John C. Turner’s research while affiliated with Macquarie University and other places

presents a new theory of group processes and illustrates its application to the related problems of social influence and group polarization self-categorization theory and social identity: social change, social categorization and the interpersonal-intergroup continuum / self-categorization theory: the relationship between personal and social identity / self-categorization and social influence / an explanation of group polarization / some distinctive implications and directions for research (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

There are ongoing debates both in personality psychology and social psychology on the causes and consequences of personality stability and change. Recent work on social roles suggests that as people change roles (e.g. employee to manager), different experiences and demands are internalised into one's self-concept shaping identity and personality. In this paper, the emphasis moves beyond 'roles' to other group memberships (e.g. ethnicity) in shaping one's self-view and self-rated personality (e.g. Neuroticism). The results of two experiments demonstrated that the salience of a particular group membership (as a Non-Aboriginal Australian) did significantly impact on Neuroticism. Such findings suggest that social identity processes may offer a hitherto neglected avenue for helping to explain personality (dis)continuity. Implications of these findings for both fields are discussed.

The concept of prejudice has profoundly influenced how we have investigated, explained and tried to change intergroup relations of discrimination and inequality. But what has this concept contributed to our knowledge of relations between groups and what has it obscured or misrepresented? How has it expanded or narrowed the horizons of psychological inquiry? How effective or ineffective has it been in guiding our attempts to transform social relations and institutions? In this book, a team of internationally renowned psychologists re-evaluate the concept of prejudice, in an attempt to move beyond conventional approaches to the subject and to help the reader gain a clearer understanding of relations within and between groups. This fresh look at prejudice will appeal to scholars and students of social psychology, sociology, political science and peace studies.

The role of interpersonal attraction in psychological group formation is discussed. For the social cohesion model attraction and group formation are isomorphic, while the social identity approach identifies self-categorization as the mechanism of group formation. This paper examines the ‘social attraction hypothesis' (Hogg & Turner, 1985) that interpersonal attraction only leads to group formation if it generates an assumption of common category membership that engages a cognitive process of identification. This hypothesis is experimentally tested in a 2(categorization/no categorization) x 2(idiosyncratically likable-dislikable others) x 2(positively/negatively distinctive in-group) factorial design employing the ‘minimal group’ paradigm. As predicted, group formation was found to be a function of the social attractiveness (positive distinctiveness) rather than the personal attractiveness (idiosyncratic likableness) of the in-group members, and categorization (irrespective of affective relations) also generated group behaviour. Complex interactions revealed the unpredicted finding that individuals spontaneously form a group when aggregated with positively distinctive likable others in the absence of an explicit categorization. Social identity readily provides an explanation in terms of perceptions of interpersonal similarities which are transformed into social similarity and thus cause identification. The results of the study strongly favour the social identity approach to group formation.

The distinctive metatheoretical and empirical significance of the social identity concept for social psychology is outlined with special reference to social influence and group polarization. ‘Individualism’ and ‘interactionism’ are summarized and contrasted as alternative metatheories of social psychology and it is argued that the social identity concept embodies the latter. A social identity theory of group behaviour (and the individual-group relationship) is introduced and from it are derived further theories of social influence and group polarization. The latter is explained as a special case of normal intragroup influence. It is shown how the social identity theory (theories) of group behaviour, social influence and group polarization explicitly assumes a functional interaction between psychological and social processes, in contrast to individualism, and at the same time generates distinctive, testable, empirical predictions. It is concluded that the social identity concept represents a mechanism of social-psychological interaction and as such demonstrates that social psychology need not be an individualistic science.

Since the advent of the ‘cognitive revolution’ in stereotyping research, interest in the consensual nature of stereotypes and its social psychological basis has declined dramatically. Reversing this trend, this paper examines the manner in which the strength of shared stereotypes and the links between particular content and particular groups are mediated by processes of social influence. Two experiments (Ns = 300, 230) are reported in which participants' pre-existing stereotypes about Australians and Americans were confirmed or contradicted by either an in-group or an out-group source. As predicted, this social validation had powerful effects on the perceived applicability of content to groups (Expt 1) as well as stereotype consensus and favourableness (Expt 2). Stereotypes were typically bolstered when they were confirmed by an in-group or contradicted by an out-group, relative to conditions in which they were contradicted by an in-group or confirmed by an out-group. It is argued that the theoretical integration of principles from stereotyping and social influence research offers the potential for a fuller understanding of the inter-subjective, group based properties of stereotypes and stereotype change.

The finding that minorities may tend to produce conversion whereas majorities may tend to produce compliance is an extremely important one for the study of social influence. Most research into minority conversion has been based on conversion theory (Moscovici, 1980) which, we would claim, rests on the notion that the ‘true’ influence exerted by minorities is possible only because they are essentially different from self. This paper reports two studies in a programme of research testing an alternative explanation, based on self-categorization theory, which assumes that perceived similarity to a potential source of influence will be the key to its deep and lasting success. Both studies employ a full majority/minority X in-group/out-group design, socially significant real-life in-group–out-group memberships and measure attitudes directly relevant to these social identities. Study 1 uses immediate and delayed and Study 2, public and private, responses as the measures of, respectively, compliance and conversion. The results support self-categorization theory in that, when exposed to both majority and minority out-group sources, subjects exhibited an immediate/public polarization away from the sources, towards a more extreme in-group position, and there was no diminution of the extremity of their position on delayed/private measures. The classic pattern of majorities bringing about greater compliance than conversion and minorities greater conversion than compliance was evinced in the in-group conditions of both studies, although this tended to be comparative rather than absolute. The implications of the results for the conflict between self-categorization theory and conversion theory are discussed and the future direction of our research indicated.

The fact that stereotypes are shared within groups is essential to stereotype definition and operationalization. Nonetheless, stereotype consensus remains under-researched and under-explained. To address this problem we present a theoretical analysis of the process through which stereotype consensus develops. Derived from self-categorization theory, this argues that consensus is produced by shared social identification and the collective co-ordination of perception and behaviour that flows from it. This analysis is examined in a review of relevant research and in studies where dynamic processes of category representation and social influence are shown to contribute to consensual stereotypes of both out-groups and ingroups.