Perceived changeability, not status difference itself, determines intergroup comparison meaningfulness

Evidence

Our hypothesis is that a status difference between groups does not reduce the meaningfulness of comparison between them providing that there is a perception that it can be changed. For example, consider two football (or any other) teams that at the end of their season may have come first and second in their league respectively. There is no argument about which has the higher status, but alternative comparative outcomes were and, in the future, still will be possible. When the new season begins, the teams will be as comparable and competitive as they had been before. This example illustrates Tajfel’s (1978a) distinction between secure and insecure intergroup comparisons. The crucial factor in this distinction is whether cogni-tive alternatives to the actual outcome are available—whether other outcomes are conceivable. Status differences between social groups in social systems showing various degrees of stratification can be distinguished in the same way. Where status relations are perceived as immutable, a part of the fixed order of things, then social identity is secure. It becomes insecure when the existing state of affairs begins to be questioned. An important corollary to this argument is that the dominant or high-status groups, too, can experience insecure social identity. Any threat to the distinctively superior position of a group implies a potential loss of positive comparisons and possible negative comparisons, which must be guarded against. Such a threat may derive from the activity of the low-status group or from a conflict between the high-status group’s own value system (for example, the sociopolitical morality) and the actual foundations of its superiority. Like low-status groups, the high-status groups will react to insecure social identity by searching for enhanced group distinctiveness. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2753

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Tajfel’s secure vs. insecure intergroup comparisons via whether cognitive alternatives to an outcome are available.
• XREF: Connects to social identity theory in small group dynamics and to the ‘quiescent’ versus contested stratification debate in sociology of inequality. — connects to: Perceived permeability of group boundaries dictates whether status change is sought individually or collectively. — Anna X. Huang, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Juliane Degner, Being One or the Other, Both or…, 84