Complementing field research among severely disadvantaged minority groups, the present laboratory analogue investigates how the clarity of a group member's cultural (collective) identity is related to positive feelings about oneself and one's performance. Participants were assigned to a clear, conflicted, or unclear collective identity condition, and were then faced with challenging tasks (study 1) or a challenging social interaction (study 2). In study 1, the hypotheses were not confirmed because participants overcame a lack of collective identity clarity by simply applying their own familiar collective identity to the tasks. This default alternative was removed in study 2, which resulted in a confirmation of the hypotheses. Participants in the clear condition felt more positive and successful than participants in the conflict and unclear conditions. Compared to participants in the clear and unclear conditions, participants in the conflict condition found the interaction to be the most difficult presumably because they were challenged to resolve competing identities. Clarity of collective identity was related to feelings of positivity, success, task difficulty, and to the expression of positive emotions, certainty, and achievement, thereby emphasizing the importance of collective identity clarity for the self.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.83843 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Usborne, Esther |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002270248, proquestno: AAIMR22623, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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