When the going gets tough, the tough get going: Social identification and individual effort in intergroup competition

Based on social identity theory, the authors predicted that in ongoing inte rgroup competition, people's strength of social identification will have a positive impact on their behavioral efforts on behalf of an ingroup when it s current status is low, whereas this will not be the case when its current status is high. In a first experiment, male participants showed the expect ed pattern of behavior Female participants, however tended to display oppos ite reactions. As a possible explanation, it was argued that the experiment al procedure may have inadvertently evoked a gender-based stereotype threat for female participants. In an attempt to obtain more consistent support f or their hypothesis, the authors therefore replicated the experiment with m odifications to avoid such a threat. These changes Proved to be effective i n the sense that this time the predicted interaction effect between ingroup identification and current group status was obtained for both male and fem ale participants.