magazine issue 6 2008 / Issue 7

Complementing Individualism with The Social Identity Approach

• written by Martijn van Zomeren
• edited by Hans IJzerman

This prediction was recently borne out in two experiments in which Dutch non-Muslim participants were asked to respond to the alleged foundation of a new political party for Muslims in the Netherlands (Van Zomeren, 2008). Before the experiment, participants` filled out measures of their individual moral conviction (i.e., their personal opinion), and their collective moral conviction (i.e., as a Dutchman in this case) on a moral issue (freedom of speech in the first study, and abortion in the second study). Subsequently, participants read a description of the new party`s statement against freedom of speech, and abortion, and they read that a representative survey among the non-Muslim Dutch in the Netherlands disagreed with this statement. However, the level of support was manipulated such that the group validated individuals` collective moral conviction (i.e., a 95 % support condition), or that it did not validate their conviction (i.e., a 65 % support condition). Did this group norm manage to influence the responses to the political party among those with collective convictions? Results suggested an affirmative answer: Their negative responses to this party decreased when group support was lower. Put differently, when moral conviction was viewed as collective, group norms influenced how those with collective convictions responded to moral threats. Note that these results are difficult to explain from an individualist perspective, which would not predict social influence effects at all.

It seems, then, that the social identity approach even complements individualism in one of its most traditional domains. But note that this does not imply that moral conviction cannot be based in the individual. From the perspective of the social identityapproach, the basis of moral conviction should be viewed in the light of the social context that makes salient individuals` individual or social identity. If individuals` personal identity is salient, their individual moral convictions may be difficult to change, and their negative responses to moral threats difficult to prevent. However, if individuals` social identity is salient (as was presumably the case in the studies I described), then their collective moral convictions as well as their responses to moral threats may be influenced by what fellow group members think, feel, and do. In other words, the social identity approach truly complements individualism, even when it comes to psychological phenomena that are often deemed to be at the very core of who we individually are. As I have argued in this article, this has an important implication for psychologists. If we want our theories to be more predictive of every-day life (where groups are all but absent), we need to incorporate the social identityapproach in our thinking. In fact, there is no reason not to acknowledge its importance in psychology, and beyond.

Footnotes

¹Editor’s Note: ‘Fitna’ is the title of a movie recently released by Dutch parlementarian Geert Wilders. In the movie, Wilders links the Qur’an to terrorism, Islamic rule, and Islam in the Netherlands, and equates Islam with violence. It has now been renounced by the Dutch government. The original movie can be watched here: Fitna

References

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