BEING DIFFERENT OR BEING BETTER - NATIONAL STEREOTYPES AND IDENTIFICATIONS OF POLISH AND DUTCH STUDENTS

This paper investigates two theoretical statements that are central to Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory: (1) when peopl e identify as members of a social group, they are motivated to disting uish this group in a positive sense from relevant comparison groups, a nd. (2) in an hierarchically organized system of possible social ident ities, people may define their identity at various levels, but two lev els cannot be salient in the same situation. Four studies investigate whether these hypothesized processes can be traced in natural social c ategories. Study 1 (N = 150) found that Polish subjects had a more neg ative national stereotype than Dutch subjects. Study 2 (N = 160) inves tigated whether these national stereotypes were related to the perceiv ed distinctiveness of national traits, and to differential levels of n ational and European identification for Polish and Dutch subjects. Con trary to the expectations, it was found that Polish subjects identifie d more strongly with their national group than Dutch subjects. Both po sitive and negative national traits were considered more distinctive b y Polish subjects than by Dutch subjects. Moreover, Polish subjects ex pressed a stronger European identity than Dutch subjects. Study 3 (N = 161) replicated the findings of Study 2 under more controlled conditi ons. The Polish national stereotype was found to be largely based on n egatively evaluated traits, and Polish subjects were more motivated to accentuate the distinctiveness of their national traits than Dutch su bjects. Again, Polish subjects displayed stronger national and Europea n identities. Furthermore, no support was found for the expectation th at Polish subjects would employ some self-protective strategy when suc h an opportunity was offered in this study. Similarly, in Study 4 (N = 40) we found no evidence that Polish subjects utilized an alternative self-protective mechanism, namely 'group-serving' attributions, by me ans of which negative national traits could be ascribed to external ci rcumstances. The results of these four studies are discussed in relati on to Social Identity Theory, Self-Categorization Theory and political /historical developments in Europe.