Cooperation in multiple social categorization settings

• Applicant: Professorin Angela Dorrough
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532144574

People differ according to their social groups such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. Globalization has further increased this diversity within societies. Psychological literature has suggested that the human tendency to adopt an "us versus them" perspective may challenge attempts to foster cooperation among diverse social groups. People show an intergroup bias in that they, for example, tend to cooperate less with outgroup versus ingroup members. Nevertheless, the reality of social dynamics is more complex than a simple ingroup versus outgroup dichotomy. People often belong to multiple groups – thus, the number of group memberships shared between two individuals can vary. Whereas intergroup bias can obstruct cooperation between social groups, the natural heterogeneity of social categories can create untapped opportunities to promote intergroup cooperation. Cooperation can increase when group membership in another social category is shared. This is a theoretically plausible but empirically uncertain phenomenon. The current proposal is designed to investigate the intricate nature of shared group membership’s effect on cooperation, the mechanism underlying this effect, and the boundary conditions. Specifically, in this project we aim to: (i) investigate the relationship between the number of shared group memberships and cooperation, (ii) investigate the mediating mechanisms (i.e., identification with the interaction partner and expectation from the interaction partner), and (iii) study the universality of the postulated relationships and the variance across societies and individuals. The studies in Branch 1 will elucidate the precise — linear or non-linear — relationship between the number of shared group memberships and cooperation by increasing the number of social categories salient to people during cooperation decisions. We will compare three alternative relationships: additive roles of shared group memberships, the saturation point hypothesis, and the boomerang effect of additional group memberships. In Branch 2, the studies will test the individual effects of identification and expectation on cooperation in experimental studies by randomly assigning participants to levels of identification and expectation. In Branch 3, a multi-society study will investigate the extent of cultural differences and test the extent to which individualism and collectivism as cultural and interpersonal variables influence the link between the numbers of shared group membership and cooperation behaviour as well as their interaction with the two underlying mechanisms (i.e., identification and expectation).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Australia, Turkey, United Kingdom
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Marc Jekel
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Lusine Grigoryan, Ph.D.; Dr. Ozan Isler; Dr. Pinar Ugurlar; Dr. Onurcan Yilmaz