Social identity switching: how effective is it?
Zinn, AK; Koschate-Reis, M; Levine, M; et al.Lavric, A
Date: 20 March 2022
Article
Journal
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Publisher
Elsevier
Publisher DOI
Related links
Abstract
Psychological theories posit that we frequently switch social identities, yet little is known
about the effectiveness of such switches. Our research aims to address this gap in knowledge
by determining whether – and at what level of integration into the self-concept – a social
identity switch impairs the activation of the currently ...
Psychological theories posit that we frequently switch social identities, yet little is known
about the effectiveness of such switches. Our research aims to address this gap in knowledge
by determining whether – and at what level of integration into the self-concept – a social
identity switch impairs the activation of the currently active identity (“identity activation
cost”). Based on the task-switching paradigm used to investigate task-set control, we
prompted social identity switches and measured identity salience in a laboratory study using
sequences of identity-related Implicit Association Tests (IATs). Pilot 1 (N = 24) and Study 1
(N = 64) used within-subjects designs with participants completing several social identity
switches. The IAT congruency effect was no less robust after identity switches compared to
identity repetitions, suggesting that social identity switches were highly effective. Study 2 (N
= 48) addressed potential differences for switches between identities at different levels of
integration into the self. We investigated whether switches between established identities are
more effective than switches from a novel to an established identity. While response times
showed the predicted trend towards a smaller IAT congruency effect after switching from a
novel identity, we found a trend towards the opposite pattern for error rates. The registered
study (N = 144) assessed these conflicting results with sufficient power and found no
significant difference in the effectiveness of switching from novel as compared to established
identities. An effect of cross-categorisation in the registered study was likely due to the
requirement to learn individual stimuli
Psychology - old structure
Collections of Former Colleges
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0
Except where otherwise noted, this item's licence is described as © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
National, Religious, and Linguistic Identity Construction within an Internationalized University: Insights from Students in Egypt
Khabbar, Sanaa (University of Exeter The Graduate School of Education, 29 November 2017)The last two decades have set the global trend of internationalized education on a new course. Besides the usual flow of international students from their home countries to Western universities, an opposite flow emerged. ... -
(Re)construction of EFL Teachers' Professional Identity in Curriculum Implementation: A Narrative Inquiry
Anwar, MM (University of Exeter School of Education, 27 January 2020)The current research is a narrative inquiry aiming to explore the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers’ professional identity construction process in the context of curriculum implementation within a Foundation ... -
Social identity switching: How effective is it and how much control do we have over social identity switches?
Zinn, A (University of Exeter Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, 24 October 2022)Switching between social identities can help us to adapt to different contexts. Based on socio-psychological theories, we are likely to perform frequent switches, yet little is known about the effectiveness of social ...