Key Ideas
- Shared group identity may make someone more motivated to do a certain behaviour.
- Things such as perceived extent of membership and positive social identity may be factors into why someone would want to cooperate with group members.
- Tyler & Blader (2001) outline that the 3 types of cooperation in groups are commitment to the group, doing work on behalf of the group, and following the rules of the group.
Note
Link to Social Identity Theory
- Those who identify more with their group are more likely to cooperate.
Comparison as a Motivator
- Comparison may be a primary motivator for competition (Garcia et al., 2013).
- People want a higher perceived position relative to others.
- Factors of competition may include importance of activity to the person, similarity of the person and the target, closeness of the person and the target.
Case study
Taylor & Moriarty (1987)
Aim
To investigate the role of explicit competition and physical dissimilarity in interracial conflict.
Method
- Researchers split participants into groups (even and odd) after ensuring that naive participants were numbered even and confederates were odd. All naive participants were white.
- The confederate group was either racially similar or dissimilar, which was the first independent variable.
- The task participants were given was to come up with solutions to a problem.
- The second independent variable was the presence of explicit competition. In one condition, participants were told there would be a clear winner in a competition. In the other, they were told that both groups' solutions would be combined to form the best one.
- Participants completed a questionnaire that included questions about how they felt towards their own group, how they felt towards the outgroup, and how much they liked each individual person in the study.
Results
- Participants' mood towards their outgroup was more positive when primed to be cooperative rather than competitive.
- Ingroup bias was present, and the effect was enhanced when the outgroup was racially dissimilar.
Link to Concepts
- Bias: The aforementioned study is considerably old in the world of psychology, leading to possible biases.
- Measurement: Questionnaires and tests are often used in experiments measuring motivation and human relationships.
