The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries ( N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self‐esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

Work on collective action focuses mainly on the perspective of disadvantaged groups.However, the dynamics of social change cannot be fully understood without taking into account the reactions of the members of advantaged groups to collective action by low status groups. In 10 experiments conducted in four different intergroup contexts (N=1349), we examine advantaged groups support for Normative vs Non-normative collective action by disadvantaged groups. Experiments 1a to 1e show that normative collective action is perceived as more likely to improve the disadvantaged group's position and that nonnormative collective action is perceived as more damaging to the advantaged group's social image. Also, these differences are due to differences in perceptions of actions violating norms of protest and perceptions of protesters as blaming the advantaged group for the inequality.Experiments 2a to 3 show that high compared to low identified members of advantaged groups distinguish more between types of collective action, showing a greater preference for the normative type. Both a mediational design and an experimental-causal-chain design (Experiments 3 and 4) show that support among high-identifiers depends more on whether collective action damages the high-status group's social image than on whether it actually reduces inequality. Findings suggest that high-status groups' support for collective action is not only shaped by the perceived likelihood of change but also by its potential damage to the image of the high-status ingroup.

Previous research has shown that one way for members of stigmatized groups to deal with the aversive experience of discrimination is by increasing group identification (Branscombe, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999; Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002). Indeed, group identification can buffer the negative impact of discrimination on psychological well-being (Kertzner, Meyer, Frost, & Stirratt, 2009; Smith & Silva, 2011). In the present research we examine potential coping mechanisms through which identification with a stigmatized group increases psychological well-being. According to Social Identity Theory (SIT, Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986), members of stigmatized groups confronted with discrimination can try to cope by distancing themselves from the stigma

International audienceAccording to Scheepers and colleagues (2006), instrumental goals refer to the maximization of profit whereas identity goals are associated with the attainment of a positive social identity. In two experiments, we show that when negotiations are purely instrumental individuals prefer pro-outgroup deviants as representatives (Experiments 1 & 2). In contrast, when negotiations are identity-related, group members increase their preference for normative (Experiments 1 & 2) and pro-ingroup deviants (Experiment 1). Furthermore, these goals also impact perceptions of typicality of group members. Taken together, these results suggest strategic acceptance of deviance when the goal is to bring the other party to concede and increased preference for normativity when identity is the group's main preoccupation. We discuss implications of these results for research on negotiation as well as on the influence of the intergroup context on intragroup dynamics

In two experiments, we analyzed the use of intra‐group differentiation between normative and deviant members as an identity mobilization strategy in intergroup negotiations. Because ingroup members sometimes try to obtain the support of outgroup audiences to attain their goals, we propose that in intergroup negotiations, people attempt to minimize the distinction between the parties involved by changing the appraisal of deviance and including deviant members in the ingroup's prototype. In line with this hypothesis, differences in the assessment of typicality between normative and deviant targets were reduced in instrumental intergroup negotiation contexts. Furthermore, we explored a boundary condition for this effect and found that such outgroup approach is disrupted when threats taint the intergroup negotiation context. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.