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Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) is one of the most influential social psychological theories of group behavior and intergroup relations. Early social identity research focused on many different group processes; however, the motivation behind group identification was not fully explored. Researchers have proposed a variety of accounts for why people join and identify with groups. This dissertation unravels the relationship between, on the one hand, mortality salience, self-related uncertainty and self-esteem, and on the other group identification and ingroup defense. The general hypothesis derived from uncertainty-identity theory (Hogg, 2010) is that uncertainty and not fear of death or pursuit of self-esteem motivate people to identify with and defend their groups, and that identification mediates the relationship between uncertainty and defense of the group. Experiment 1 (N = 112) tested the relationship between uncertainty and self-esteem on defense of the ingroup, with the additional test of the mediating effects of identification with the group between uncertainty and ingroup defense. Results showed that uncertainty and not self-esteem motivate people to identify with a group, to defend their group, and that group defense is mediated by identification. Experiment 2 (N = 112) provided a replication of the typical TMT study, which suggests that self-esteem will buffer the effects of mortality salience on ingroup defense, with the additional test of the mediating effects of identification between mortality salience and defense of one's group. As predicted, mortality salience only increased identification and defense of the group when self-esteem was not enhanced, as well, the interactive effects of mortality salience and self-esteem on defense was mediated by identification. Experiment 3 (N = 294) was a combination of both Experiments 1 and 2 and tested the hypothesis that uncertainty would moderate the relationship between self-esteem and mortality salience on group identification and ingroup defense. Exactly as predicted, only under high uncertainty the typical TMT results are demonstrated. Results across these three experiments demonstrate that self-uncertainty plays a significant role in reactions to mortality salience, and support uncertainty-identity theory's analysis of the role of self-uncertainty in ideological conviction and group behavior.

As social interactions increasingly become exclusively online, there is a need for research on the role of identity and social identity in online platforms. Drawing on Symbolic Interactionist approaches to identity, namely Social Identity Theory and Identity Theory, as well as Signaling Theory, this study argues that actors will selectively use religious language to signal their credentials to an audience for the purpose of garnering prosocial behavior in the form of donations to their fundraising campaign. Using latent semantic analysis topic models to analyze the self-presentations of crowdsourcing campaigners on GoFundMe.com, this study found evidence for the presence of signaling to a religious identity online as well as a significant difference in the presentation of need for campaigns originating in areas with high reported religiosity compared to campaigns from areas of low religiosity. In comparison to other campaigns, campaigners engaging in religious signaling were significantly increasing their donations. I suggest that strategically chosen religious topics in online crowdfunding is an example of low-cost identity signaling and provides insight into how signaling happens online and the potential outcomes resulting from this cultural work.

The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Agency provides Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to state and local governments, giving them broad flexibility to design and implement community projects. The CDBG program emphasizes that public hearings are a requirement to obtain federal funding at the state and local levels. Also, HUD lists several other public participation methods that can be used in addition to public hearings. Further, the extant literature on public participation emphasizes the prevalent use of one method, public hearings, compared to the use of other more engaging techniques. Despite the availability of different methods that may be more engaging, administrators continue to engage the public through the use of public hearings. This study explores the motivation and identity of public administrators in local government, implementing public participation programs. Using a multi-site case study based on fifteen interviews with officials from various localities across the Commonwealth of Virginia, I found that administrators held onto their identity as public servants but might have had difficulty staying motivated to do public engagement work when they perceived that there were impediments in the work environment. Another interesting finding is that these obstacles created tensions between the public servants and their respective organization, leading to fewer performance outcomes among the administrators. Further, the administrators' characteristics (identity) such as job tenure, rank, education, age, and gender, along with their public service motivation, might have impacted their actions and behavior in the public sector environment. I also found that administrators who wanted to do more, commonly reported they were situated in a work environment that limited their ability to do more. I found that the work environment and the identity (personal characteristics and public service motivation) could influence the public service behavioral outcomes of administrators. The interview data pointed out a complex picture of the tensions existing between the institution and the individual. The research revealed that public administrators often adhered to their role as public servants but were faced with dynamics that interacted with their performances. From these findings, administrators must look pass those informal and formal influences that prevent them from staying engaged with their roles as public servants and find ways to give citizens meaningful opportunities to have input into the government decision-making process. / Doctor of Philosophy / This research sought to discover the public administrators' identities and their motivation for engaging in public participation, along with understanding their roles as public servants. To examine this further, the researcher captured how administrators have engaged the public and how they have documented this engagement in their citizen participation plans. The findings showed that public administrators were committed to their identities as public servants and continued to perform in this capacity despite some of the barriers that may have prevented them from having meaningful engagement opportunities with the public.

Master of Arts / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Lisa Melander / This study examines the lived experiences of the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a small church based in Topeka, KS and known for engaging in extensive protesting, from the perspective of stigmatization and the subcultural identity theory of religious persistence. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the congregation, exploring issues of how they perceive themselves to exist in relation to broader American society. A qualitative analysis of the interviews revealed three main themes: religion as a guiding framework, members’ relationships with others, and stigma and stigma management. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church see the world through a core Biblical framework of understanding that influences both how they relate to and disengage from interactions with others and the ways in which they negotiate stigma in these interactions. This research contributes to the body of research on stigma and stigma management as well as adds theoretically to the subcultural identity theory of religion.

<p>Undersökningen syftade till att beskriva upplevelsen av sitt eget och andras sätt att konsumera. I relation till faktorer baserade på ”social identity theory” (Tajfel & Turner. 1979, refererat i Myers, 2007) men också egna individuella upplevelser om påverkan på det egna konsumtionssättet hos kvinnor i åldern 20-24 år. Strävan efter att uppnå en positiv social identitet och undvika en negativ social identitet upplevs påverka sättet att konsumera. Den sociala identiteten upplevs återspegla den egna identiteten i sociala interaktioner. Intervjuer med sju kvinnor gjordes och resultatet analyserades med kvalitativ tematisk analys. Resultatet beskriver att kvinnors eget och andras sätt att konsumera kan kategoriseras, identifieras och jämföras under påverkan av upplevelser kring stil, ekonomi och värderingar. Även humör och känslor upplevs påverka konsumtionssättet. Resultatet diskuteras kring betydelsen av intresse och vikten av att förmedla en positiv självpresentation och hur det kan påverka hur och vad man handlar.</p>

The state of the natural environment is a topic of increasing concern, with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and diminishing natural resources all posing eminent threats to the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Much of this environmental degradation is caused by human behaviour that can be changed. Psychologists have realised their role in understanding and influencing pro-environmental behaviours to help (see Chapter 1). Most psychological research of environmental behaviour has focused on the individual person as the unit of analysis. While this has been helpful, less attention has been given to how group memberships, and the social influences these create, affect environmental behaviour. Because environmental behaviour often occurs within a social context, understanding the social element may be critically important to promoting environmentally sustainable behaviour (see Chapter 2). Using the social identity approach, this research investigates how various aspects of social group membership interact with individual attributes to influence environmental behaviour. Three related strands of research explore this issue (see Chapter 3 for an overview). In Chapter 4, two studies (Studies 1 and 2) examined how group feedback in the form of social comparisons affect individual behaviour. Based on social identity theory, it was predicted that positive social comparisons would lead to more positive behaviour, and less positive comparisons to less positive behaviour, especially among individuals who identified strongly with the target ingroup. Results from both studies found some support for these hypotheses on certain (but not all) behavioural dependent measures, both at the time of manipulation and one week later. This supports the notion that individual social identification strength can moderate behavioural response to group-level feedback on environmental topics. In Chapter 5, Study 3 considered how interaction within groups via discussion might induce group norms about environmental behaviour that over-ride the effects of intergroup comparisons. A design similar to Study 1 was used, with the addition of a small-group discussion following the feedback manipulation. Discussion content was hypothesised to predict environmental behaviour, with the feedback manipulation having less impact than in Study 1. Results found that the more participants discussed environmental behaviours, the more they engaged in them one week later. This effect was independent of pre-existing environmental values, suggesting that the effects of group interaction were not merely a reflection of existing individual orientations. Following the discussion, values were also found to be very strong predictors of behaviour, a result not found in Study 1, suggesting that group interaction not only shapes individual behaviour but also reduces the classic value-action gap. Together, these findings point to the powerful role that intra-group interaction can play in forming norms of environmental behaviour and shaping individual responses. In Chapter 6, two studies (Studies 4 and 5) explored how comparisons within a group over time (i.e., intra-group comparisons) may function differently to comparisons between groups (i.e., inter-group comparisons), which were explored in Chapter 4. Based on the findings in Chapter 4, positive intergroup comparisons were predicted to result in more positive individual intentions, whereas negative intergroup comparisons were expected to result in reduced intentions. With respect to intra-group comparisons, however, the opposite pattern of effects was predicted. The results of Study 4 did not support these hypotheses. However, feedback from participants suggested that the experimental design may have produced reactance. To address this, Study 5 made use of a revised design, and the results of this study indicated support for the hypotheses. Importantly, in addition to negative and positive comparisons having opposing effects depending on whether these were intra- or inter-group, the processes behind these effects also differed. The effects of intra-group comparisons were mediated by shared responsibility whereas the effects of intergroup comparisons were mediated by environmental value centrality. These results are integrated and discussed in Chapter 7. The recurring theme of these results is that group-level feedback can interact with individual-level variables in subtle but powerful ways, leading to differing outcomes of environmental behaviour. These findings highlight the socially imbedded nature of individual environmental actions, and suggest new avenues for theoretical and practical work in the environmental domain. In particular, on the basis of the studies included in this thesis it is recommended that psychologists who are interested in understanding and changing individual environmental behaviour should incorporate an understanding of intra- and inter-group processes into their theorising and future research.

Gymnasiestart innebär allt som oftast ny skolmiljö, nya klasskamrater och ett annorlunda studiesätt än vad eleverna tidigare är vana med. Nyblivna gymnasieelver befinner sig i en ålder där identifikation och tillhörighet är viktigt, detta gör det intressant att undersöka de nyblivna elevernas uppleverlser angående just identifikation och grupptillhörighet (McAdams &amp; de St Aubin, 1998., Tanti et al., 2011). Föreliggande studies syfte är att studera gymnsieelvers upplevelser om grupperingar. studien har haft Social Identity Theory som utgångspunkt och i synnerhet aspekterna om in- och ut-grupper (Tanti et al., 2011., Turner &amp; Rynolds, 2010). Sju nublivna elever från två olika städer har deltigit i semistrukturerade intervjuer angående deras upplevelser att börja gynasiet, grupperingar och deras egna identifikation. Resultatet av intervjuerna analyserades genom Burnards (1991) metodfem teman som representerar elevernas uppleveler: Mångfacetterad popularitet, Fördomar, Att skapa vänner, Identitetsskiftning samt Icke-genus grupper. Avslutningsvis diskuteras de fem temana med förankring i tidigare forskning.

The central question of this thesis is: “How can people be mobilised to feel strongly attached to or invest into their nations?” Following a review of literature on the psychology of nationhood, a social identity approach towards national attachment is suggested. The possibility of the family metaphor (e.g. fatherland) as a rhetorical device anchoring the nation in filial qualities (e.g. belonging) is discussed. In the first study, establishing the general prevalence of family metaphors and aiming to test their use as a means of mobilisation, the content of language corpora, speeches, parliamentary debates and national anthems is analysed. The results demonstrate frequent use, especially in connection to mobilisation (e.g. in speeches). Study II tests whether merely linking a stimulus to a family metaphor will elicit a positive response and increase national identification. It does so by presenting a student sample (n = 149) with a neutral picture stimulus with different titles including family terms and family metaphors; no effects of any particular picture title on national identity emerged, but a considerable share of participants provided negative Nazi-related associations when primed with ‘fatherland'. Given the apparent relevance of meaning, the third study employed a word association task to provide a more in-depth account of German (n = 119) and British students' (n =138) common associations for family metaphors, confirming that some participants associate them with a negative past (e.g. WW II) or negative politics (e.g. nationalism). In an attempt to avoid the impact of said negative associations, Study IV draws on brotherhood – the metaphor seen as most positive – adding a call for ‘working in unity as volunteers', i.e. a context matching the metaphoric use in anthems, contrasting it with a) a call to work ‘as citizens' or b) a non-matching context (‘being devoted'). While it was assumed that such a fitting mobilisation context (i.e. ‘working together') would be buttressed by a family metaphor, similar results emerged. In a sample (n = 102) matched to the overall population, the brother metaphor did not have an effect on national identification and participants reported lower agreement with a statement presented together with a family metaphor, often providing associations of nationalism or Nazism. The fifth study responded to the frequent associations of the Second World War by providing British (n = 109) and German (n = 113) students with a distant past (1830s) or WW II context prior to presenting a text that was either using family metaphors or not. It aimed to test whether avoiding a link to the Second World War would alleviate the negative associations. However, the results pointed in the opposite direction, i.e. German participants were more likely to invest in their nations if family metaphors and the 1930s occurred together, albeit the negative understanding of family metaphors provided in the previous studies remained, which can be interpreted as an expression of collective guilt. In the last study, a fictitious nation was presented to a general student sample at the University of St Andrews (n = 198) as either trying to achieve independence through militant struggle or building cultural institutions. As in the previous studies, the majority of participants saw family metaphors as negative, and only a small minority from countries with a higher acceptance of power-distance described them in a positive light. This thesis argues that, in the light of the results, the family metaphor has to be understood as evoking historically situated meanings and is seen as essentialising nationhood, a notion predominantly not matching the understanding participants had of their nation and consequently being rejected. It suggests that a) (national) identity research needs to be aware of context and b) other frameworks for exalted attachment should be investigated.