The role of the ‘other’ in national identity: exploring the context‐dependence of the national ingroup stereotype

Abstract

Analysts from a range of disciplines (especially sociology and social anthropology) highlight the role of the`other' in the construction and de®nition of national identity. Recently some social psychologists have come to emphasize the inherently relational nature of identity. Drawing upon these recent investigations, the present paper reports a ®eld study investigating the context-dependent nature of group identity. Using a modi®ed version of the Katz±Braly task, British subjects (n 240) stereotyped two national groups: Americans and British. They did so in two conditions. In the`one-group' conditions, subjects rated either of the two groups. In the`two-group' conditions, they rated one whilst also considering the other. Following Oakes, Haslam and Turner (1994) we predicted that whereas subjects' stereotypes of the national outgroup (the Americans) would be unaected by this manipulation, their stereotype of the national ingroup (the British) would be aected. This prediction was con®rmed. We also predicted that the national ingroup stereotype obtained in the`two-group' condition would be one which was de®ned in contrast to the American`other' which constituted the comparative context. Using a measure which takes into account the applicability of ingroup-de®ning terms to both the ingroup and the outgroup (the diagnosticity measure of stereotyping proposed by McCauley and Stitt, 1978) we show that the ingroup identity de®nition produced in this condition did indeed dierentiate the British from the Americans. The signi®cance of these data for those concerned with the application of social psychological theory to real-life social problems is discussed.

Ethnic school context and the national and sub-national identifications of pupils

“…Most theories on identity, self-categorization theory in particular, emphasize that social identities are strongly dependent on context (Tajfel 1981;Oakes, Haslam and Turner 1994), and empirical evidence supports this point (Hopkins and Murdoch 1999). It is, then, surprising that the relation between the school context and the national identifications of pupils is widely neglected.…”

Explicit and implicit attitudes of Scottish and Maltese children to national identity

“…These results appear to imply and support previous research, in that children's national stereotypes could be seen as a function of the comparative context (Haslam, Turner, Oaks, & McGarty, 1992;Haslam, Oakes, Turner & McGarty, 1995;Hopkins, & Murdoch, 2009). There was also slight gender variance, with regards to the reducing levels of negative out-grouping shown by female participants, supporting the findings of Gilligan (1982) and Bennett (2001, Sani et al, 2003).…”

“Who is really British anyway?”: A thematic analysis of responses to online hate materials

“…Thus, national identities are continuously re-defined through interactions with different 'others' (Condor, 2000;Hopkins & Murdoch, 1999). Coffey and Woolworth (2004) observed that some online discussions can be characterised by escalation (i.e.…”