TY - JOUR
T1 - Social identity emergence in attitude interactions and the identity strengthening effects of cumulative attitude agreement
AU - O'Reilly, Caoimhe
AU - Maher, Paul J.
AU - Smith, Elaine M.
AU - MacCarron, Pádraig
AU - Quayle, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
PY - 2024/2
Y1 - 2024/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - attitudes
KW - computer-mediated communication
KW - emerging identification
KW - online opinion sharing
KW - opinion-based groups
KW - social identity theory
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85170662295&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/ejsp.3000
DO - 10.1002/ejsp.3000
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85170662295
SN - 0046-2772
VL - 54
SP - 97
EP - 117
JO - European Journal of Social Psychology
JF - European Journal of Social Psychology
IS - 1
ER -