Identity as Subjective In-Group Identification and a Source of Intercultural Conflict

In varying degrees, in the approaches and theories described thus far, conflict is explic­itly or implicitly suggested as a natural and likely feature of intercultural interactions, given the presumed conceptions of identity as categorically ascribed or communally shaped and manifested in individual commu­nicators’ behaviors.

Representative of such an individual-based psychological approach are three interrelated theories: social identity theory (Tajfel, 1974, 1978, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), self­categorization theory (Turner, 1985; Turner et al., 1987), and integrative theory of intergroup conflict (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Together, these theories lay the intellectual founda­tion for an extensive body of experimental and survey-based studies. Group identifica­tion arises, according to these theories, from basic cognitive activities of social categoriza­tion. Although almost all sources of variation among human beings can be considered as continuous dimensions, these theories focus on an innate tendency to simplify cognitive representations of the social world by dividing persons into discrete social categories, that is, to perceive out-group members as “undiffer­entiated items in a unified social category” and not as individuals (Turner, 1982, p. 28).

Based on the ubiquitous psychological ten­dency of human beings to simplify cognitive representations of the social world by dividing persons into discrete group categories, these theories focus on social identity (including cultural identity) and define it as “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1978, p.

Swann, Gomez, Seyle, Morales, and Huici (2009) further explain that in extreme cases of in-group identification, people can become “fused” with a group, their personal and social identities become functionally equiva­lent, and that activating either personal and social identities of fused persons increase their willingness to endorse extreme behaviors on behalf of the group when their personal or social identities had been activated. This theoretical claim linking strong in-group iden­tification and intergroup conflict has been supported in empirical studies, including the ones that demonstrate in-group-out-group differentiation, leading to a wide range of con­flicts from the tendency to accentuate differ­ences or de-accentuate similarities (Oddou & Mendenhall, 1984), communicative dis­tance (Lukens, 1979), prejudicial talk (Van Dijk, 1987), and hate speeches (Kirkland, Greenberg, & Pyszcynski, 1987), to ethnopo­litical warfare (McCauley, 2001).

Extending social identity theory and self-categorization theory, communication accommodation theory directly addresses the relationship between an individual’s in-group identification and his or her conflict-generating intercultural behaviors. It does so by offer­ing a broad-based account for both collective (intergroup) identity orientation leading to nonaccommodative behaviors and individu­ated (interpersonal) identity orientation lead­ing to accommodative behaviors. Since its first formal presentation in propositional form (Gallois, Franklyn-Stokes, Giles, & Copeland, 1988), communication accommodation the­ory has been expanded and elaborated. In its latest, streamlined version (Gallois, Ogay, & Giles, 2005), the theory identifies two types of individual communicators’ initial iden­tity orientation, intergroup and interpersonal, along with key factors of the sociohistorical context (intergroup history, interpersonal his­tory, and societal/cultural norms and values) and the prevailing norms governing the imme­diate situation surrounding a given inter­action between individuals.