Striving for group agency: threat to personal control increases the attractiveness of agentic groups

Stollberg, Janine; Fritsche, Immo; Bäcker, Anna

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00649

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol., 27 May 2015

Sec. Cognitive Science

Volume 6 - 2015 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00649

This article is part of the Research Topic Social cognition, motivation, and interaction: How do people respond to threats in social interactions? View all 18 articles

Striving for group agency: threat to personal control increases the attractiveness of agentic groups

$\r\nJanine Stollberg*$ Janine Stollberg^*

Immo Fritsche

Anna Bäcker

Department of Social Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany

When their sense of personal control is threatened people try to restore perceived control through the social self. We propose that it is the perceived agency of ingroups that provides the self with a sense of control. In three experiments, we for the first time tested the hypothesis that threat to personal control increases the attractiveness of being part or joining those groups that are perceived as coherent entities engaging in coordinated group goal pursuit (agentic groups) but not of those groups whose agency is perceived to be low. Consistent with this hypothesis we found in Study 1 (N = 93) that threat to personal control increased ingroup identification only with task groups, but not with less agentic types of ingroups that were made salient simultaneously. Furthermore, personal control threat increased a sense of collective control and support within the task group, mediated through task-group identification (indirect effects). Turning to groups people are not (yet) part of, Study 2 (N = 47) showed that personal control threat increased relative attractiveness ratings of small groups as possible future ingroups only when the relative agency of small groups was perceived to be high. Perceived group homogeneity or social power did not moderate the effect. Study 3 (N = 78) replicated the moderating role of perceived group agency for attractiveness ratings of entitative groups, whereas perceived group status did not moderate the effect. These findings extend previous research on group-based control, showing that perceived agency accounts for group-based responses to threatened control.

Introduction

Group membership is important to people. It helps them to define who they are and to whom they belong, and it serves the satisfaction of basic human needs. The link between group membership and need satisfaction has been delineated for different motives, like self-esteem (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Rubin and Hewstone, 1998), belongingness (Baumeister and Leary, 1995; Hornsey and Jetten, 2004), self-concept certainty (Jetten et al., 2004; Hogg, 2007), symbolic immortality (Greenberg et al., 1986; Castano et al., 2002), and, more recently, for personal control (Fritsche et al., 2013). Although, the need for control has been counted among the most basic human motives (Fiske, 2003; Pittman and Zeigler, 2007) only recently empirical research has begun to systematically test how group membership may satisfy the need for control (Fritsche et al., 2008, 2011, 2013). People need a general sense of control (White, 1959), they want to experience themselves as autonomous agents who are capable to exert influence on important aspects of their environment. We propose that a feeling of “having an impact on the world” is not limited to individuals (“I have an impact on”), but can be extended to social ingroups (“We have an impact on”), and that both contribute to the perception of the self as an agent. Accordingly, people can rely on their group membership to perceive themselves as agents when their sense of personal control is threatened (Fritsche et al., 2013). Building on research showing increased identification and group-based cognition following threat to personal control (Fritsche et al., 2008, 2013; Agroskin and Jonas, 2010, 2013), in the present article we aim at investigating what kind of groups work best for restoring a sense of control. Specifically, we tested the novel hypothesis that when a sense of personal control is threatened, people identify more strongly with agentic ingroups and find it more attractive to join agentic than less agentic groups.

People usually belong to many different groups that represent their social self (Tajfel and Turner, 1979). They identify with ingroups that are both accessible and salient in a particular context (Turner et al., 1987), and which may satisfy important self-related motives (Correll and Park, 2005). The need for control has been referred to as one of the most central human motives (White, 1959; Pittman and Zeigler, 2007). Deprivation of control can impair people's performance, well-being and health (Szpiler and Epstein, 1976; Rodin and Langer, 1977; Abramson et al., 1978), which is why people strive to uphold or restore a sense of control when control seems threatened (Rothbaum et al., 1982; Thompson et al., 1993). The model of group-based control (Fritsche et al., 2011, 2013) assumes that defining the self in terms of group membership (social identity; Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and joining in group-based action bolsters or restores people's sense of control through the (social) self when their sense of personal control is threatened. Initial empirical evidence has supported the group-based control approach: Salient lack of personal control increased ingroup bias (Fritsche et al., 2008, 2013), the expression of prejudice (Agroskin and Jonas, 2013; Fritsche et al., 2013; Greenaway et al., 2014a) and conformity to salient ingroup (but not to outgroup) norms (Stollberg et al., Unpublished manuscript). The reported control threat effects were obtained for different ingroups, ranging from classic social categories like nationality, and students, to work groups. However, it is an open question, whether people deprived of personal control support and identify with any ingroup. The model of group-based control suggests that people prefer groups that appear as (collective) agents and that could equip the self with a sense of (collective) control. This novel hypothesis is tested in the present research for both, identification with present ingroups and perceived attractiveness of joining new groups.

What are the properties of groups that give people a sense of collective control? According to Skinner (1996), personal control comprises the idea that the self as an agent can affect end states through instrumental actions (means). In a related vein, Preston and Wegner (2005) proposed that people are motivated to think of themselves as agents (“ideal agency”). According to them, agency is experienced for voluntary actions and can be traced back to three features: an intention to act, the free will to exert the action, and performing the action itself. The concept of agency closely resembles and helps to specify the foundations of control. Thus, drawing on both Skinner, and Preston and Wegner, we define a sense of control as the perceived potential to affect important aspects of the environment through the autonomous self. That is, perceptions of agency are essential for perceiving control, and striving for perceptions of the self as agentic should be a means to (re-) establish a perception of control.

Building on social identity principles (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), we propose that perceptions of agency are not limited to the personal level of the self, but can also describe the social level of the self. That is, in situations where the personal self is salient, people infer control from their sense of personal agency, whereas when a social self is salient, people's sense of control should be determined by perceptions of collective agency. In cases when personal agency and control seem thwarted, people may thus be motivated to define the self in terms of an agentic ingroup or to become a member of an agentic group. Applying the components of personal agency specified by Preston and Wegner (2005) to a collective agent (i.e., a social group) means that, for instance, a group of colleagues voluntarily cleaning up a messy meeting room would be perceived as agentic, because they are actually cleaning (perform action), they have planned to do so (collective intention), because they were annoyed by all the mess (free will). If people are motivated to reestablish a sense of control and to perceive themselves as autonomous collective agents, they should prefer groups that best represent all features of an ideal agent. First evidence that groups differ with regard to how well they satisfy agency needs was reported in research on lay people's group typologies (Lickel et al., 2000), showing that only task groups were associated with agency (Johnson et al., 2006). In a similar vein, Deaux et al. (1995) found that vocational identities were seen as more agentic than other identities.

Entitativity—the perception of a group as a real entity (Campbell, 1958; Yzerbyt et al., 2000; Brewer et al., 2004)—should be a necessary precondition to ascribe perceptions of agency to a group. Entitativity was linked to various group properties, such as boundedness, common fate, similarity of group behavior, homogeneity of group members, and sharedness of goals (Yzerbyt et al., 2000; Brewer et al., 2004). However, in most empirical studies, entitativity was understood only in terms of group homogeneity (Yzerbyt et al., 2000; Castano et al., 2003; Hogg et al., 2007) or within-group similarities (Lickel et al., 2000; Johnson et al., 2006; Crawford and Salaman, 2012). It was shown that identification with homogenous and bounded groups increased following self-uncertainty (Hogg et al., 2007), supporting the notion that groups with clearly defined prototypes satisfy a need for self-certainty. However, entitativity (i.e., the perception of a group as coherent entity through a certain level of homogeneity and boundedness among group members) should not be sufficient for satisfying the need for control, although it might be a necessary condition for group-based control to emerge. First, individuals require a certain level of similarity and boundedness to be perceived as a group at all. Second, basic agreement on collective goals and representations of the environment seems necessary to engage in collective behavior (which is not true for unspecific homogeneity that is not related to group goals). Nevertheless, whether or not the group is pursuing goals and has formed them autonomously is independent of perceived consensus and thus entitativity, but it is basically a question of collective agency. Although, some authors included agency in the concept of entitativity (Brewer et al., 2004), for the sake of clarity, here we treat both concepts separately, proposing that entitativity is necessary but not sufficient for group-based control to emerge. We hypothesize that threat to control increases identification with ingroups and increases the attractiveness of new groups, when these groups are highly entitative and at the same time highly agentic. Further, we control for other group features that may be related to collective agency, such as group size, group power, or status to flesh out the unique effect of collective agency for increasing group identification and group selection under threat.

To test our hypothesis that threat to control increases the attractiveness of agentic groups we conducted three studies. In Study 1, we investigated the effect of a control salience manipulation on identification with different types of ingroups, intimacy groups, task groups, social categories and loose associations. We hypothesized that control threat increases identification only for those types of groups that are characterized by both entitativity and agency (i.e., task groups; Lickel et al., 2000). Moreover, we investigated whether increased group identification following threat indirectly strengthened perceptions of intragroup support and collective control. According to the model of group-based control (Fritsche et al., 2011, 2013), when people respond to threatened control through identification with agentic ingroups they should perceive an increase in perceived control through the (social) self, that is, on the group level. Perceptions of heightened collective efficacy and perceived support within the ingroup should thus be indicative of control experienced on a group level. In line with this assumption Drury and Reicher (2009) found that identification with a social movement increased group members' perceptions of empowerment and collective efficacy, and therefore maintained the belief that the ingroup can attain its goal collectively.

In Studies 2 and 3, we studied the attractiveness of groups that were not (yet) a part of participants' identity. In particular, in Study 2 we were interested in the factors that determine the attractiveness of small vs. large groups. Small groups have been associated with better group performance due to less procedural losses on coordination (Kravitz and Martin, 1986), and motivation, like social loafing (Latané, 1981), which might affect the efficacy of group goal pursuit and increases the perception of small groups as agentic and efficacious, as it has been found in social dilemma studies (Kerr, 1989). However, there is contrary evidence as well: participants, who were asked to interact with others as a representative of a majority group reported a higher sense of personal control than those who thought to represent a minority group (Guinote et al., 2006). Finally, the relation between size and group agency perceptions was questioned in a multilevel-analysis by Watson et al. (2001), who investigated the impact of several individual and group factors on collective efficacy beliefs and who did not find a relation between group size and collective efficacy beliefs of group members. The ambiguity of these results suggests that whether small or large groups are perceived as more agentic may vary from situation to situation. We hypothesized that following threat to personal control participants should be more strongly attracted to groups of that size they perceive as relatively more agentic. Other perceived group characteristics that do not represent full-blown agency, such as social power or unspecific homogeneity, are not expected to moderate the effects of personal control threat on relative group attractiveness.

In Study 3, we measured the three components of perceived ideal group agency for entitative and non-entitative groups, hypothesizing that control threat affects group attractiveness only when the group is entitative and highly agentic. Following a control salience manipulation, we assessed the attractiveness of entitative and non-entitative realistic groups that were displayed on pictures and measured perceived agency and perceived group status as possible moderators.

Study 1

We conducted Study 1 to examine the effect of threatened control on identification with ingroups of different types. As we argued above, not all groups should restore a sense of control to the same degree. Those high in both, entitativity and agency should be preferred when people have the opportunity to choose between ingroups of different types. A taxonomy of group types published by Lickel et al. (2001) reflects the intuitive typing of groups by lay people. They differentiate between task groups (e.g., work teams), intimacy groups (e.g., families), social categories (e.g., nations) and loose associations (e.g., people waiting together at the bus stop), showing that these four group types provide different benefits for people: participants primed with adjectives linked to a need for affiliation (e.g., connectedness, belonging) listed significantly more intimacy groups, whereas for achievement related adjectives (e.g., success, competence) more task groups were selected, and for self-esteem related adjectives (e.g., identity, distinctiveness) more social categories were chosen (Johnson et al., 2006; Crawford and Salaman, 2012). None of the studies investigating need fulfillment by these four different group types has explicitly investigated a need for control as a driver of ingroup identification. However, it seems obvious that task groups are those that are most intimately associated with the notion of agency and therefore collective control as, unlike the other groups, it is their most primary purpose to act. Therefore, we expect an increase in identification following threat to control only for task groups, because these groups are primarily perceived as agentic groups.

In line with the notion of group-based control, increased identification with a task ingroup following threat to control should further result in increased perceptions of collective efficacy and within-group support. Collective efficacy directly expresses a sense of collective control and agency whereas within-group support facilitates effective group coordination and goal pursuit and may thus indicate collective control in an indirect fashion. Recent findings initially support this assumption, by showing that group identification increased people's perceptions of control, which in turn enhanced personal well-being (Greenaway et al., 2015). Thus, we tested for indirect effects of control threat on collective efficacy and within-group support, mediated via identification with task groups.

Method

Participants and Design

One hundred and one university students participated in the study. We excluded three participants who had guessed the aim of the study, and five who had participated in a similar experiment previously. Thus, the final sample consisted of 93 participants, 66 were female and 26 were male, with a mean age of 21.41 years (SD = 2.22), one person did not indicate age or sex. The experiment had a 2 Control Salience (high/low) × 4 Group Identification (task group/intimacy group/social category/loose association) design with repeated measurement on the last factor.

Procedure

Participants were recruited at the campus of a German university. After they had agreed upon participation, they received a questionnaire, which introduced the study as a survey on personality traits. Then, participants were exposed to a control salience manipulation, similar to a manipulation that has been used previously in control threat research (Whitson and Galinsky, 2008). In the low control salience condition, participants read the following instruction (instructions for the high control salience condition in parentheses): Please think about an important situation in your life, in which you had no (full) control over the things going on. Please, try to remember exactly and imagine the event vividly! How did you feel right now? Now, describe the situation and your thoughts about it in the following lines. Please, take as much time as necessary!

The control manipulation was followed by a German version of the PANAS (Watson et al., 1988) and a questionnaire on sleep- and awakening patterns, which served as a delay task. We included a delay task, because different kinds of threat have been shown to produce effects only after a short delay (Wichman et al., 2008; Burke et al., 2010; Fritsche et al., 2012). Afterwards, participants received descriptions of the four group types (task group, intimacy group, social category, loose association) according to Lickel et al. (2000). For each group type they were asked to identify an example group to which they belonged. Then, identification with the group, collective efficacy, and within-group support were assessed. The order in which the group types were presented was counterbalanced, resulting in four different versions of the questionnaire.

Identification

Participants rated their identification with each group on five items on a 4-point-scale (1 = do not agree to 4 = agree). Four were adopted from Henry et al. (1999): “I think of this group as part of who I am.”, “I see myself as quite similar to other members of the group.”, “I enjoy interacting with the members of this group.”, “Members of this group like one another.”, another item “I am happy to be a member of this group.” was added, α_{(task group)} = 0.83, α_{(intimacy group)} = 0.53, α_{(social category)} = 0.71, and α_{(loose association)} = 0.86¹.

Collective efficacy

Then, participants completed four items (1 = do not agree to 4 = agree), assessing collective efficacy beliefs for each group: “Together we are strong.”, “We can achieve things collectively, one cannot achieve individually.”, “Nobody should think you cannot count on us.”, “Together we even come through hard times.”, α_{(task group)} = 0.82, α_{(intimacy group)} = 0.61, α_{(social category)} = 0.79, and α_{(loose association)} = 0.87.

Within-group support

Perceived support among group members was assessed with three items (1 = do not agree to 4 = agree) for each group, adapted from Zimet et al. (1988): “There is always a member of the group around when I am in need.”, “I get the emotional support and help I need from my group.”, “I can count on my group when things go wrong.”α_{(task group)} = 0.80, α_{(intimacy group)} = 0.77, α_{(social category)} = 0.87, and α_{(loose association)} = 0.84. After completing the experiment, participants were debriefed and thanked for participation and received a chocolate bar.

Results

We expected low control salience to increase identification with the task group, but not with other group types. Therefore, we conducted a 2 Control Salience (low/high) × Order of Group Types × 4 Group Identification (task group/intimacy group/social category/loose association) analysis of variance, with repeated measurement on the last factor (for cell values see Table 1). The general level of group identification differed marginally for the order of group type presentation, F_{(3, 78)} = 2.62, p = 0.06, η² = 0.09. However, as it did not interact with control salience, we report the descriptive values of the analysis regardless of presentation order. The results showed different levels of identification, depending on group type, F_{(3, 78)} = 334.29, p < 0.001, η² = 0.93. Participants reported the highest level of identification with intimacy groups, followed by social categories and task groups, with the lowest levels of identification with loose associations. More importantly, a significant interaction of control salience and group type suggests that control salience affected participants' identification with ingroups differently, depending on group type, F_{(3, 78)} = 3.18, p = 0.03, η² = 0.11. In line with predictions, people with low perceptions of control reported higher levels of identification with the task group than people with high perceptions of control, F_{(1, 80)} = 6.12, p = 0.02, η² = 0.07. There were no simple effects of control salience on identification with intimacy groups, social categories or loose associations, all p's > 0.12.

TABLE 1

Table 1. Mean and standard deviation scores for identification with different group types as a function of control salience (Study 1).

Mediational Analyses

To test whether increased identification with a task group mediates the effect of control salience on collective efficacy beliefs and perceived within-group support from the task group, we conducted two separate simple mediation analyses (see Figure 1), using the macro process for SPSS (Hayes, 2013). Control salience was contrast coded for both analyses (low control = −1 vs. high control = 1). Participants in the low control salient condition showed more identification with their task group as participants in the high control salient condition (a = −0.15, p = 0.02), as identification increased in participants, collective efficacy beliefs increased too (b = 0.56, p < 0.001). A bias-corrected 95% confidence interval based on 2000 bootstrap samples for the indirect effect (ab = −0.09) was entirely below zero, CI [−0.18, −0.02], indicating an indirect effect. No evidence was found for a direct effect of control salience on collective efficacy beliefs (c′ = 0.05, p = 0.44).

FIGURE 1

Figure 1. Indirect effects of control threat in Study 1: Task group identification mediates the effect of control threat on both, perceived within-group support and collective efficacy perceptions. Control salience was contrast coded: Low control (−1), high control (+1).

Simple mediation analysis for within-group support revealed that low control salience increased participants identification with their task group as compared to high control salience (a = −0.15, p = 0.02), as identification increased, perceived group support increased too (b = 0.79, p < 0.001). Again, a bias-corrected 95% confidence interval (2000 bootstrap samples) for the indirect effect (ab = −0.12) was entirely below zero, CI [−0.23, −0.01]. No direct effect was found, (c' = 0.09, p = 0.15). Both reported mediations support our prediction that control threat indirectly increased collective efficacy beliefs, as well as perceived within-group support, via increased task group identification. As the control salience manipulation did not affect identification with another group type, we tested, whether there was a direct effect of control salience on collective efficacy beliefs and within-group support for the other group types. No direct effect could be observed for any of the two dependent measures, all p's > 0.21.

Discussion

The results show that threat to personal control increased people's reports of identification with self-representative task groups, but not with other types of ingroups. This means that people under threat either identified more with task groups or more often choose task groups (but not other types of groups) they strongly identified with. Both possible processes express their motivation to uniquely associate the self with an ingroup, whose primary purpose is the active pursuit of a shared goal, as well as the perception to achieve the goal through joint effort, and therefore agency (Spencer-Rodgers et al., 2007). Identification with other groups that were also high on entitativity (Lickel et al., 2001), but rather low on agency, such as intimacy groups, was not affected by control threat. This supports our contention that only membership in entitative groups that at the same time is characterized by agency can restore feelings of perceived control through the collective self. Entitativity per se is not sufficient to increase the self-importance of a group following threat to control when more than one group is salient to people. While people identified highest with intimacy groups, which is in line with previous findings (Castano et al., 2003), self-importance of intimacy groups did not increase for people low in control, suggesting a specific mechanism of group-based control restoration. Nevertheless, previous studies also found increased support of other ingroups, such as nations, following threat to control (Fritsche et al., 2013). This could be explained by the fact that in all of these studies only one ingroup was salient to participants and thus only one option for experiencing collective control, whereas in the current study participants could choose that ingroup that appeared to be most appropriate for reestablishing a sense of control. Although in general, groups should heuristically be perceived as homogeneous agents (Brewer et al., 2004), the present study made salient the differences between the group types. Obviously, as the current results show, some ingroups are better suited to restore control perceptions than others, probably because they can provide a greater sense of agency.

The control restorative function of task ingroups is further supported by mediational evidence. The results show, as their sense of personal control decreased, people increased identification with a task group they belonged to, which in turn enhanced perceptions of collective efficacy for the task group. The same was true for perceived support among group members. Although, support by others may indicate less control through the self in interpersonal contexts, salient common group membership is likely to transform interpersonal support into an expression of the agentic “We,” and thus represents an indirect indicator of collective control. Hence, we conclude that people increase perceptions of collective control through identification with agentic ingroups, when control perceptions for the personal self are depleted. These findings illustrate that ingroup identification can in fact restore perceptions of control and may thus add to research examining beneficial effects of social identity for human well-being (social cure effects; Jetten et al., 2014).

However, agency is not the only characteristic of task groups and thus the effects of salient threat to personal control may be attributed to processes other than group-based control. To solve this issue, we conducted Studies 2 and 3, where we directly tested whether perceived group agency is necessary for increased group attractiveness following threatened personal control². In Studies 2 and 3, we also intended to contrast the proposed moderating effect of perceived collective agency to the effects of other potential moderators, thereby turning from ingroup identification to the attractiveness of groups people do not (yet) belong. Here, we assume that potential new members become more likely to join the group when they perceive features of the group satisfying their personal needs (Moreland and Levine, 1982). Therefore, threat to personal control should increase the attractiveness of groups that are perceived as being agentic.

Study 2

The results of Study 1 are a first indication that agentic ingroups are especially attractive for people who lack personal control. In Study 2 we extend this hypothesis to potential ingroups of which people are not part of yet. Furthermore, to test whether the effect of perceived collective agency is unique, possible effects of other factors, such as group size, perceived group power or perceived unspecific group homogeneity should be teased apart from agency perceptions.

In Study 2, we investigated the impact of control threat on attractiveness of groups differing in size. Small groups are better able to act in a coordinated manner, whereas in cases where large groups solve their coordination problems, as majority groups, they will have more social power to attain resources and could thus elicit effects on the environment. As thus, small and large groups' agency may be in the eye of the beholder, we decided to use relative measures, assessing participants' idiosyncratic perceptions of how agentic large groups are in comparison to small groups. In addition, we measured participants' relative perceptions of large vs. small groups on the possible group attribute moderators power and homogeneity, as well as group attractiveness as dependent variable. We expected participants to respond to threatened personal control by showing a relative preference for groups of that size they perceive as relatively more agentic. Although both group power and homogeneity could be related to perceptions of collective agency, they are each insufficient to cover all aspects of agency. Power can refer to personal influence, but also to the possession of resources and high status. Only the former perception shows a conceptual association with the outcome aspect of agency but less so with its process (shared intention and coordinated collective action). In a similar vein, homogeneity may prepare the ground for building shared intentions but is not implying that coordinated action or visible outcomes do occur. That is why we only expected full-blown agency to moderate control threat effects on group attractiveness.