Date of Award

Fall 2019

Degree Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Psychology, PhD

Program

School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation

Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair

Michael A. Hogg

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Jason Siegel

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

William D. Crano

Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member

Richard J. Crisp

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2019 Jiin Jung

Keywords

depersonalization, projection, social identity, social inference, uncertainty reduction

Subject Categories

Social Psychology

Abstract

This dissertation develops and tests a new integrative model, the depersonalization-projection model, which proposes that uncertainty reduction is a key motivation underlying depersonalization and projection processes in groups. The proposed model describes the conditions under which people in group contexts define themselves in terms of group attributes (depersonalization) and/or define the group in terms of attributes of themselves (projection). The locus of uncertainty (about the group, about self, about self-prototypicality/self-group fit) determines the directional flow of definitional information, as well as (a) effectiveness of uncertainty reduction, (b) strength of inference, (c) strength of identification, (d) information processing time, and (e) perception of relative self-prototypicality and interchangeability. The proposed model is compared to previous integrative models. A 2 locus-of-uncertainty (group vs. self) by 3 self-prototypicality (high vs. low vs. unknown) between-subjects experiment (N = 257) tested two core hypotheses. (H1) Self locus-of-uncertainty yields (a) greater uncertainty reduction, (b) stronger inference, (c) stronger identification, (d) shorter information processing time, and (e) lower relative self-prototypicality (higher interchangeability) than Group locus-ofuncertainty. (H2) These effects of locus-of-uncertainty are moderated by self-prototypicality. When the locus-of-uncertainty is the group, high self-prototypicality yields (a) greater uncertainty reduction, (b) stronger inference, (c) stronger identification, (d) shorter information processing time, and (e) higher relative self-prototypicality (low interchangeability) than low or unknown self-prototypicality; when the locus-of-uncertainty is self, self-prototypicality will have no effect. Results revealed that as predicted under H1a and H1b, Self locus-of-uncertainty yielded greater uncertainty reduction and stronger inference than Group locus-of-uncertainty. As predicted under H2c, results revealed the significant two-way interaction on identification. However, there were no significant effects on reaction time and the perception of relative selfprototypicality/interchangeability. The closing discussion explores implications of this research for newcomer innovation, intragroup communication, innovative leadership, and faction formation.

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