Contact with cross-cutting others increases the cognitive complexity of one’s social identity.

Evidence

Encountering diverse others, who may be in-group members on some categories (e.g., gender, profession), but out-group members on others (e.g., religion, ethnicity) should prompt individuals to engage in increased cognitive differentiation processes and thus positively affect social identity complexity. In our two studies in Northern Ireland, already referred to above, we confirmed such a positive relationship, revealing that positive intergroup contact with the ethnopolitical out-group was positively associated with similarity, as well as overlap complexity (Schmid et al., 2009). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 565

Intergroup contact may thus also affect the cognitive representation of one’s multiple in-groups by highlighting, via direct experience with diverse others, the complexity and nonoverlapping nature of social categories. Encountering diverse others, who may be in-group members on some categories (e.g., gender, profession), but out-group members on others (e.g., religion, ethnicity) should prompt individuals to engage in increased cognitive differentiation processes and thus positively affect social identity complexity. In our two studies in Northern Ireland, already referred to above, we confirmed such a positive relationship, revealing that positive intergroup contact with the ethnopolitical out-group was positively associated with similarity, as well as overlap complexity (Schmid et al., 2009). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 565

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that cross-cutting membership complexifies identity parallels sociology’s cross-cutting cleavages theory and connects to the reader’s social capital material. — connects to: Motives activated by social context go beyond similarity to drive further identification. — Anna X. Huang, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Juliane Degner, Being One or the Other, Both or…, 66
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 565