This project examines the relationship between team identification and collaboration configuration and how they affect attributions to failure. In a sample of 110 participants, we examined reactions to failure. We manipulated perceptions of similarity among participants and a confederate of the study, we also manipulated collaboration configuration. We found that the collaboration configuration manipulation effected attributions; attributions about teammate failure in the collocated condition were more situational than attributions in the distributed condition, which were more dispositional. This finding supports the notion that collaboration configuration is important for understanding reactions to teammate failure.

Gossip is a little studied topic and even fewer studies have examined gossip from the perspective of social identity and self categorization theories. However, many of the functions of gossip have significant implications for group processes, including bonding, norm transmission and reinforcement, marginalization of deviants, and social influence. Particularly for those on the margins of the group, gossip may be used as a tool to gain acceptance in the group, as gossip is an effective way to express group loyalty and adherence to group norms. Study One investigated the extent to which being a prototypical member of one's group was predictive of likelihood to spread gossip. Using sororities as the group, members were presented with a hypothetical piece of gossip and asked the extent to which the member who gossiped is prototypical, how likely they would be to share the gossip with other group members, and how prototypical they perceive themselves to be of the sorority. It was predicted that peripheral group members would be more likely to spread gossip than central group members, particularly about other peripheral group members, and particularly when the information was not highly negative. Study Two was conducted in parallel, using the same methodology, but with a piece of gossip about a celebrity instead of a fellow sorority member. It was predicted that the results would mirror those of Study One and that peripheral members would be most likely to spread the gossip. While none of the stated hypotheses were supported, there were several unanticipated interactions. In both Study One and Study Two, there was a significant three-way interaction, in that a highly uncertain respondent, a prototypical target, and relatively mildly negative gossip was associated with anticipated transmission to the highest number of sorority members. While the results were unanticipated, they are not inexplicable and the implications for research in the areas of gossip, celebrity, and self categorization theory are discussed.

Thesis (M. Consumer Science)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

The purpose of this research was to examine how non-Aboriginal Canadians might respond if the label genocide is used to describe the historical mistreatment of the Aboriginal Peoples’ of Canada. In two studies, I manipulated the perception of Residential Schools as genocide by informing (or not informing) undergraduate student participants that some people believe what happened should be labeled genocide. I also assessed the potential moderating role of knowledge by either measuring participants’ pre-existing knowledge of Residential Schools or manipulating how much participants learned about Residential Schools through a passage. Overall, participants’ reactions to the label depended on what they knew about Residential Schools such that participants with a superficial level of knowledge responded defensively to a description of Residential Schools as genocide, while participants with no knowledge or high levels of knowledge responded positively. Findings provide theoretical insight into how knowledge affects perpetrator group members’ reactions to historical harms.

Thesis (M. Consumer Science)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Syftet med föreliggande studie var att undersöka hur gymnasieelever upplever sociala medier utifrån Tajfels (1974) Social identity theory (SIT) samt vilka negativa och positiva aspekter gymnasieelever upplever med sociala medier. Med hjälp av en kvalitativ intervjumetod utgör svaren från tolv gymnasieelever i södra Sverige empirin för studiens resultat. Tidigare forskning har visat att responsen av andra medlemmar på sociala medier spelar stor roll för ungdomars psykiska välbefinnande. Resultatet visade att anledningen till informanternas användning av sociala medier till stor del berodde på att andra i deras umgängeskrets var aktiva, att informanterna upplevde kränkningar som ett oacceptabelt, men vanligt förekommande, beteende på sociala medier. Allt material bearbetades utifrån Burnards (1991) innehållsanalys där författarna utifrån empirins basala koder konstruerade följande huvudteman/underteman: kommunikation/anonymitet, etik/olämpligt beteende och tillhörighet/gruppidentitet. I diskussionsavsnittet diskuterade författarna resultatet med utgångspunkt utifrån den tidigare forskningen samt SIT. Här diskuterades bland annat att både tidigare forskning samt föreliggande resultat har funnit att individer upplevde en trygghet i att diskutera ämnen av mer kontroversiell karaktär bakom en skärm.

To date, procedural justice research has paid little attention to how people react to procedural discrimination (favoring self vs. favoring other), that is, how people react when they and the others are treated with different procedures. To fill this gap in the procedural justice literature and advance our understanding in this area, the current thesis presents an analysis of how reactions to procedural discrimination are qualified by the group membership and intragroup position (ingroup prototypicality and intragroup status) of the parties involved in intragroup and intergroup contexts. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that in an intergroup context, as group members perceive ingroup bias as legitimate, they react more positively when they are favored over an outgroup member than when an outgroup member is favored over them. In particular, because group members perceive the ingroup authority to be more related to them, their reactions to favoring self as opposed to favoring other procedures are stronger when the authority is an ingroup member than when the authority is an outgroup member. Studies 3 to 5 showed that in an intragroup context, peripheral members, who are highly concerned about group acceptance, perceive a high level of illegitimacy and react particularly negatively when a prototypical member is favored over them. On the other hand, prototypical members paired with a prototypical or peripheral member, and peripheral members paired with another peripheral member react similarly to procedural discrimination whether it favors them or the other group member. Studies 6 and 7 also focused on the intragroup context. These studies revealed that when high status group members are favored over a low status member, if they perceive the status difference as legitimate, they perceive relatively high levels of procedural legitimacy and procedural fairness, and report a relatively low level of negative affect. On the other hand, when low status group members are discriminated against in favor of a high status counterpart, they report a relatively high level of negative affect even if they perceive the status difference as legitimate and think that the favoring other procedure is relatively legitimate and fair. Taken together, the current program of studies reveals that depending on group membership or intragroup position, group members may react differently to favoring self as opposed to favoring other procedures. Furthermore, affective reactions to the procedures may not be consistent with cognitive judgments of the procedures. The research also reveals that the influence of group membership and intragroup position on reactions to procedural discrimination can be conceptualized in terms of sensitivity to procedural information (Proposition 1) and perceived procedural legitimacy (Proposition 2), suggesting that the group-value model (Lind & Tyler, 1988) and the social identity perspective (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987; for a review, see Hogg, 2005, 2006) can help explain reactions to procedural discrimination. In conclusion, the current thesis makes significant contribution to the procedural justice literature.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The present work is a project in social psychology that looks at four different types of ingroup identification and investigates their possible variations as a function of defining personal characteristics and group-related phenomena. Five studies provide evidence for the validity of a qualitative distinction between centrality, social, communal, and interdependent identification and examine the way in which culture, gender, group status, relationship attachment style, and group type predicted each type of identification with groups. The research employs a multi-sample approach and combines correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental designs. Research data was collected using purpose-built questionnaires that included a newly constructed Centrality, Social, Communal and Interdependent Identification Scale (CSCIIS) together with previously validated measures. Participants from Western and non-Western cultural backgrounds showed dispositional differences in their preferred type of identification, and differed in the extent to which their identification was focused on the group as a whole or on the individual group members. The studies integrate social identity theory, self-construal, and behavioural interdependence ideas, suggesting that there are some types of ingroup identification that are primarily based on interpersonal processes and relationships between group members. The leading themes are those of the conceptual complexity in assessing individuals’ identification with various social groups and the possibilities for deepening our understanding of the phenomenon by considering the key aspects that separate one type of ingroup identification from another. The results help bring clarity to a confusing literature dealing with ingroup identification and illustrate the value of a different level approach in the area.

Community, Attachment, Structures and the Epidemic maps some of the changes in gay men�s experience and conceptualisation of community that have occurred during the AIDS epidemic. Social identity theory has been employed to investigate the social-psychological aspects of gay identity at personal, social and community levels. The study compares three generations of gay men in Melbourne; pre- peri- and post-AIDS. As a starting point, the study employed focus groups to explore basic conceptions of gay community. In the first of two major data collection phases, 32 gay men between the ages of 18 and 40 participated in semistructured interviews of between 45 minutes and one and a half hours. The interviews explored the men�s social networks, past and present relationship to the commercial gay scene, feelings about gay organisations businesses, neighbourhoods, entertainment, aesthetics, the way they see other gay people, their thoughts about the impact of AIDS on gay communities and their aspirations for gay communities. The second phase of data collection utilised a questionnaire developed from the analysis of the interviews. The 55 item questionnaire covered demographic information, coming out history, initial experiences of the gay world, friendship networks, feelings about the institutions, people and conceptual elements of gay community, items concerning practices of gay community, the community attachment subscale from the SAPA study and items on HIV/AIDS. The questionnaire was completed by 432 gay men, 207 recruited at the Midsumma carnival, an annual gay and lesbian event in Melbourne and 225 through the mailing list of the Victorian AIDS Council. Analysis of the questionnaire data uncovered a complex constellation of difference in the conceptualisation and experience of gay community between the groups, particularly with regard to the content and boundaries of the category �gay community�. The research challenges practice based models of gay community attachment and proposes a more dynamic, fluid and multi-dimensional conceptualisation of gay social identity.

The aim of this project was to examine which factors are important in influencing communication between health professionals and patients. Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) was the theoretical framework adopted in this project. CAT proposes that individuals are influenced by their personal and social identities and that, in many cases, it is an individual's group or social identity that is most salient in an interaction. The underlying theoretical assumption in this project was that communication between health professionals and patients is characterised by intergroup rather than interpersonal salience and convergent methodologies were used to test this proposition. In addition to CAT, the linguistic category model (LCM), which is also used to investigate individuals' perceptions of intergroup salience, was adopted to complement the findings derived from CAT. There were seven studies in this project. The first study described the methodology for obtaining the data set used in Part 1 of the thesis. Participants wrote retrospective descriptions of a satisfactory and unsatisfactory conversation with a hospital staff member which they had experienced as a hospital in-patient. Study 1 provided a profile of the participants. In Study 2 the stimuli were participants' written recollections of 69 unsatisfactory and 79 satisfactory conversations. The LCM was used to test for differences in participants' perceptions of differing levels of intergroup salience between the two types of descriptions. While intergroup bias was evident, the results were complex. In Study 3 a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the same data set was conducted. This study explored differences between patients' and health professionals' goals, sociolinguistic strategies, and the patients' descriptions of the health professionals across the two types of conversational descriptions. Results revealed differences in goals, strategies, and descriptions. In the descriptions of satisfactory conversations, participants reported goals concerning reassurance and developing relationships. These two goals were not evident in the descriptions of unsatisfactory conversations, where attending to role relations was of greater importance. Participants reported the use of different sociolinguistic strategies for themselves and for health professionals across the different conversation types, which indicated that, for reports of satisfactory conversations, participants viewed their interactions with health professionals as more personal and positive than in the unsatisfactory ones. Participants described the health professionals in their descriptions of satisfactory conversations in more undifferentiated terms than the health professionals in the descriptions of unsatisfactory ones. Study 4 comprised two parts. First, using the data set from Studies 2 and 3, a qualitative analysis was conducted which explored thematic differences between the descriptions of satisfactory and unsatisfactory conversations. This analysis indicated more interpersonal themes for the satisfactory interactions and more negative intergroup themes for the unsatisfactory ones. Second, 134 participants rated 16 exemplar descriptions from the data set on 13 items derived from CAT. In general, the exemplars of satisfactory descriptions were rated as containing accommodative use of discourse management, emotional expression, and interpersonal control strategies. Exemplars of the unsatisfactory interactions were rated as more overaccommodative or counteraccommodative on these strategies. Study 5 introduced Part 2 of the thesis and involved a second data set. The stimuli were real-time videotaped interactions between health professionals and patients. Participants rated 25 videotaped interactions on 28 questions developed to tap the intergroup and interpersonal salience of the interaction. Of these 25 interactions, participants rated seven as highly intergroup and seven as highly interpersonal. These 14 interactions formed the stimuli for the Study 6. In Study 6 an LCM analysis of these 14 videotaped interactions compared the intergroup with the interpersonally rated interactions for levels of intergroup bias. The interpersonally salient interactions suggested lower intergroup bias than did the intergroup ones. This and other findings from the LCM analysis are discussed. Study 7 used a CAT perspective to examine six of the 14 videotaped interactions used in Study 6. These six interactions represented three videotaped interactions that were rated as highly intergroup, and three that were rated as highly interpersonal.. Participants provided ratings on both interactants' strategies, and health professionals' goals. They also rated the interactions for outcome measures, including patient satisfaction, and effective communication. Results indicated that the interactions rated as interpersonally salient were perceived as attending to relationship needs and emotional needs. Generally the interpersonal interactions were also rated as providing a more satisfactory outcome than the intergroup interactions. Together the seven studies provide evidence that interactions between health professionals and patients are essentially intergroup interactions. However, such interactions have the potential to move through dimensions of high intergroup and high interpersonal to dimensions of low intergroup and low interpersonal. Each pair of combinations provides different outcomes of communication effectiveness and satisfaction for the patient. Further, this research project demonstrates the ability of CAT to pick up on the dynamics of health provider and patient communication. It also highlights the usefulness of convergent methodologies to understand the complexities of patient and health professional interactions.