Ecological factors explain how North American individualism produces symbolic collective identities

Evidence

In any case, the socioecological approach provides an explanation for why individualism in North America is associated with depersonalized, symbolic collective identities by suggesting ways in which ecological factors (e.g., the ability to choose in-groups with high status or similar characteristics) might bring about the psychological tendencies and behavioral consequences described by social identity theory, such as intergroup comparison and intragroup similarity. It is expected that an application of the socioecological perspective will enrich our understanding of the more fundamental causation underlying different patterns of group behaviors and thus make it a genuinely social psychology of group processes. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1650

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Identity development is produced by environmental settings, not individual processes alone — Tatiana I. Zamora and Amado M. Padilla, Making sense of conflicting messages of…, 44