depends not only on who you are, but also on who I am. In an influential chapter merging theories of social identity and emotion felt toward other groups, Smith (1993) similarly argued that considering intergroup attitudes as a combination of appraisals, emotions, and action tendencies based in the perceiver's social identity could better explain shifting intergroup evaluations across contexts and could better predict differentiated intergroup outcomes than traditional models of prejudice.
In the more than 20 years since the publication of that work, intergroup emotions theory (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000; Mackie, Maitner, & Smith, 2009; Mackie & Smith, 2002, 2015; Smith & Mackie, 2006, 2008; Smith, Seger, & Mackie, 2007) has grown and developed into a comprehensive theory of intergroup relations that provides a complementary perspective to traditional attitude models of prejudice. In this chapter, we rearticulate the central tenets of the theory and then focus on how social categorization and group identification – who I am – interact with context to influence individuals’ appraisals, emotions, and behavioral intentions. We then focus on how three discrete emotional reactions elicit different and specific negative intergroup responses, before focusing on implications of intergroup emotions theory for improving intergroup relations. We finish with a discussion of current directions.
Intergroup Emotions Theory
Intergroup emotions theory (IET) suggests that when a particular social identity is activated, individuals will interpret events in terms of their implications for that ingroup, rather than for the individual personally. The more individuals identify with their currently activated social identity, the more extremely they will appraise group-relevant events. Group-based appraisals then elicit specific emotions and action tendencies. Because they are rooted in concerns for the group, we refer to such emotions as group based (see Niedenthal & Brauer, 2012). Intergroup relations are dynamic and ongoing, and thus individuals are expected to continuously reappraise changing situations, and their emotions to wax and wane, or amplify and change, along with changes in the intergroup context.
11 - Intergroup Emotions
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- By Diane M. MacKie, University of California, Santa Barbara, Lisa A. Silver, University of California, Santa Barbara, Eliot R. Smith, Indiana University
- Edited by Larissa Z. Tiedens, Stanford University, California, Colin Wayne Leach, University of California, Santa Cruz
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- Book:
- The Social Life of Emotions
- Published online:
- 01 April 2011
- Print publication:
- 27 September 2004, pp 227-245
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Summary
That emotions arise in intergroup contexts is of course uncontroversial. We are thrilled when our national team wins the World Cup against stiff competition, angry when protesters in another country burn our flag, excited as the party we voted for wins the election, and disgusted when local college students brawl drunkenly with a neighboring school. Despite the obvious impetus that intergroup behavior is to emotions, the idea that emotions may actually be intergroup phenomena is not so much controversial as it is, at least in social psychology, unconsidered. Emotion is typically assumed to be an individual phenomenon, triggered when an individual interprets events as either favoring or harming his or her personal goals or desires in the context of whether he or she has the personal resources to cope or not. Yet such approaches do not seem to fully capture the kinds of emotions evoked by our examples. Unless we are a member of the national team, caught by mistake in the demonstration, up for election, or one of those actually involved in the brawl, none of these events may impact us directly or personally. Yet because these events touch those we are close to, those we identity with, those we feel part of or one with, we, too, experience emotion.
Our attempts to explain such emotional experiences have led us to consider emotion as an intergroup phenomenon.