Do historic threats to the group diminish identity fusion and its correlates?

Abstract

We examined the reactions of Spanish participants to three negative historic events: a corruption scandal involving the Royal Family and two separatist efforts by a prosperous region of Spain. Although average fusion scores declined following these events, these declines were limited to sentiments toward the group category – collective ties-; they did not tarnish sentiments toward individual group members – relational ties. Moreover, strongly fused persons continued committed to remain in the group and act agentically by fighting and dying for it. Finally, rank orderings of fusion scores remained stable. These findings demonstrate that negative events weaken some aspects of alignment with the group, including collective ties and fusion, but not other aspects, such as relational ties and endorsement of pro-group behaviors.

Keywords:

• Identity fusion
• extreme behavior
• absolute stability
• relative stability

Acknowledgements

We thank Sanaz Talaifar for her thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Notes

1. Participants in studies 1–2 were attending a distance-learning institution that includes students from all over Spain. In the preliminary studies and in Study 3 we used a snowball technique, such that students asked their friends and family to participate. This included participants who resided in the states of Catalonia and the Basque Country where separatist and anti-Spain sentiments have been historically high. Those who did not self-identify as Spaniards were excluded from the analyses (n = 0 in Study 1, n = 2 in Study 2, and n = 2 in Study 3).

The data were collected in a manner consistent with ethical standards for the treatment of human subjects. Because there was no precedent for examining the impact of historic events on fusion scores, it was difficult to estimate effects sizes. We report how we determined exclusions, all manipulations and all variables in each study.