Attitudes and identity: exploring the active, fluid nature of identity emergence in interaction
Creators: name: O'Reilly, Caoimhe
Publisher: name: University of Limerick
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 52
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology

description: Research in the social identity tradition often assumes that broad, static categories, with recognisable, pre-existing labels are the bases for identities (e.g., nationality, ethnicity, career, gender). Such objective categories often ignore the role of the comparative context and conflate social categorisation with self-categorisation. Objective categories may not fully capture how people categorise themselves and others into groups in interactive contexts, especially when considering emerging identities. In this thesis, I assess the emergence of identity, and the active nature of categorisation and identity construction in interaction. I focus in particular on the attitude-identity relationship, given the prevalence of attitude expression in interaction, especially computer-mediated interaction. I explore the attitude-identity relationship in eight preregistered experiments, one preregistered quasi-experiment (N = 7342) and one twitter data study (N = 8149). I explore whether attitude congruence can be the basis for identification; whether attitudes foster stronger identification than minimal group identification; and whether identification can be fostered in the absence of face-to-face discussion via computer mediated communication. I use novel attitudes (i.e., attitudes that participants should not be previously aware of) to assess whether attitude congruence can be the basis of identification in its own right, as opposed to reflecting pre-existing identities. I assess whether certain types of attitudes foster stronger identification than others, in particular focusing on moral attitudes, given that morality is one of the most important factors for our perceptions of ourselves, others, our ingroups, and our outgroups. For the remaining studies I use attitudes relating to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022), as this novel context allows us to assess emerging identities. I assess the identity strengthening effects of cumulative attitude congruence and the fluidity of identity, focusing on how identities (and who is included and excluded from groups) can be updated in context with the introduction of new, contextually relevant information. I also assess the active nature of identity creation in interaction, focusing in particular on how the group relationship between interactants (whether they see one another as ingroup or outgroup) influences the attitudes that are publicly expressed. Finally, I assess the online twitter response to the Russo-Ukraine war to determine whether large-scale online patterns of attitude sharing are similar to those found in the experimental work of the thesis. In particular, I explore whether people publicly express hashtags similar to others who are close to them in the follower network. Based on the empirical findings across these studies I conclude that:i) Awareness of attitude congruence is sufficient to transform attitudes into properties around which psychological groups can form i.e., attitudes can be categories from which social identification can be based.ii) Attitude based groups foster stronger identification than groups revolving around arbitrary criteria (akin to minimal groups).iii) Minimal computer mediated communications are sufficient for the emergence of attitude-based groups.iv) Some attitudes are more identity relevant than others. Attitudes held as moral convictions are particularly identity relevant.v) Identity can be fluid and can be updated as the comparative context changes i.e., as new attitudes are introduced in interaction, identity can strengthen, weaken, or even extinguish.vi) Attitude expression can be performative and can be constrained by one’s group relationship with one’s audience. Attitude interaction with ingroup members motivates interactants towards attitude alignment.vii) There is a dynamic relationship between attitude expression and identity. That is, motivated attitude-alignment can strengthen the attitude-based identity that motivated the alignment in the first place.