SOCIAL IDENTITY: A FLEXIBLE CONCEPTION OF IDENTITY AND SHARED NARRATIVES OR A FIXED TRAIT?
This project is trying to understand the role that social identity plays in decision making. It is testing a conceptualization of social identity attachment as "strength of attachment.” Thus testing the hypothesis that attachment to a social identity predicts whether norms affect a person's choice. Testing the “strength of attachment” conceptualization has considerable and important implications for how we model and craft policy-interventions that leverage social identity motivated behaviour.
BACKGROUND
There are currently two established views on this which this project departs from.One view of how social identity impacts choice is that it is driven by a fixed individual propensity to be attached to an identity. This would predict that they would be heavily influenced by the prescriptions associated with that identity. A second prediction that follows from this view is that these groupy types will feel affiliation with more social identities than non-groupy types.
THE STRATEGY
In this study we plan to experimentally manipulate the strength of attachment to an identity. Using a novel technique that relies on a behavioural measure (rather than a self-reported scale), we are disentangling the individual-propensity to conform to a norm from the degree to which the individual is attached to the identity (and therefore follows the norm).
TIME-LINE
January 2019-December 2019
RESEARCH TEAM
Erin Krupka (University of Michigan)
Roy Chen (National University of Singapore)
Daphne Chang (University of Michigan)
