A snip from google search....perhaps of value.....



CURRENT RESEARCH IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

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Volume 7, Number 14
Submitted: June 11, 2002
Resubmitted: June 26, 2002
Accepted: June 26, 2002
Publication date: June 27, 2002

THE IMPACT OF COLLECTIVE SELF- ESTEEM ON INTERGROUP EVALUATION: SELF-
PROTECTION AND SELF-ENHANCEMENT
Alexia Andreopoulou
Department of Psychology, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

Diane M. Houston
Department of Psychology, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK.

ABSTRACT

The present study examines the impact of personal success or failure
feedback on collective self-esteem and bias. The second corollary of
the self-esteem hypothesis - that low or threatened self-esteem will
motivate intergroup discrimination and Crocker and Luhtanen's
(1990)
self-enhancement hypothesis were examined. Collective self-esteem
was affected by status, and, contrary to the second corollary of the
self-esteem hypothesis, participants with high collective self-
esteem were found to show more ingroup bias (c.f. Abrams and Hogg
1988). However, status and self-esteem had interactive effects on
evaluations of the ingroup and outgroup. High self-esteem was
associated with more positive ingroup evaluations only when the
ingroup had high status, whereas low self-esteem was associated with
more positive outgroup evaluations only when the ingroup had low
status. Results are discussed in terms of Crocker and Luhtanen's
(1990) self-enhancement hypothesis.

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INTRODUCTION

According to social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner 1986), one
important reason why people display ingroup bias is that this
enhances social identity, thereby elevating the self-esteem of group
members. This prediction of social identity theory has become known
as the self-esteem hypothesis. Abrams and Hogg (1988) identified two
corollaries of the self-esteem hypothesis. The first is that
successful intergroup discrimination enhances social identity and
thus elevates self-esteem, self-esteem is a dependent variable, a
product of specific forms of intergroup behavior. The second
corollary suggests that, because of a motivational need for positive
self-esteem, low or threatened self-esteem will motivate intergroup
discrimination, self-esteem is an independent variable, a motivating
force for specific forms of intergroup behavior.

Tajfel (1981, p. 255) defined social identity as "the
individuals'
knowledge that they belong to certain social groups together with
some emotional and value significance to them of their group
membership." According to social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner
1979) the self-concept can be divided into aspects of personal and
social identity. Personal identity is concerned with one's
individual characteristics, whereas social identity concerns the
characteristics of the groups to which one belongs. The
characteristics of one' s groups may or may not also be
characteristics of the individual. Deaux (1992) has argued that
social identity is not necessarily claimed by all those who fall
into a defined category and that the meaning associated with a
particular identity category may be subjectively defined. However,
it remains the case that some category memberships are more fluid
than others are. Certain categories are fixed throughout the
lifespan, it is virtually impossible to change age, disability, race
or gender. Other categories are defined by one' s performance or
status and are only changeable by a combination of luck and effort
such as socio-economic status, performance in school, or on the
sports field. Finally, some categories are chosen and could be
changed at will such as the sports team one supports, or the
political party one votes for.

Studies of the relationship between self-esteem and ingroup bias
have considered widely varying types of group and identity, from
those employing a minimal group paradigm (e.g. Lemyre and Smith
1985; Wagner, Lampen and Syllwasschy 1986), to those employing fixed
categories such as gender and ethnicity (e.g. Hunter, Stringer and
Coleman 1993; Ruttenberg, Zea and Singleman 1996). Similarly some
studies have manipulated status of groups by feedback at an
individual level (Hogg and Sunderland 1991); others have used group-
level feedback (Crocker and Luhtanen 1990).

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Crocker and her colleagues have investigated the impact of self-
esteem on reactions to success and failure at both a personal and
group level. Crocker, Thompson, McGraw and Ingerman (1987) found
that people who are high in personal self-esteem who received
success feedback, rated other successful individuals much more
positively than those who had failed; those who received failure
feedback rated successful individuals no more positively than those
who had failed. By contrast, low self-esteem participants
consistently rated success individuals higher than failure
individuals regardless of their own personal score. Crocker et al.,
(1987) argued that the high self-esteem participants were enhancing
the implications of their success and minimizing the implications of
their failure. Crocker and Luhtanen, (1990) extended this work at a
group level in a study in which they divided participants into two
groups in a manner consistent with the minimal group paradigm.