High-status group members need consensus on identity to act authoritatively.

Evidence

However, for the guards they were not. Part of the reason for this was that, while guard status was high within the immediate context of the study, participants were aware that their behaviors could be seen on television and that external audiences might evaluate them negatively if they were to behave in an authoritarian manner. This was particularly true for some participants who were members of liberal organizations in their everyday lives and hence were extremely uncomfortable with the role of guard. The result was that the guards could never form a consensus about who they were and how they should act. The differences between them as to how punitive or lenient they should be were exacerbated once boundaries between groups were made impermeable and the prisoners began to challenge the system. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 52

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s interest in how leaders embody shared social identity to make threat-framing read as neutral description; the external-audience mechanism here parallels audience effects in social identity leadership work. — connects to: Leadership requires both shared identity and consensus on who best embodies the group view — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 67; Leaders lead by representing a consensus that shared identity makes possible. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 67; Elites legitimate their power by invoking a consensus they themselves pre-structure — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 875 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Leadership requires both shared identity and consensus on who best embodies the group view #expands (0.93) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 67
• Leaders politicize groups by embodying the shared identity that makes their frames normative #expands (0.92) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4439
• Leaders lead by representing a consensus that shared identity makes possible. #expands (0.90) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 67
• A clear in-group representative position enables decisive collective action. #expands (0.88) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 64
• Elites legitimate their power by invoking a consensus they themselves pre-structure #complicates (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 875
• Member identity and democratic belonging must be actively cultivated to prevent cooperative degeneration. #qualifies (0.74) — Adrian Josef Amon, Organizing the study of degeneration…, 89
• Coordinated collective action requires others’ co-action, not just identification #complicates (0.73) — John Drury and Rupert Brown and Roberto González and Daniel Miranda, Emergent social identity and observing…, 113
• Minority-group presumptions demand explicit respect from authority figures for institutional trust to form #qualifies (0.72) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1373