PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Barreto, Ellemers / SOCIAL IDENTITY AND SELF-PRESENTATION You Can’t Always Do What You Want: Social Identity and Self-Presentational Determinants of the Choice to Work for a Low-Status Group

Group members ’ choice to work on individual or on group status improvement was examined as a function of degree of ingroup identification (low, high) and accountability of responses (anonymous, accountable to the ingroup). In Experiment 1 (N = 73), in line with the authors ’ predictions, accountability elicited progroup behavior among low identifiers, whereas individualis-tic behavior was displayed when participants were anonymous. No similar effect of accountability was observed for high identifi-ers, who always chose for group status improvement. Experiment 2 (N = 118) replicated and extended these findings. Degree of identification with the ingroup was shown to determine which contextual cues are likely to influence group members ’ responses. The integration of traditionally separate models of social influ-ence (self-presentation and social identity) is proposed. It is sug-gested that degree of identification with a group functions as a moderator of which type of influence the group is able to exert. Membership in poorly evaluated groups is generally seen as undesirable. As a consequence, members of low-status groups often wish to improve their social standing. People may attempt to do this either by improving their individual position or by working toward the improvement of their group (e.g.