National and Ethnic Identities and Differences Today: A Psychological
Perspective
Introduction
Several of the papers within this thematic session of the
Athens Dialogues have addressed issues concerning identity and difference
within the contexts of Classical Greek civilisation, the Hellenistic-Roman
world, Byzantium, and the Islamic world. However, identity and difference do
not only represent major issues in the historic past. They also represent
major issues in the world of today. Indeed, many of the most significant and
profound events which are taking place in today’s globalised world are
driven precisely by issues of identity and difference. The politicization of
national, ethnic and religious identities within contemporary affairs,
coupled to the prejudice and hostility which many people direct at national,
ethnic, and religious groups other than their own, and the global scale of
the consequences which can potentially flow from these antagonisms, have
made the task of understanding the construction of human identities and
cultural differences especially urgent.
In this paper, I will comment on national and ethnic identities and
differences as they currently exist in the world today. Because I am a
psychologist, my perspective will be that of the social sciences in general
and psychology in particular. My main focus will be on how social and
psychological processes shape people’s identities and perceptions of
difference, and how people’s national and ethnic identifications and
attitudes are acquired and develop through the course of childhood and
adolescence.
On Multiple Identities
It is necessary to begin by observing that national and
ethnic identities are not our only identities. Instead, we all have a large
number of different identities. These various identities are rooted in
different aspects of our self-perceptions. Some of our identities are what
may be called ‘social identities.’ Social identities are those identities
which are derived from our membership of social groups (such as our nation,
our ethnic group, our religious group, our gender group, our occupational
group, the organisation that we work for, the sporting clubs or teams that
we support, etc.). When our membership of one of these social groups forms a
salient part of our own self-concept in such a way that we attribute
emotional significance and value to that group membership, we may be said to
have acquired a subjective identification with the group (Tajfel 1978). However, social identities are not our only identities. We can also use our
personal attributes (e.g. caring, studious, tolerant, fun-loving, etc.), our
interpersonal relationships and roles (e.g. mother, friend, colleague, etc.)
and autobiographical narratives about our lives (e.g. born in London to
middle class parents, educated at a state school, etc.) to define ourselves
and our own uniqueness further (Stryker 1980; Deaux 1992, 1996). These
multiple identifications with different social groups, attributes,
relationships, roles and narratives help us to define, position and
orientate ourselves within the social world relative to other people. Because the primary focus of this paper is on national and ethnic
identities, most of the following comments relate primarily to social
identities. However, it should be borne in mind throughout that these
identities constitute only one part of the multiplicity of identities which
constitute our self-concepts.
On Individual Variability in Patterns of Social Identification
Psychological research has revealed that people’s subjective
representations of the relationships which exist between their various
social identifications can differ from the objective relationships which
actually exist between the social categories which form the basis of their
identifications (Roccas and Brewer 2002). For example, in the case of an
Italian person who is a Catholic, the objective relationship between being
Italian and being Catholic is one of partial overlap: some but not all
Italian people are Catholics, and some but not all Catholics are Italian. However, in subjectively representing the relationship between these two
categories, an Italian Catholic may employ any one of a number of different
patterns. One possible pattern is to keep the two identities completely
separate cognitively, and to identify with only one of the categories at any
one time according to context (e.g. Italian when at work, but Catholic when
in church). Another possible response is to allow one identity to dominate
and to regard the other identity as a subcategory within that dominating
identity (e.g. to regard Catholics as being just one subgroup within the
larger group of Italians, others subgroups being Protestants, Muslims, Jews,
etc.). A third possible cognitive strategy is to regard one of the
identities as being essential for membership of the other category (e.g. to
regard Catholics as being the only ‘real’ Italian people), while a fourth
strategy might be to regard one’s identity as being formed by the
intersection of the two component identities (i.e. to identify oneself
specifically as an Italian Catholic, a category exhibiting its own unique
emergent characteristics which differ from those associated with being
either just Italian or just Catholic on its own).
Hence, there are several ways in which the same set of multiple social
identities can be represented psychologically, and different individuals
with similar sets of identifications may represent the relationships between
their component identities in very different ways from one another. Additional variability in patterns of identification can arise between
individuals because the meanings, symbolic contents, evaluations and
feelings which any individual attaches to a particular identity (such as
their national or ethnic identity) are personalised as a consequence of that
individual’s own life history, experiences, personality and cognitive and
affective biases (Breakwell 2001). Hence, there may also be wide
discrepancies between the subjective connotations which are ascribed to the
same identities by different individuals.
Further variability between individuals can also arise because there are
different ways in which an individual can identify with a social group
(Leach et al. 2008; Roccas et al. 2008). One form of identification is in
terms of how central or important the social group is to one’s own
self-definition and self-concept. A second form is less cognitive and more
affective in nature, being linked to the amount of pride, happiness and
satisfaction which one derives from being a member of the group. A third
form of identification concerns the extent to which one embraces and
internalises the norms and values of the group, while a fourth form is more
focused on commitment to and solidarity with the group as indexed by one’s
willingness to do things for the sake of other group members. A fifth form
of identification is in terms of the extent to which one views the social
group as being superior to other groups. Research has revealed that these
various ways in which individuals may identify with social groups are
empirically distinguishable, so that one person can, for example, be high on
group superiority and on adherence to group values but low on commitment to
other group members, whereas another person may be high on commitment to
other members of the group but low on superiority and adherence to group
values. These patterns represent very different ways in which to identify
with the group. For example, in the case of identification with a national
group, the former individual would probably regard the defence of national
values as being one of the most crucial aspects of citizenship, while the
latter might regard concern for the welfare of fellow citizens as being of
far greater importance. Both individuals may be highly identified with the
nation, but the cognitive, affective and behavioural consequences of their
identifications are likely to be very different.
On the Context-dependent Nature of Identifications
A further complexity is that the salience of identifications
varies as a function of context. Indeed, there is very good evidence that a
person’s multiple identifications are never all activated simultaneously;
instead, the subjective salience of particular identifications tends to
fluctuate in a fluid and dynamic manner as a person moves from one situation
to another (Oakes, Haslam, and Turner 1994). These fluctuations are caused,
in part, by the available contrasts which are highlighted within each
situation (e.g. as an English person in Greece, my Englishness is made very
salient to me; however, when I am teaching students at my university in
England, my identity as a teacher is instead rendered more salient). In
other words, particular identifications often become most salient to us when
we are confronted with other people who differ from us in a way that is
relevant to those identifications.
Fluctuations in the way in which we think about our various identifications
are also linked to the changes which occur to our interests, needs,
motivations, goals, and expectations as we move from one situation to
another (Turner and Onerato 1999). The work of Baumann (1996) is especially
revealing in this regard. He draws a conceptual distinction between
‘dominant’ and ‘demotic’ discourse about identity and culture. Dominant
discourse treats identity, culture, and community in a reified manner as if
these are clearly identifiable entities which are intrinsically linked to
one another. This type of discourse enables simplistic judgements to be made
about whether someone is, for example, ‘truly’ English or Greek (i.e. because they participate in either English or Greek culture, and belong to
either the English or the Greek national community). Dominant discourse
therefore permits a straightforward equation between identity, culture, and
community, and permits people to talk about ‘Greek identity,’ ‘the Greek
national community,’ and ‘Greek culture.’ By contrast, non-dominant or
demotic discourse treats identities, cultures, and communities as
multifaceted, internally diverse, contested, constantly changing, and
subject to personal negotiation and choice. Identifications and culture are
therefore regarded in demotic discourse as dynamic processes through which
meanings and the boundaries of groups and communities are constantly being
redefined and renegotiated by individuals according to their own current
needs.
Baumann’s empirical work reveals how individuals often adopt
both discourses about identity and culture in their
everyday lives. If, in a particular context, there is a strategic social or
political advantage to be gained by representing themselves and their group
in reified terms (especially to an external audience), the goal being to
achieve particular benefits for themselves or for the group, they are likely
to use the dominant discourse for this purpose. However, in other contexts,
exactly the same individuals may switch to a demotic discourse if it suits
their purpose for facilitating other goals (such as challenging group norms,
or questioning the attribution of characteristics to the group by
individuals who are not group members). In other words, the way in which
individuals represent the social groups with which they identify shifts
according to their own goals, needs and motivations.
On Identity Threat
While the discussion up to this point has emphasised the
complexity and context-dependency of identifications, there are nevertheless
also cases where particular identifications can become chronically salient
to individuals, dominating their perceptions across many different
situations. These cases typically involve what has been called ‘identity
threat’ (Branscombe, Ellemers, Spears and Doosje 1999). Identity threat can
take many different forms, including: being categorised by other people
against one’s will and subjected to prejudice on that basis (e.g. being
judged solely on the basis of one’s race or ethnicity); when the group to
which one belongs is directly attacked either verbally or physically by
members of another group (e.g. when members of a minority ethnic group are
insulted or physically assaulted); when external factors prevent a group to
which one belongs from becoming a distinct and meaningful category from
other categories (e.g. when an indigenous minority national group is denied
political recognition or rights); when the value of a group to which one
belongs is undermined in some way (e.g. when a minority ethnic group has a
low social status within a country); or when other members of a group refuse
to accept an individual as a full member of that group (e.g. when migrants
or ethnic minority individuals are denied full citizenship rights within a
country).
It has been found that individuals engage in a variety of psychological
responses to identity threat (Branscombe et al. 1999). First, the identity
which is the target of the threat can become chronically salient to the
individual who experiences the threat, remaining salient across all contexts
and situations. Second, the social group which is under threat may be
perceived to exhibit greater internal cohesion and homogeneity with little
internal variation (i.e. the group comes to be perceived in more
stereotypical terms). A third type of response which can occur is for
members of the threatened social group to engage in collective political or
civic action to try to mitigate the perceived threat. A fourth possible
response is to engage in either strong ingroup favouritism or strong
outgroup denigration (i.e. to psychologically enhance the positive
evaluation of the threatened social group to which one belongs, or to
enhance the negative evaluation of other groups to which one does not
belong). Fifth, if the individual under threat simultaneously has other
identities deriving from membership of other higher status social groups,
then that individual may reduce the centrality or importance of the
threatened group membership to the self-concept, and instead enhance the
centrality or importance of their membership of these higher status groups. Which of these responses occurs can depend on the specific type of identity
threat which is involved and on whether the individual has a strong or a
weak identification with the threatened group. For example, sometimes low
identifiers will simply disidentify still further with the threatened group,
with only high identifiers exhibiting one or more of the above responses.
Social identity threats which arise from the way in which other people
categorize the self can be particularly marked in the case of ethnic
minority individuals, especially when the other-ascribed categorizations
differ from minority individuals’ own self-ascribed identifications. In some
cases, minority individuals may strategically choose to use the ascribed
identity to engage in collective action aimed at ameliorating the social
position of all the people who fall within the invoked social group. For
example, within the USA, people of Asian origin commonly reject the use of
the terms ‘Asian’ or ‘Asiatic’ to describe themselves, and instead tend to
identify subjectively as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. However, they may nevertheless unite behind an Asian pan-ethnicity for
political purposes in order to acquire greater effectiveness in challenging
existing power hierarchies and institutions (Espiritu 1992).
That said, discrepancies between the identities which are ascribed by other
people vs. the subjective identifications which minority individuals ascribe
to themselves can sometimes be a significant source of stress, impacting on
minority individuals’ psychological well-being and sense of social
inclusion. These outcomes may also be influenced by whether there is
congruence or incongruence between the way in which minority individuals
perceive the relationships between their own multiple identities and the way
in which other people perceive those relationships. For example, within the
UK, there has been an intense debate in recent years about whether being
British and being Muslim are compatible identities. Many white British
people currently deny that these are compatible identities. By contrast,
many British Muslims feel that these are fully compatible identities from
which no conflict in either values or duties arises; however, they feel that
they are constantly being required to display their loyalty towards Britain
and being asked to choose between their Muslim and British identities. Hence, while many white British people view Muslim people’s self-segregation
and refusal to assimilate as a barrier to their effective integration within
British society, many Muslims themselves view the ‘policing’ of the boundary
of the British nation by the white British majority as the principal barrier
to their inclusion (ETHNOS 2006).
On the Psychological Construction of Difference
An inevitable concomitant to the process of psychological
identification is the parallel process of constructing patterns of
difference in order to differentiate the group with which one identifies at
a psychological level from other groups to which one does not belong (i.e. to differentiate the psychological ingroup from outgroups). Over the years,
there has been a substantial body of research into the way in which people
construct boundaries between categories. This research suggests that
boundaries between categories are not positioned arbitrarily. Instead,
boundaries tend to be located on the basis of patterns of perceived
similarities and differences (Tversky 1977; Rosch 1978; Oakes et al. 1994). In particular, the likelihood that a group of items will be placed into the
same category is driven by the extent to which the differences within that
set of items are judged to be less than the differences which exist between
that set of items and other items. As the number of common features within
the set of items increases, and the number of distinctive features which
differentiate those items from other items also increases, the greater the
likelihood that the set of items will be categorised together. Hence,
category formation is based on both characteristic features which tend to be
shared by category items, and distinctive features which tend to
differentiate those items from other non-category items.
For this reason, insofar as human beings exhibit both characteristic and
distinctive features, they are likely to be perceived as falling into
categories. However, it has also been found that perceptions of similarities
and differences are subject to social influence. For example, merely
attaching verbal labels to items causes individuals to attenuate the
differences between items which have been given the same label, and to
accentuate the differences between items which have been given different
labels (Tajfel and Wilkes 1963). Thus, simply giving names to social groups
can enhance the perception that there are differences between those groups
and reduce the perception of differences within the groups, amplifying the
tendency to stereotype group members. Other social and cultural factors can
also contribute to the consolidation of these perceptions of similarity and
difference. For example, school education, by frequently purveying
ethnocentrically biased representations of the people who belong to
different national groups, can further contribute to the entrenchment of the
perceived categorical boundaries between the people who belong to different
national groups (Schleicher and Kozma 1992; Barrett 2007).
In other words, social category formation and the construction of perceived
boundaries between categories are the product of a complex interplay
between, on the one hand, patterns of human similarity and difference, and,
on the other hand, linguistic, social, and cultural representations and
practices. I will return to the influence of social and cultural factors on
the psychological representation of ingroups and outgroups at a later point
in this paper.
On the Psychological and Behavioural Consequences of Identification
Once social categories have been constructed at the
psychological level and an individual categorises himself or herself as
falling within a particular category, the potential for the formation of a
personal subjective identification with that category is present. In this
section, I want to focus on some of the potential consequences of
identifying with a category.
As has already been noted, identifying with a social category serves a
cognitive function of helping an individual to define and to locate
themselves within the social world. However, social identifications can also
be used to fulfil other basic human needs. As Tajfel (1978; Tajfel and
Turner 1986) argued, human beings have a fundamental need to achieve a
positive sense of themselves. For this reason, when a social group
membership is internalized as part of an individual’s self-concept (i.e. the
individual subjectively identifies with the group), then that individual
needs to view that group in a positive manner. To this end, the ingroup may
be compared with outgroups using dimensions of comparison which produce more
favourable representations of the ingroup than of the outgroups. The
positive distinctiveness which is then ascribed to the ingroup over the
outgroups on these comparative dimensions produces positive self-esteem. Thus, the process of social comparison can result in either ingroup
favouritism or outgroup denigration (or both). Hence, negative stereotyping
and the devaluation of outgroups which are perceived to be different from
the ingroup can be a direct consequence of identification with the ingroup
coupled to the need to maintain high self-esteem.
However, as Tajfel and Turner (1986) also noted, these effects are by no
means universal, and occur only under certain conditions. For example, the
social context within which the evaluation of ingroups and outgroups occurs
must allow the comparison with outgroups to be mad e on dimensions which have
significant evaluative meaning. Not all dimensions have such meaning. Furthermore, outgroups must be perceived to be relevant to the definition of
the ingroup. If an outgroup is irrelevant to the way in which the ingroup is
perceived, then these effects also will not occur. Consequently, ingroup
favouritism and outgroup denigration will only be exhibited if there are at
least some meaningful dimensions for intergroup comparison which permit the
ingroup to be viewed as being superior to an outgroup
and if
that outgroup is relevant to the way in which the ingroup is perceived by
the individual.
If these conditions do not prevail, then alternative strategies are required
to achieve positive self-esteem (Tajfel and Turner 1986). One possibility is
for the individual to try to leave the group, that is, to engage in
individual social mobility. This might occur, for example, when an ethnic
minority individual assimilates to the national majority culture. However,
this will not always be possible if the boundary between the social groups
is, for example, marked by race. An alternative strategy is to redefine the
meanings which are associated with the ingroup. This occurred, for example,
in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s when the Black Power and Black
Consciousness movements generated a sense of racial pride among
African-Americans in order to counteract the negative images of blackness
which were prevalent within America at the time. A third possible strategy
is to change the basis of the comparison, for example by changing the
comparison outgroup against which the ingroup is evaluated. Thus, members of
a low status group may look for a group with an even lower status with which
to compare themselves, in order to boost their self-esteem. A fourth
strategy is to challenge the social or political status quo in an attempt to
change the prevailing societal structure and the relative status of
different groups within that structure. This strategy is most likely to be
used when the existing status differentials are perceived to be illegitimate
or when the high status of an outgroup is perceived to be unstable. Hence,
the particular identity strategy which is used depends on the societal
structure which is in place, the relationships which are perceived to exist
between different groups within that structure, beliefs regarding the
legitimacy and stability of the structure, and perceptions of the
permeability of group boundaries. It has also been found that choice of
strategy depends on the strength of identification with the ingroup. For
example, low identifiers are more likely to adopt an individual mobility
strategy while high identifiers are more likely to try to challenge the
existing social structure (Branscombe and Ellemers 1998).
Of course, many of these factors (the relative status of ethnic groups,
beliefs about the legitimacy and stability of the societal structure, and
perceptions of the permeability of group boundaries) vary considerably from
one country to another. For this reason, different national contexts are
likely to result in minority individuals adopting different identity
strategies depending on the specific social realities characterising the
position of their own ethnic group within the particular national context in
which they are living.
On Variability in the Development of National and Ethnic Identifications
and Attitudes
Studies into the way in which national and ethnic
identifications and attitudes develop through the course of childhood and
adolescence provide a further useful window on the processes that underlie
the psychological construction and representation of ingroups and outgroups
(Barrett 2007; Quintana and McKown 2008). Perhaps not surprisingly, and
consistent with the preceding discussion, these studies have revealed that
national and ethnic identifications and attitudes develop in very different
ways depending on the specific national context in which individuals live.
For example, in my own research on the development of national
identifications and attitudes, we have worked with children and adolescents
living in England, Scotland, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Andalusia,
Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan (Barrett, Riazanova, and
Volovikova 2001; Barrett 2007). This research has revealed that national
identifications are often, although not always, established in children by
the age of 6 years (the youngest age that we examined). In addition, there
is no standard pattern in how children’s representations of and attitudes to
other national groups develop. Sometimes children’s attitudes become more
positive with increasing age, sometimes they become more negative with age,
sometimes they initially become more negative but then become more positive
again, sometimes they become more positive but then become more negative
again, and sometimes they do not change at all as a function of age. Furthermore, among any one group of children living in a particular
location, different developmental profiles are exhibited depending on the
specific national outgroup which is involved. For example, among Russian
children living in Moscow, we found that attitudes towards Ukrainian people
became more positive with increasing age, while attitudes towards Georgian
people did not show any changes with age; however, attitudes to American
people initially became more positive but later on became more negative once
again. We discovered similar variability in developmental profiles according
to the particular national outgroups involved in the children living in all
of the other locations as well. A similar diversity of developmental
patterns has been uncovered in other independent studies into the
development of children’s attitudes to ethnic and racial groups (Quintana
and McKown 2008).
We also found variability in patterns of development depending on the
specific national languages which were spoken in the family home. For
example, in the Basque Country, there were systematic differences in the
children’s attitudes to national groups depending on whether they came from
families that spoke only Spanish, only Basque or both Spanish and Basque in
the family home. The children who came from the Spanish-speaking and
bilingual families were much more positive towards French, Italian, British
and German people than the children who came from the Basque-speaking
families, while the children from the Basque-speaking and bilingual families
were much more positive towards Basque people than the children from the
Spanish-speaking families (Reizábal, Valencia, and Barrett 2004). Parallel
findings were obtained in Catalonia (Vila, del Valle, Perera, Monreal, and
Barrett 1998).
We also found variability in the development of the children’s national
attitudes depending on their language of education. For example, we found
systematic differences in the development of Ukrainian, Georgian and Azeri
children’s attitudes to national groups depending on whether they attended
Russian-language schools or schools which provided education in the national
language (Barrett et al. 2001; Barrett 2007). For example, in Georgia,
attitudes to Russian people were much more positive among the children
attending Russian-language schools, while attitudes to Georgian people were
much more positive among the children attending Georgian-language schools.
On the Sociocultural Factors Which Influence the Development of National
and Ethnic Identifications and Attitudes
This variability which occurs in the development of
children’s national and ethnic identifications and attitudes stems from a
number of different sources. First and foremost, parental attitudes,
discourses and practices are a major source of influence. For example, in
the Basque Country and Catalonia, it is parents who decide which languages
are spoken in the family home, while in Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, it
is also parents who decide which type of school their children will attend. These decisions are typically made on the basis of parents’
national-ideological orientations, and these orientations are systematically
linked to their discourse and practices in relationship to nations within
and beyond the family home (Elejabarrieta 1994; Valencia et al. 2003). It is
these parental behaviours (which are systematically linked to and indexed by
the use of language) that are the actual drivers of the national attitudes
and representations of the children (rather than language use
per se ). This interpretation is fully
consistent with many other studies which have also revealed that what
parents say to, and do with, their children does indeed impact on the
national, ethnic, and racial identifications and attitudes which are
exhibited by their children (Hughes et al. 2006).
A second major source of influence is the school. First, the school
curriculum can affect children’s national and ethnic identifications and
attitudes (Schiffauer, Baumann, Kastoryano, and Vertovec 2004; Barrett
2007). For example, in Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, national language
schools and Russian language schools follow very different curricula,
especially in relationship to the cultural and historical heritage of the
nation. These divergences in curriculum content help to consolidate the
differential patterns of national attitudes which are being transmitted to
children by their parents (indeed, this is one of the principal reasons why
parents make their decision to send their children to a particular type of
school). It is precisely because the school curriculum provides a potential
means of influencing children’s attitudes towards other groups that numerous
anti-prejudice programmes have now been developed for use within schools,
although it does need to be added that these are of varying levels of
effectiveness in tackling entrenched patterns of prejudice (Pfeifer, Brown,
and Juvonen 2007).
The contents of school textbooks are a further source of influence on
children’s attitudes. For example, the textbooks which are used in schools
in different countries can sometimes express very different kinds of
narratives about the nation, and these national narratives are often
appropriated and internalised by the children who use them (Schiffauer et
al. 2004). Furthermore, the pictures which are included in textbooks can
also affect children’s attitudes: for example, it was found in one study
that children who read books in which the pictures displayed people from a
variety of ethnic backgrounds developed more positive attitudes towards
outgroup members than children who read books in which the pictures only
displayed members of their own ingroup (Litcher and Johnson 1969).
A third type of influence emanating from the school concerns the way in which
teachers themselves behave in the classroom and the kinds of explicit and
implicit messages which they transmit to the children via their own
discourse and behaviour. In particular, the practices which teachers adopt
in relationship to issues of cultural difference, discrimination, and ethnic
harassment in the classroom can have a significant effect on the attitudes
of the children they teach towards other national, ethnic, and racial groups
(Kinket and Verkuyten 1999).
Beyond the school itself, the mass media constitute a further major source of
influence on children’s attitudes to, and representations of, other groups
(Graves 1999). For example, in their classic study on the effects of
television on children, Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince (1958) discovered
that children who watch factual television programmes about the people who
live in other countries become less judgemental in their attitudes towards
people from other countries than children who do not watch these programmes. They become more objective in their attitudes, with their representations of
these peoples tending to reflect the ways in which they have been
represented in the television programmes.
A further notable factor which can influence children’s attitudes to people
from other national, ethnic and racial groups is direct personal contact
with people who belong to these groups. Over fifty years ago, Allport (1954)
argued that personal contact can lead to the reduction of prejudice towards
other groups. Subsequent research (Brown and Hewstone 2005; Dovidio, Glick,
and Rudman 2005; Pettigrew and Tropp 2006) has confirmed his insights and
revealed that there are several specific conditions which need to prevail
for such contact to be effective. Contact works best when the individuals
who meet and interact are of roughly equal status (e.g. when the individuals
who are in contact are of the same age); when the group memberships of these
individuals are made salient and are emphasised within the contact
situation, rather than underplayed; when the individuals engage in
co-operative rather than competitive activity; and when, in the course of
interacting with each other, they find things out about each other (e.g. about their divergent cultural practices).
On the Psychological Factors Which Influence the Development of National
and Ethnic Identifications and Attitudes
However, it is not only external sociocultural factors which
influence the development of children’s national and ethnic identifications
and attitudes. Psychological factors can also play a role. For example,
children’s cognitive abilities have been implicated here, with several
distinct cognitive abilities having been linked to changes in levels of
prejudice during childhood. These include cognitive flexibility (e.g. the
ability to classify a set of people in multiple ways rather than in just a
single way), the ability to perceive internal differences within groups, the
ability to perceive deeper similarities between superficially different
groups, and the ability to understand that different people holding
different opinions can both be correct when considered from their own point
of view (Aboud and Amato 2001). These cognitive skills are normally acquired
between 6 and 12 years of age, and when reductions in prejudice occur across
this age range, these have sometimes been found to be related to the
acquisition of these abilities. However, as we have seen earlier, children
do not always show a reduction in prejudice across these years: sometimes
their prejudice towards a particular outgroup may actually increase rather
than decrease. Furthermore, a child may exhibit a reduction in prejudice in
relationship to one group but an increase in prejudice towards another
group. The fact that these opposite patterns are occurring in one and the
same child reveals that developing cognitive abilities cannot be the only
influence impacting on the child’s attitudes.
Another psychological factor which we have discovered in our own work is
sometimes linked to children’s attitudes is their level of psychological
identification with their own ingroup. For example, among Basque, Catalan
and Spanish children in particular, the higher their level of identification
with their own national ingroup, the more likely they are to evaluate that
ingroup positively over and above their evaluations of other national groups
(Barrett 2007; Barrett, Lyons, and del Valle 2004; Reizábal et al. 2004). This finding is consistent with the idea that the more one identifies with a
particular social group, the more highly motivated one will be to evaluate
that ingroup positively over comparison outgroups in order to achieve
positive self-esteem (Tajfel and Turner 1986). However, these Spanish
children were the only children in our studies to show such a strong and
clear-cut relationship between identification and attitudes. In other words,
the potential effects of not only developing cognitive abilities but also
the strength of subjective identification seem to be either attenuated or
swamped out completely by other factors in other populations.
One such factor is perceived identity threat. In another research project, a
group of colleagues and I have been investigating how national and ethnic
identifications and attitudes develop in children who are growing up in
national contexts which have recently experienced, or still are
experiencing, intergroup conflict, violence or warfare, including the Basque
Country, Bosnia, North and South Cyprus, Northern Ireland and Israel
(Oppenheimer and Barrett, in press). This work has revealed that in such
contexts, high levels of national or ethnic identification are often coupled
to high levels of negativity towards the enemy group from a very early age,
and these attitudes often do not moderate at all as children develop. This
pattern is consistent with the notion that, in these contexts, the acute
sense of identity threat elicits such strong negative feelings towards the
enemy group that all other possible influences on the children’s development
are swamped out. The result is that prejudice against the enemy group is
acquired early, does not moderate with age, and sometimes even intensifies
still further during adolescence (Cf. Bar-Tal and Teichman 2005).
One final important issue which also needs to be noted here is that children
are not passive recipients of environmental influences; they are instead
highly active selectors of the information which is made available to them
(Bandura 1986; Durkin 1995). Out of all the information which is potentially
available, they only attend to some of it, and this is often the information
which is consistent with their own existing beliefs and representations or
which fulfils their own current needs and motivations. Information which is
incompatible with their beliefs, motivations, or needs may just be screened
out and ignored. Furthermore, when children do attend to information, they
often construct their own interpretations of that information. In other
words, perceptual and attentional processes, as well as interpretative and
cognitive-representational processes, invariably also impact on the uses
which children make of the information which is made available to them
within their environments.
Towards an Integrated Developmental Theory of the Factors Influencing
Psychological Representations of Identity and Difference
From the preceding discussion, it is clear that there are
many factors which can potentially influence psychological representations
of identity and difference. It is also clear from this discussion that
substantial variability exists in the patterns of identifications and
attitudes which people exhibit at the individual and the group level, and
across contexts. Hence, in developing an integrated developmental theory of
the sociocultural and psychological factors which drive people’s national
and ethnic identifications and attitudes, it is crucial to pay attention
both to the full range of factors and to the existence of this individual,
group and contextual variability. A theory which attempts to do this is
shown in Figure 1.
The starting point of this theory is that the individual
always develops within a particular societal niche. This niche is defined by
a specific set of historical, geographical, economic and political
circumstances which define the relationships between the individual’s own
nation and ethnic group and other nations and ethnic groups, including the
relative status of the ingroups in relationship to these outgroups.
The adult members of the societies in which children develop hold their own
beliefs and attitudes concerning these macro conditions, and they often
adopt ideological positions in relationship to them. Their beliefs,
attitudes and values impact on their actions and discourse, and may even
lead them to engage in political or social action to try to change those
macro circumstances. The most important adults, from the perspective of the
developing child, are parents, teachers and the individuals who produce
materials for school curricula, school textbooks and the mass media.
Parents have both direct and indirect effects on their children. First, what
they say to and do with their children impacts directly on their children’s
representations and attitudes. However, parents also determine where the
family lives, where the family goes on holiday, and those with whom the
child has kinship relations. All of these factors can affect the quantity
and quality of direct personal contact which the child has with members of
other national and ethnic groups. Parents also determine (or their economic
circumstances determine) which school the child attends. The school then
determines the particular curriculum, textbooks, and teachers to which the
child is exposed. The school can also influence how much personal contact
the child has with people from other national and ethnic groups. Finally,
according to their economic and cultural situation, parents buy products for
use in the family home, including televisions, books, CDs, DVDs, computers
connected to the Internet, etc. And, at least in the case of younger
children, parents may also control their access to some of these products.
Hence, all of the following are potentially available to children as sources
of information about other nations and ethnic groups: parents’ discourse and
practices, personal contact with members of those groups, the school
curriculum, school textbooks, teachers’ discourse and practices, and
representations of nations and ethnic groups in the mass media and in other
literacy and visual resources. The representations of national and ethnic
groups which appear in these various information sources encode information
about the historical, geographical, economic, and political circumstances of
the child’s own nation and ethnic group, and also often implicitly (and
sometimes explicitly) encode attitudes towards those ingroups and towards
comparison outgroups.
However, all of these sources of information are only potentially available
to the developing child. Which information sources are actually attended to
are influenced by the child’s own psychological processes as these are
deployed within any given situation, including perceptual and attentional
processes, interpretative and cognitive-representational processes, and
affective and motivational processes (including the child’s levels of
identification with the nation and ethnic group to which he or she belongs,
and the child’s perceptions of threat to those groups). Thus, depending on
these psychological processes, and depending on the particular sociocultural
contexts to which the child is exposed, different clusters of environmental
factors may be rendered salient for that child. In addition, the child
determines his or her own level of engagement with the school curriculum,
school textbooks and media representations—simply providing information
through these means is certainly no guarantee that this information will
actually be attended to by the child. Finally, the child’s own discourse and
actions may also be responded to by parents, teachers or members of other
social groups, depending on the setting, perhaps by challenging,
questioning, or reinforcing the child’s behaviour, or by providing further
information to the child.
This theory suggests that different subsets of factors can be the primary
drivers of identifications and attitudes in different individuals, and in
different groups of individuals, depending on those individuals’ own
psychological processes, the particular societal niches which they occupy,
and the particular sociocultural settings which they experience in their
everyday lives. This theory therefore explains why there is considerable
individual variability in the identifications and attitudes which are
displayed across groups, across individuals within groups, and across
different contexts for the same individual. Hence, it accommodates not only
the multiplicity of different factors which have been found to influence
identifications and attitudes, but also the individual variability and the
context-dependency which have been found to characterise both
identifications and attitudes.
Conclusions
In this paper, I have explored various aspects of national
and ethnic identities from a psychological perspective, including the
relationship between subjective identification with a national or ethnic
group and the cognitive construction and representation of difference. It is
clear from this body of work that identification processes are extremely
complex at the psychological level, with identifications and their
concomitant representations and attitudes being driven by a wide
multiplicity of factors, both sociocultural and psychological.
The body of research which I have described in this paper may raise the hopes
of those whose aim is to develop interventions for ameliorating negative
attitudes towards particular groups of people who are perceived to be
‘different.’ This is because, if negative attitudes are influenced by a
range of sociocultural factors, the implication is that by altering these
factors which are external to the individual, one may be able to reverse the
effects of the previous experiences which led to the construction of the
negative attitudes that are being targeted.
However, this body of research also suggests some significant and daunting
challenges for devising suitable interventions. This is because the sheer
complexity of the patterns of exogenous influence, which are mediated by a
web of endogenous psychological processes, render the task of designing
effective interventions extremely difficult. This is due to the fact that
the particular factors that will have been responsible for generating the
prejudices in the first place will almost certainly have varied from one
society to another, from one setting to another within a particular society,
and from one individual to another within each setting. For this reason,
there may not be any individual methods for reducing prejudice that will be
equally effective across all societal settings, all social groups and all
individuals. Instead, interventions may have to be tailored specifically to
the particular constellations of influences operating within particular
settings for particular subgroups of individuals.
Challenging though this may be, the task of devising such interventions
should not be shirked. The consequences of intergroup hostility and conflict
can be so devastating and far-reaching in the contemporary world that there
is an urgent moral imperative on social scientists to draw upon all of the
evidence which is currently available concerning how these forms of
hostility and conflict originate in order to try to devise effective
interventions. By addressing this task with a clear sense of commitment, my
own hope is that social scientists will be able to contribute to the
reduction of at least some of the entrenched antagonisms and destructive
behaviours which jeopardise this globalised world which we all share.
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