The Importance of Identity in Sexual Health
Naomi M. Hall in Sexual Health and Black College Students, 2022
Since individuals try to create unique identities for their group and their group membership, they also try to distinguish themselves from outgroups and outgroup members. This makes topics such as sexuality, sexual orientation, casual sex, sex outside of marriage, incongruent sexual identity and behavior, and other sensitive issues related to sexual health and behavior a challenge. If the discussions surrounding promoting positive sexual health, sexuality, engaging in safer sex practices, or STIs/HIV are deemed outgroup discussions and therefore not relevant to how they see themselves, many of those conversations and practices will be avoided by students. This is seen when discussing risk perception among youth and emerging adults. Such avoidance may psychologically strengthen and/or reinforce ingroup status and membership while simultaneously increasing the risk for poor sexual health outcomes. Research demonstrates that even though young adults engage in a bevy of risky behaviors, their assessment of risk and their personalization of risk is usually less than accurate which contributes to adverse sexual health outcomes. A person's identity is intertwined with communication about sex, sexuality, and sexual health because they either support or demoralize one's identity (Rubinsky & Cooke-Johnson, 2017).
Children's understanding of disabilities
Beverley Clough, Jonathan Herring in Disability, Care and Family Law, 2021
A relatively new extension of the extended contact approach is known as the imagined contact approach, “the mental simulation of a social interaction with a member or members of an outgroup category” (Crisp & Turner, 2009, p. 234), and has been shown to improve intergroup attitudes. Crisp and Turner (2009) note several key benefits of the imagined-contact technique: it can be deployed where direct or extended contact is logistically impossible, for instance, in cases of physical segregation. Neither does imagined contact need a child to live somewhere where they have contact with those towards whom they might hold negative attitudes or where these people are known to anyone in their social circle. Rather, it can be brought into low-diversity settings where intergroup bias is less likely to be challenged (e.g., Rutland, Cameron, Milne, & McGeorge, 2005).
Individualism-Collectivism Revisited: Some Consequences for Group Decision-Making
Walter J. Lonner, Dale L. Dinnel, Deborah K. Forgays, Susanna A. Hayes in Merging Past, Present, and Future in Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2020
Hence as the individual’s membership in the group becomes more salient, it would in turn lead him or her to behave differently in ingroup and outgroup situations. Researchers have found significant differences between ingroup and outgroup behavior in collectivist cultures compared with individualist cultures (e.g., Gudykunst, Yoon, & Nishida, 1987; Leung & Bond, 1984). Such results indicate that a person’s self-definition as a member of a group determines how he or she acts in social situations. Crocker and Luhtanen (1990) propose the existence of collective self-esteem in individuals, which is differentiated from personal self-esteem. Collective self-esteem is defined as the motivation to maintain a positive social identity, which is an aspect of the individual’s self-concept deriving from one’s membership in social group(s). Crocker and Luhtanen’s formulation is an extension of social identity theory (Tajfel, 1982; Turner, 1982) which posits that a person is motivated to maintain a positive social identity, or what Crocker and Luhtanen call collective self-esteem. With the assumption that collective self-esteem functions like personal self-esteem, they predicted that high collective self-esteem participants would engage in ingroup enhancing biases or distortions when faced with a threat to their collective self-esteem.
Gendered Anti-Bisexual Bias: Heterosexual, Bisexual, and Gay/Lesbian People’s Willingness to Date Sexual Orientation Ingroup and Outgroup Members
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2023
Mackenzie Ess, Sara E. Burke, Marianne LaFrance
Social identity theory argues that salient identities provide the basis for self-categorization. Categorization into an ingroup (e.g., “I am part of the LGBTQ+ community”) allows individuals to see similarities between themselves and other ingroup members. In-group favoritism, and the opposite, outgroup derogation, are influenced by a variety of factors, including self-esteem needs. People are motivated to elevate their own social groups’ standings, as this enhances their own individual needs for self-esteem with respect to their self-concept and cultural identity (Brewer, 1979). Individuals tend to privilege members of their ingroups and are more willing to cooperate with ingroup over outgroup members (Balliet, Wu, & De Dreu, 2014). Ingroup favoritism and outgroup derogation are associated with discriminatory behavior, with some research suggesting that preference for one’s ingroup may be a stronger predictor of discrimination than disdain for an outgroup (Brewer, 2017; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014).
In-Group Bias and Inter-Group Dialogue in Canadian Multiculturalism
Published in Journal of Progressive Human Services, 2023
With this affiliative identification, therefore, comes group expectations (Dunne, 2018). These expectations are usually a positive attitude or action toward ingroup members and a negative attitude or indifference toward out-group members. As Appiah (2006) has argued, “Unkindness is an equally frequent form of treatment directed toward out-group members” (p. 16). In this ingroup-outgroup dynamic, out-group members are judged as a group not as individuals. According to Blumer (1958), this relationship is “group to group, not … individual to individual” (p. 5). For Miller (2002), this is an element of an inter-group comparison, which makes social group judge that they are either different or similar. So, for Miller, there are cases in which an individual of an out-group is judged (positively or negatively) without that judgment being generalized to the social group of that member. Therefore, Miller (2002) argues, “interventions or tactics to improve intergroup attitudes and behaviors must be intergroup rather than interpersonal in nature” (p. 392). As Dovidio, Gaertner and Saguy have argued (Dovidio et al., 2009), “Social categorization primarily involves the perception of a person in terms of his or her group membership rather than with respect to their individual, unique characteristics” (p. 4). In this case, inter-personal relationships are overlooked, or subordinated, and inter-group relations overplayed.8The following section presents Canadian examples.
Role of the media in promoting the dehumanization of people who use drugs
Published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2023
Daniel Roy Sadek Habib, Salvatore Giorgi, Brenda Curtis
Stigma is conceptualized by Link and Phelan (1, p. 367) as “elements of labeling, stereotyping, separation, status loss, and discrimination co-occur[ing] in a power situation that allows the components of stigma to unfold”. Closely related to stigma, dehumanization is the perception or treatment of people as subhuman (2) and includes negative evaluations of the outgroup, moral disgust, denial of agency, and comparisons of outgroup members to nonhuman entities like vermin (2–4). Most often related to ethnicity and race, dehumanization delineates an outgroup and exaggerates intergroup differences (2,5). Such attitudes have real-world effects on the populations designated as outgroups. Several studies have found such effects in medicine, where dehumanization has been recognized as an “endemic” (6). The dehumanization of people suffering from obesity (7), disability (2), psychiatric diagnoses (8), and substance use disorders (SUDs) has led to poorer healthcare delivery (9), help-seeking (10), and health outcomes (11).
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