The role of the 'other' in national identity: Exploring the context-dependence of the national ingroup stereotype

Analysts from a range of disciplines (especially sociology and social anthr opology) highlight the role of the 'other' in the construction and definiti on of national identity. Recently some social psychologists have come to em phasize the inherently relational nature of identity. Drawing upon these re cent investigations, the present paper reports a held study investigating t he context-dependent nature of group identity. Using a modified version of the Katz-Braly task, British subjects (n = 240) stereotyped two national gr oups: Americans and British. They did so in two conditions. In the 'one-gro up' conditions, subjects rated either of the two groups. In the 'two-group' conditions, they rated one whilst also considering the other. Following Oa kes, Haslam and Turner (1994) we predicted that whereas subjects' stereotyp es of the national outgroup (the Americans) would be unaffected by this man ipulation, their stereotype of the national ingroup (the British) would be affected. This prediction was confirmed. We also predicted that the nationa l ingroup stereotype obtained in the 'two-group' condition would be one whi ch was defined in contrast to the American 'other' which constituted the co mparative context. Using a measure which takes into account the applicabili ty of ingroup-defining terms to both the ingroup and the outgroup (the diag nosticity measure of stereotyping proposed by McCauley and Stitt, 1978) we show that the ingroup identity definition produced in this condition did in deed differentiate the British from the Americans. The significance of thes e data for those concerned with the application of social psychological the ory to real-life social problems is discussed. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.