[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on In-Group and Out Group Theory
Member of In-group:
We used the idea of interpersonal congruence, found when group members are perceived by their teammates as they perceived themselves, via identity negotiation (Swann et al., 2000). Demographic diversity improved cognitive task performance in-groups with high interpersonal congruence, and impaired it in-groups with low interpersonal congruence.
Reduction of emotional conflict can, theoretically, be achieved with some practical and more research-based solutions. Gaertner et al. (1989), in studying in- and out- group behaviors, found that persuading participants to recategorize their in- and out- groups as either a single group, or as individual members reduced bias. In the 'individuals' recategorisation this was because previous in-group members lost popularity and respect rather than out-group members gained it. Recategorisation as a single group led to a similar reduction in bias, but this time by improving opinions of previous out-group members.
This could provide a means of reducing emotional conflict. Polzer et al. (2002), however, note that as task and emotional conflict are usually strongly linked, recategorization of a workgroup as the in-group may reduce task conflict, and thus the benefits of a functionally diverse team might also be reduced. Group congruence avoid this problem, as teams that recognized the individuality of members, as the members saw themselves, could still generate task conflict, but avoided emotional conflict. The group congruence effect appears to be caused by early self-disclosure. Instead of encouraging groups to bond as a single entity, then, organizations should encourage them to describe their differences, including positive and negative abilities, and how these relate to the tasks. This would be apparently simple to implement, as a temporary group leader or facilitator could start such a discussion, and then leave the team to its own devices. Such a process should, of course, be only part of the procedures for managing diversity that any organization must implement..................
