Coping with Change

Abstract

This chapter finally tries to answer the question of conditions under which more abstract forms of solidarity are likely to become accepted. At what point is it likely that previous categories of belonging will be given up in support of new institutionalised categories? Social psychologists have been studying processes of group categorisation and the formation of ‘we-ness’ for a long time, revealing mechanisms of social segmentation and stereotyping, as well as in-group favouritism or out-group derogation. It turns out that the so-called in-group bias is a consistent effect. In her classical article, Marilynn Brewer (1979) concludes that the establishment of symbolic in-group/out-group boundaries, even in the absence of a functional relationship between the members of a group, gives rise to an in-group bias: The tendency to favour one’s own group over another. This implies, for example, that members rate the quality of their own group’s product higher than that of out-groups; applied to benefit societies, we have seen that members tend to positively evaluate their societies’ effort and success to provide the collective good. Turner (1984: 535) advanced the hypothesis that ‘group membership is based upon the sharing of a common social identification rather than cohesive interpersonal relationships’. Ten years later, Brown (1995) showed that in-group favouritism is especially common among high-status groups.