Strong exit barriers channel subordinate discontent into satisficing social-creativity strategies.

Evidence

Second, assuming that the barriers (objective, moral, and ideological prohibitions) to leaving one’s group are strong, unsatisfactory social identity may stimulate social creativity that tends to reduce the salience of the subordinate/dominant group conflict of interest. Strategy 2(c) mentioned above is likely to be crucial here since, in general, access to resources such as housing, jobs, income, or education is sufficiently central to the fate of any group that the relevant comparisons are not easily changed or devalued. Few underprivileged groups would accept poverty as a virtue, but it may appear more tolerable to the degree that comparisons are made with even poorer groups rather than with those that are better off (see Runciman, 1966). — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2748

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘social creativity’ path — reframing, revaluing attributes, changing comparison group — is a candidate mechanism for strategic essentialism that stops short of direct resource conflict. — connects to: Social creativity restores identity at the cost of misdirected rivalry; Joint creative production generates collective identity beyond external-threat response — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 1225; Status competition friction drives creativity and invention — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 306

Broader Connections

• Social creativity restores identity at the cost of misdirected rivalry #expands (0.82)
• Joint creative production generates collective identity beyond external-threat response #expands (0.72) — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics, 1225