The Advantage of Fitting the Ingroup: Ingroup Prototypicality and Attributed Occupational Success

Abstract

According to social identity theory people are viewed as prototypical of a group to the extent that they possess ingroup characteristics but not outgroup characteristics. Based on this, previous research demonstrated that high-status group members (e.g., in the occupational field: men) may profit from failure in low-status domains, that is, domains in which members of a low-status group (e.g., in the occupational field: women) outperform high-status group members. In this case individual failure of a high-status group member appear highly prototypical for the high-status ingroup and therefore leads to the attribution of future occupational success (so called Failure-as-an-Asset effect). The current work extends this reasoning, by taking into account that perceived prototypicality of an individual group member is assumed to depend on meta-contrast based perception, meaning the ratio of differences between in-and outgroup characteristics and similarities of the ingroup and the respective group member. Therefore, the present study investigated how manipulated differences in ingroup prototypicality (i.e., meta-contrast quotient) of a failing male individual affect attributed occupational success. Thus, we predicted perceived prototypicality to moderate the Failure-as-an-Asset effect. In line with our hypothesis, we found that increased ingroup prototypicality lead to higher attributed occupational success.

The Bicultural Phenomenon

“…The defining attributes of groups are cognitively represented in the form of prototypes, which are conceptualized as “fuzzy sets of attributes (beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviors) that simultaneously capture similarities among group members and differences between members of one group and another group” (Hogg, 2005, p. 245). So, perceived prototypicality of each ingroup member depends on meta-contrast-based perceptions (e.g., Turner et al, 1987); that is, the mean absolute difference between the ingroup position and each outgroup position relative to the mean absolute difference between the ingroup position and every other ingroup position (see Hogg, 2001, 2005; Reinhard, Schindler, Stahlberg, & Seibert, 2014; Tajfel, 1959). Furthermore, being similar to other ingroup members combined with the perceived contrast between ingroup and outgroup members is assumed to elicit self-stereotyping with group members who infer their own attributes from the normative content of the ingroup prototype (Hogg & Turner, 1987; Turner et al, 1987).…”