Having a Lot of a Good Thing: Multiple Important Group Memberships as a Source of Self-Esteem

Jolanda Jetten, Nyla R Branscombe, S Alexander Haslam, Catherine Haslam, Tegan Cruwys, Janelle M Jones, Lijuan Cui, Genevieve Dingle, James Liu, Sean Murphy, Anh Thai, Zoe Walter and Airong Zhang

PLOS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, issue 5, 1-29

Abstract: Membership in important social groups can promote a positive identity. We propose and test an identity resource model in which personal self-esteem is boosted by membership in additional important social groups. Belonging to multiple important group memberships predicts personal self-esteem in children (Study 1a), older adults (Study 1b), and former residents of a homeless shelter (Study 1c). Study 2 shows that the effects of multiple important group memberships on personal self-esteem are not reducible to number of interpersonal ties. Studies 3a and 3b provide longitudinal evidence that multiple important group memberships predict personal self-esteem over time. Studies 4 and 5 show that collective self-esteem mediates this effect, suggesting that membership in multiple important groups boosts personal self-esteem because people take pride in, and derive meaning from, important group memberships. Discussion focuses on when and why important group memberships act as a social resource that fuels personal self-esteem.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124609 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 24609&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0124609

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124609

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().