Social Identity Processes in Organizational Contexts by

Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781317762829
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

PERCEIVED DISTINCTIVENESS, SOCIAL UNCERTAINTY, AND UNEASY TRUST: ONE LIABILITY OF MERELY BEING DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS

Because individuals in organizations possess multiple social identities, they can categorize themselves—and be categorized by others—in a variety of different ways. These include categorizations based upon their obvious physical attributes (such as age, race, or gender) as well as categorizations based upon various social attributes, such as their religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and educational background. Additionally, individuals may be categorized on the basis of organization-specific groupings (e.g., departmental affiliation, branch location, tenure, etc.).

Recognizing their importance, researchers have afforded a great deal of attention in recent years to exploring how these categorization processes influence social perception and behavior within social groups and organizations (e.g., Kanter, 1977b; R. M. Kramer, 1991; Tsui et al., 1992; Wharton, 1992). Several conclusions emerge from this research. First, salient social categories can influence how individuals define themselves in a given social situation. This research has shown, along these lines, that individuals often categorize themselves in terms of those attributes that happen to be distinctive or unique in a given setting (Cota & Dion, 1986; Kanter, 1977a, 1977b; Swan & Wyer, 1997; S. E. Taylor, 1981). For example, ifan individual is the only female in a group, her gender status may be afforded disproportionate emphasis when explaining her behavior, affecting not only how she is seen by other organizational members, but how she sees herself as well. From a cognitive standpoint, the distinctiveness of this category makes gender-based attributions and causal stories involving gender more available during social information processing. As a result, they tend to “loom larger” during social interaction, affecting the social inference process for both actor and observer.

Extrapolating from such evidence, it can be argued that individuals who belong to distinctive social categories within an organization are more likely to be self-conscious when interacting with other organizational members, and especially when interacting with those from the (statistically) dominant group. Because they feel that they are different or “stand out” in the organization, such individuals tend to overestimate the extent to which their behavior is being noticed and that they are under a sort of judgmental or evaluative scrutiny by other group members.

The argument that self-categorization on the basis of distinctive or exceptional identity can contribute to the perception of being under evaluative scrutiny is consistent with a considerable body of evidence regarding the cognitive and social consequences of merely “being different” from other members of a social group or organization (Brewer, 1991; Kanter, 1977a, 1977b; Kramer, 1994; Taylor, 1981; Tsui et al., 1992). Such evidence suggests that such distinctiveness can be aversive (Frable et al., 1990; C. G. Lord & Saenz, 1985). As Brewer (1991) noted, “being highly individuated leaves one vulnerable to isolation and stigmatization (even excelling on positively valued dimensions creates social distance and potential rejection)” (p. 478). Distinctive individuals thus occupy a potentially undesirable social “no man's land” in the organizational landscape.

In social information processing terms, one consequence of individuals' awareness of “being different” from other organizational

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