Defensive helping: threat to group identity, ingroup identification, status stability, and common group identity as determinants of intergroup help-giving.
On the basis of development of the concept of "defensive helping," the authors demonstrated that high ingroup identifiers thwart a threat to group identity through defensive help-giving (i.e., by extending help to an outgroup member whose achievements jeopardize their status). Participants were 255 Israeli high school students (130 boys and 125 girls) ages 16-18. The phenomenon of defensive helping was demonstrated in a minimal group (Study 1) and real-group (Study 2) experiment. Study 3, which examined real groups, supported the extension of the phenomenon of defensive helping to relations between high- and low-status groups, showing that members of a high-status group who perceive status relations with the low-status outgroup as unstable will protect the ingroup's identity by providing dependency-oriented help to the low-status outgroup. Priming for common ingroup identity reversed this pattern, with participants electing to offer autonomy-oriented rather than defensive help. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed with respect to social change, paternalism, and helping between nations.
Nadler
Arie
A
Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. arie@freud.tau.ac.il
Harpaz-Gorodeisky
Gal
G
Ben-David
Yael
Y
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D026684:Personal Autonomy; D012649:Self Concept; D012922:Social Change; D012931:Social Environment; D012933:Social Identification