Intergroup Behaviour and Ethnicity: A Social Psychological Perspective

Humans exist not only as unique individuals, but also as members of social groups that are formed on the basis of ethnicity, gender, age and so forth. Reflecting this duality are interpersonal and intergroup modes of behaviour, respectively. Thus, humans can act in terms of their personal self and treat others as individuals (interpersonal behaviour); they can also act in terms of group membership and relate to others as members of this or that group (intergroup behaviour). In a mixed marriage, for example, the couple's behaviour toward each other is ‘normally’ interpersonal, but can become intergroup when war breaks out between their respective ethnic groups. Contrary to common sense, factors more minimal than a war are often sufficient to trigger intergroup behaviour. Indeed, seemingly interpersonal encounters are in fact intergroup. How does behaviour shift from interpersonal to intergroup, and with what consequences? To address these questions, I outline a social psychological perspective based on social identity theory and conclude with a discussion on the enigmas of ethnicity.     

Toward a Formal Theory of Social Processes

A research program informed by Simmers geometric and Mead's processual frame of thought has isolated (1) the six elements of sociation that are established each time people produce a cooperative act, (2) the additional elements created when people construct episodes of interpersonal accounting and interpersonal negotiating, (3) some of the elements created when people put in place tyrannic, solidary, authority, and representative relationships, and (4) a few of the elements established when people become organizationally situated.     

Snowball sampling: using social networks to research non‐heterosexual women

This paper explores snowball sampling, a recruitment method that employs research into participants' social networks to access specific populations. Beginning with the premise that research is ‘formed’, the paper offers one account of snowball sampling and using social networks to ‘make’ research. Snowball sampling is often used because the population under investigation is ‘hidden’ either due to low numbers of potential participants or the sensitivity of the topic, for example, research with women who do not fit within the hegemonic heterosexual norm. This paper considers how the recruitment technique of snowball sampling, which uses interpersonal relations and connections between people, both includes and excludes individuals. Following this, the paper contends that due to the use of social networks and interpersonal relations, snowball sampling (in)forms how individuals act and interact in focus groups, couple interviews and interviews. Consequently, snowball sampling not only results in the recruitment of particular samples, use of this technique produces participants' accounts of their lives. Doctoral research with (rather than on or for) 28 non‐heterosexual women is used to examine the inclusions and exclusions of snowball sampling and how interpersonal relations form research accounts.     

Meta-Analyses of the Intra- and Interpersonal Outcomes of Interpersonal Coordination

Interpersonal coordination, the extent to which social partners coordinate each other’s postures and mannerisms, acts as a “social glue” that serves both individual and social goals, such as producing prosocial behaviors and facilitating harmonious interactions. Research in this area has become prominent in a variety of domains both within and outside of psychology, forming a sizeable literature dedicated to investigating the causes and consequences of interpersonal coordination. We conducted a series of meta-analyses on studies that treated interpersonal coordination as an independent variable, in order to measure its effect on several intrapersonal (e.g., mood, need to belong) and interpersonal (e.g., prosocial behavior) outcomes, as well as several potential moderators (e.g., percentage of female participants) that may affect the strength of the effect. Overall, the results demonstrated that the positive effects of interpersonal coordination are robust, with a few exceptions specific to intrapersonal outcomes. These findings provide a much-needed quantitative summary of the literature on interpersonal coordination, and highlight areas that merit future research.     

Discipline and socialization of children in abusive and non-abusive families

This qualitative study examines how abusive parents' increasingly harsh administration of authoritative and punitive discipline socialized their children to act aggressively and asocially within their families' escalating interpersonal conflict. In comparison, non-abusive parents used successive instructive and authoritative discipline directing their children to engage in pro-social behaviors within their families' routine complementary role social interactions and mutual decision-making processes. These findings suggest that assessment procedures and interventive goals be changed to safeguard children in abusive families from both physical injury and dysfunctional socialization practices of their parents.     

ALIGNING ACTIONS: TYPES AND SOCIAL DISTRIBUTION*

Research on aligning actions requires a clearer understanding of what types of aligning actions exist. A typology of aligning actions is described which is based on three criteria: temporal focus (retrospective or prospective), claim made (concerning the actor's responsibility or the act itself), and the desirability of the event involved. The typology is shown to incorporate the aligning actions already discussed in the literature and to suggest new possibilities. Using this typology, a number of propositions are offered suggesting how aligning actions are used by actors with differing levels of interpersonal power, as relfected in their gender and age.     

A longitudinal comparative study of the impact of the experience of social work education on interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities

Head (the intellectual/critical thinking) and Heart (the emotional-interpersonal) are long established twin-pillars of social work. Their importance is not just reflected in literature devoted to each but in the professional proficiencies and capabilities expected for practice. While clearly intertwined—both operate together in practice—and central to practice proficiencies/capabilities, implying implicit measurement of standards, there is a curious lack of research focusing on measurement of the two together. This novel study is the first to carry out a longitudinal comparative study examining the extent to which interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities are developed during the lifetime of qualifying social work training as measured through programme performance and development. It focuses on four cohorts (n = 170) at two Universities (Undergraduate and Masters). While findings show the interpersonal significantly underpinned performance and outcome, critical thinking—though embedded in Masters programme performance—was less significant, particularly in the undergraduate programmes. The study concludes that we cannot assume interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities are always incorporated into the learning process and attention should be paid to the overt measurement of interpersonal and critical thinking capabilities together with the processes and mechanisms by which they are focused on in programmes.     

Developmental Trajectories of Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury in Adolescence and Intrapersonal/Interpersonal Risk Factors

This 3‐wave study investigated the developmental trajectories of nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) and intrapersonal/interpersonal risk factors among 3,381 Chinese adolescents (56.2% females) aged from 13 to 17 years during a 1‐year period. Using an accelerated longitudinal design and latent class growth analysis, we identified four subgroups of NSSI trajectories: negligible (74.6%), experimental (12.8%), moderate decreasing (10.8%), and high fluctuating (1.9%). Adolescents reporting both intrapersonal (i.e., impulsive behaviors and depression) and interpersonal (i.e., unstable relationships and parental criticism) risk factors were significantly more likely to follow the latter three trajectories. The findings of this study suggest there is heterogeneity in NSSI development among adolescents and highlight the contributions of both intrapersonal and interpersonal risk factors in the engagement in NSSI.     

Urban ties of rural Thais

This article analyzes interpersonal linkages between villagers and urban dwellers and the effect on circular migration in Thailand. "Using data from Northeast Thailand, it examines the prevalence of urban social contacts, selectivities involved in such linkages, the characteristics of the urban contacts themselves, the salience of the interpersonal relationships, and the potential for the urban contact to act as a sponsor for the villagers. Furthermore, using a prospective research design, the impact of social contacts on subsequent rural-urban mobility of villagers is examined." A distinction is made between Bangkok and Northeastern Thai urban centers in order to illustrate some of the obstacles to the decentralized urbanization program in Thailand.     

Emotional Facial Expression Recognition and Expressivity in Type I and Type II Alcohol Dependent Patients

Alcohol dependent patients (ADs) are known to encounter severe interpersonal problems. Nonverbal communication skills are important for the development of healthy relationships. The present study aimed to explore emotional facial expression (EFE) recognition and posed and spontaneous EFE expressivity in male ADs divided into two groups according to Cloninger’s typology and the impact of their interpersonal relationship quality on the potential nonverbal deficits. Twenty type I ADs, twenty-one type II ADs, and twenty control participants took part in an EFE recognition task and an EFE expressivity task that considered personal emotional events (spontaneous expressivity) and EFE in response to a photo or word cue (posed expressivity). Coding was based on judges’ ratings of participants’ emotional facial expressions. Participants additionally completed a questionnaire on interpersonal relationship quality. No difference between the three groups emerged in the EFE recognition task. Type II ADs showed heightened deficits compared with type I ADs in EFE expressivity: Judges perceived less accurate posed EFE in response to a cue word and less intense and positive spontaneous EFE in type II ADs compared to control participants. In addition, type II ADs reported more relationship difficulties compared to both type I ADs and control participants. These interpersonal relationship difficulties were related to some of the EFE expressivity deficits of AD-IIs. This study underlines the important differences between the interpersonal functioning of AD subtypes.     

Dignity in dementia: Person-centered care in community

Drawing on Kitwood's [Ageing Soc. 13 (1993) 51] theory of person-centered care and the interpersonal process of caregiving, this article offers an alternative to the image of the family caregiver as victim through an exploration of the lived experience of caring for a person with dementia in community. Extending care beyond coping, the act of giving care is promoted as a worthy activity and reciprocal social opportunity. Three nonfamily caregiver “portraits” are offered in an arts-informed representational form. The relational processes of caregiving are explored from the vantage point of personal experience and theoretical knowledge. Dignity emerges as the resonant quality, essential value, and guiding principle in an ethic of dementia care. Implications about the direction of research about care and caregiving and research accessibility and usefulness are explored.     

Risky social choice with incomplete or noisy interpersonal comparisons of well-being

In this study, we develop a model of social choice over lotteries, where people’s psychological characteristics are mutable, their preferences may be incomplete, and incomplete or noisy interpersonal comparisons of well-being are possible. Formally, we suppose individual preferences are described by a von Neumann-Morgenstern (vNM) preference order on a space of lotteries over psychophysical states; the social planner must construct a vNM preference order on lotteries over social states. First, we consider a model where the individual vNM preference order is incomplete (so not all interpersonal comparisons are possible). Then, we consider a model where the individual vNM preference order is complete, but unknown to the planner, and thus modelled by a random variable. In both cases, we obtain characterizations of a utilitarian social welfare function.     

Measuring warmth and competence at inter-group,interpersonal and individual levels / Medición de la cordialidad y la competencia en los niveles intergrupal,interindividual e individual

Abstract

Warmth and competence are universal dimensions of social perception that articulate the perception of other individuals and social groups. However, there are no scales that have systematically been used in psychosocial research. The purpose of this study is to construct two scales, one on warmth and another on competence, which could be used at the inter-group, interpersonal and individual levels. To accomplish this, we performed two studies. In Study I (N = 578 students and N = 540 general population), we tested the scales at the intergroup level (immigrant groups and Spaniards), the interpersonal level (people close to the participants) and the individual level (the participants themselves). In Study 2 (N = 184 students), the two scales were tested at an interpersonal level by evaluating 16 public figures. The results of both studies show that both the warmth scale (kind, pleasant, friendly, warm) and the competence scale (competent, effective, skilled, intelligent) achieved a high degree of reliability when reflecting the perception of groups, individuals and oneself.     

African American and European American Women's Marital Well‐Being

Using a sample of 247 African American and European American women in their 3rd year of marriage, this study compared the predictors of marital well‐being for each group by focusing on the influences of individual, interpersonal, and social and economic resources. Regression analyses revealed that emotional health (individual), trusting one's spouse (interpersonal), and feeling underbenefited in the relationship (interpersonal) were significant predictors of marital well‐being for both groups of women. Physical health (individual) and in‐law relations (social and economic), however, affected the marital well‐being of only African American women. Findings from this study suggest the need to examine marital well‐being within the context of race.     

Genito-Pelvic Pain Through a Dyadic Lens: Moving Toward an Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Model of Women’s Sexual Dysfunction

Researchers and clinicians alike widely acknowledge the inherently interpersonal nature of women’s sexual dysfunctions given that both partners impact and are impacted by these difficulties. Yet theoretical models for understanding the role of interpersonal factors in women’s sexual dysfunctions are severely lacking and have the potential to guide future research and inform more effective interventions. The most widely studied sexual dysfunction in women that has espoused a dyadic approach by including both members of affected couples is genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder (GPPPD). In this article we use the example of GPPPD to introduce a novel interpersonal emotion regulation model of women’s sexual dysfunction. We first review current knowledge regarding distal and proximal interpersonal factors in GPPPD. Then, we describe our theoretical model and consider relevant pain and sex-related research on emotion regulation processes—emotional awareness, expression, and experience—in the context of GPPPD, including sexual function, satisfaction, and distress. Next, we review how existing theories from the fields of chronic pain and sex and relationships research have informed our model and how our model further builds on them. Finally, we discuss the implications of our model and its applications, including to other sexual dysfunctions in women.     

A Postmodern Critique of Societal Discourses of Male Violence in Interpersonal Family Relationships: A Balancing Act for Social Work

In recent years, treatments of family violence have tended to be built around conventional discourses suggesting that men are major initiators in instances of interpersonal violence. Utilizing a postmodernist analysis, we assess societal discourses that continue to give life to this narrow conceptualization of interpersonal violence. We also examine literature suggesting that both men and women resort to violence to resolve relationship difficulties and suggest that a more holistic and inclusive approach to understanding interpersonal violence is critical for social workers committed to social justice and a balanced understanding of the contextual nature of human problems.     

Interpersonal Contact and Racial Prejudice: a Comparative Study of American and Chinese Students*

The extent of the causal relation between interpersonal contact and racial prejudice is examined with emphasis on how this relation is intervened by the effects of family socioeconomic status. A cross-cultural, comparative study of American and Chinese students is attempted using a stereotype questionnaire adapted, with some modifications, from Katz and Braly's adjective list. The data indicate that (a) family socioeconomic status is significantly related to cross-national contact among both the Americans and Chinese, (b) increased contact does not linearly reduce prejudice for both the Americans and Chinese and (c) family socioeconomic status is, relatively speaking, more important than interpersonal contact in its relation to prejudice and significantly so in the American sample.     

George Herbert Mead and Karl Marx: Exploring Consciousness and Community*

Current discussions within symbolic interaction point to a concern with (a) returning to Mead's original insights, (b) extending Meadian thought beyond the micro realm, and (c) linking Mead's ideas to constructive social action. These concerns complement an effort within contemporary Marxist literature to provide a systematic social psychology for understanding new forms of domination in capitalist society. In exploring the philosophical foundations of Mead and Marx, the authors identify fundamental similarities in their approaches to the relation between consciousness and community. The authors criticize the current attempts to synthesize Marx and Freud and call for a more thoroughly sociological approach. A Meadian reading of Marx, unlike the Marx-Freud synthesis, is consistent with sociological assumptions and points to the practical possibility of transformative social change through the interpersonal act.     

Generating recognition,acceptance and social inclusion in marginalised youth populations: the potential of sports-based interventions

In recent years sport-based interventions have been implemented as a mechanism via which to target marginalised youth in relation to the development of social inclusion. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding social inclusion programmes highlights engagement with education, employment, or training, as key metrics. This has led some scholars to observe that conceptualising social inclusion in this way can act to further marginalise young people who fail to engage with these metrics. In contrast, this paper seeks to employ an alternative understanding of social inclusion, which uses the concepts of recognition and acceptance, to infer how participation in sports-based programmes may enable marginalised youth to meet mainstream societal expectations and aid with social assimilation. Drawing upon findings from two small-scale studies of sport-based interventions located in three UK cities, this paper places participant accounts at the centre of the analysis to explore broader notions of pro-social development in relation to recognition and interpersonal acceptance. The paper concludes by suggesting that within contexts in which young people are able to generate strong interpersonal relationships with key personnel (such as coaches), and which are built upon trust, recognition and developing self-worth, there is clear potential for sport-based programmes to incubate social assimilation.     

Associations Between Shared Musical Engagement and Parent–Child Relational Quality: The Mediating Roles of Interpersonal Coordination and Empathy

Parent–child musical engagement in childhood and adolescence was assessed as a predictor of relational quality in emerging adulthood. From a perspective grounded in the communicative dynamics of musical engagement, this effect was hypothesized to be mediated by perceptions of interpersonal coordination and empathy between parent and child. Support was found for such mediated effects, particularly with coordination as a mediator. Results persisted when controlling for other forms of positive parent–child activity, thus illustrating the specific relational power of musical engagement, and more generally the importance of attending to what parents and children are doing when they interact.