Social identity emergence in attitude interactions and the identity strengthening effects of cumulative attitude agreement

Abstract

The social identity approach asserts that self‐categorization is fluid and created anew in context. Despite this, research often conceptualizes identities as being based on static categories. In this article, we assess: how attitudes may be relevant attributes used to categorize the self and others, and therefore have the potential to foster social identification; how such categories/identities can be updated with new attitudinal information; and how attitudes have greater impact when socially expressed. Across three preregistered computer‐mediated interactive experiments (N = 3087), involving attitudes relating to the Ukraine‐Russia conflict of 2022, we find, identities can be updated with the introduction of new attitudes in interaction; cumulative attitude congruence strengthens identification; attitudinal interaction strengthens opinion‐based group identification and activism intentions, and ingroups can strategically align their attitudes. We conclude that to fully understand identity formation, we must acknowledge the fluidity of self‐categories and resultant identities, in line with the original specifications of the social identity approach.

The we—sum of its parts or something else?

“…Only an interaction of at least two persons is needed for the transition from personal to social relationships; groups are formed when two or more individuals share the perception of being members of the same social category (Turner 1982). Interactive identity formation takes place in political, discoursive opinion spaces, whereby beyond deductive categorization based on membership in long-established groups, categorization can also emerge inductively through perception of current attitudinal congruence in opinions (O'Reilly et al 2024). Social identification with spontaneously arising opinion-based groups suggests that there is no fixed set of "real" identities, but that the (un-)reality of identities can fluctuate and be updated depending on, for example, perceived cumulative attitude congruence (ibid.).…”