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.
Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. arie@freud.tau.ac.il
Arie
A
Nadler
Gal
G
Harpaz-Gorodeisky
Yael
Y
Ben-David
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