Social Categorization, Intergroup Behaviour and Self-Esteem: Two Experiments

Abstract

Two experiments investigating the hypothesis that self-esteem is elevated through intergroup discrimination (the positive distinctiveness hypothesis) are reported. Oakes and Turner (1980) have shown experimentally that subjects who are given, and take, the opportunity to discriminate experience elevated self-estteem, while those given no such opportunity de not. This finding is open to an alternative explanation in terms of category salience alone. Experiment 1 disconfounds discrimination and salience and produces findings which support the positive distinctiveness rather than the salience hypothesis. Since there exists the possibility of a partial explanation of the data in terms of compliance, a second experiment (almost an exact replication of the first) is reported which examines this. The positive distinctiveness hypothesis is again upheld in contrast to the salience hypothesis, but the possibility of compliance as a partial explanation is not entirely ruled out.