Living in ethnically diverse neighborhoods raises cognitive identity complexity

Evidence

In our second study that sought to examine the relationship between contextual diversity and social identity complexity, we deliberately sampled around 850 white British majority respondents from more than 200 different neighborhoods, characterized by varying degrees of ethnic minority proportion in England (again based on census records). We used multilevel modeling techniques to take account of the hierarchical nature of the data, and thus the nonindependence of observations since one may assume that individuals who live in the same neighborhood may be more similar to one another in their responses than to individuals living in other neighborhoods (similar methodological concerns apply when examining, e.g., students nested in classrooms or individuals within families, etc.; see, e.g., Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002, for an overview of hierarchical models). Our results showed that both the subjectively perceived, as well as the actual, degree of diversity, measured by the percentage of nonwhite British respondents (i.e., the ethnic minority proportion) in respondents’ neighborhood was associated with greater social identity complexity (Schmid et al., 2011). These studies thus empirically corroborate the theoretical claim by Brewer and Pierce (2005) that exposure to diverse social environments should be positively related with social identity complexity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 549

Brewer and Pierce (2005) have argued that exposure to socially diverse environments should be associated with greater social identity complexity. What reasoning underlies this claim? Being high in social identity complexity rests upon awareness and recognition of the nonoverlapping nature of social categories, either in meaning (as captured in similarity complexity) or in actual numbers or proportion (as captured in overlap complexity). One may thus assume that living, working, or socializing in environments that are more heterogeneous in terms of their social, ethnic, racial, or religious composition may automatically provide the basis for such increased awareness of the nonoverlapping nature of categories. In other words, being exposed to more complex social environments, involving crosscutting and diverse social groups, is likely to lead to more complex perceptions of one’s own multiple in-groups. Indeed, in a correlational study in the United States, Miller et al. (2009) found that people who reported living in residential areas with a greater proportion of residents from different ethnic backgrounds were characterized by higher overlap complexity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 547

Our results showed that both the subjectively perceived, as well as the actual, degree of diversity, measured by the percentage of nonwhite British respondents (i.e., the ethnic minority proportion) in respondents’ neighborhood was associated with greater social identity complexity (Schmid et al., 2011). These studies thus empirically corroborate the theoretical claim by Brewer and Pierce (2005) that exposure to diverse social environments should be positively related with social identity complexity. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 549

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the empirical social psychology literature on intergroup contact and prejudice reduction theories.
• QUESTION: Direction of causality unresolved: do diverse areas cause cognitive complexity, or do complex individuals self-select into diverse areas? Correlational design noted.
• corroborated: 6 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 549; Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 547