Ricerc@Sapienza

Although group-related uncertainties have been shown to drive subgroups’ pursuit of autonomy, it is unclear whether all group-related uncertainties motivate subgroup autonomy. We hypothesized that social identity-uncertainty, not politico-economic uncertainty, about one’s subgroup is a key driver of support for subgroup autonomy.

We aim to empirically investigate the rationale of in-group-favoritism. As potential explanations, we concentrate on intrinsic preferences for own-group members and motivations related to individuals caring about the beliefs of others (founded on guilt aversion). We also consider their intersection. Our evidence shows that in-group-favoritism cannot be accounted for by changes in expectations. This suggests that preferences per se are the most powerful explanation of social identity.

Previous research has suggested that the black sheep effect (BSE), i.e., harsher ingroup than outgroup deviants' derogation, mainly occurs in members highly identified with groups or belonging to highly entitative groups. Two studies considered the conjoined effect of identification and entitativity on BSE. In particular, in Study 1 we consider the mediating role of identification on entitativity- BSE relationship and in Study 2 we focused on the importance of the group for the self-esteem as mediator of such relationship.

The development of personal and social identity is crucial in adolescence. On the one hand, adolescents face the task of forming and consolidating their personal identity in multiple domains, with educational and interpersonal domains particularly salient. On the other hand, they enlarge their social horizon and increasingly define themselves as members of multiple peer groups, such as groups of classmates and friends met outside school. There is however a lack of integrative research on the interplay among and between personal and social identity processes.

Building on the job demands–resources model and the social identity theory, the present study examined the underlying mechanisms (i.e., job insecurity) and boundary conditions (i.e., group member prototypicality) for the relationships between contagion of positive (i.e., joy) and negative (i.e., fear) emotions and job burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, cynicism). Data from 367 employees in the United States suggest that job insecurity mediates the negative relationship between contagion of joy and burnout and the positive relationship between contagion of fear and burnout.

In this paper we aim to disentangle the effects on in-group favoritism driven by beliefs from those stemming from group identity, with the final goal of testing the relative power of three potential explanations of this bias: The Beliefs Driven Explanation (BDE), the Group Identity Explanation (GIE) and the Belief-mediated Group Identity Explanation (BGE). The BDE suggests that in-group favoritism is only driven by the desire not to let others’ expectations down. The GIE claims that people have a preference, per se, for members of their group.