Common Ingroup Identity and Racial Minority Political Solidarity

Abstract

Identification with a common ingroup has been shown to reduce prejudice against former outgroup members who are included in the common ingroup, but some research suggests that prejudice reduction interventions, including common ingroup identity, can have a “paradoxical” effect on minority group members of reducing their support for social change that would improve their group’s situation. These paradoxical effects stand in contrast to research on collective action and group consciousness suggesting that identification with a disadvantaged group predicts increases in collective action and political behavior on behalf of the group. In two 3-wave panel studies, using cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) and random-intercepts cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), I examined whether identification with a common ingroup that includes Whites (American identity) and identification with a common ingroup that does not include Whites (person of color, or POC, identity) have different effects on racial minorities’ attitudes toward other racial minority groups and policies that benefit racial minority groups. I generally found trait-level correlations that were consistent with the literature on common ingroup identity, paradoxical effects, collective action, and group consciousness: Among Asian (Study 1), Black (Study 2), and Latino (Study 2) Americans, common ingroup identities (American and POC) were positively associated with attitudes toward other racial groups included in the common ingroup, American identity was generally negatively associated with attitudes toward policies that benefit other minority groups, and disadvantaged group identities (racial and POC) were generally positively associated with attitudes toward policies that benefit minority groups. But except for POC identity and Asian Americans’ stereotype ratings of other minority groups and support for affirmative action (Study 1), I did not find consistent cross-lagged effects. Thus, these studies offer little support for the theory that identity predicts (and potentially causes) attitude change, at least among minority American adults.