- Title
- An investigation into the acquisition, generalization, facilitation and immunization of intergroup anxiety
- Creator
- Harris, Nicholas Charles
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2015
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- The anxiety, tension or uneasiness that individuals experience when in contact, or when anticipating contact, with members of a different social group is commonly referred to as intergroup anxiety (Stephan & Stephan, 2000). Past investigations of intergroup anxiety have focused on the anxiety attenuating effects of positive intergroup contact experiences, used self-report anxiety measures, and assessed either anxiety towards specific outgroup members (or ‘episodic anxiety’), or towards the outgroup in general (or ‘chronic anxiety’). The research reported in this thesis investigates the mechanisms underpinning the acquisition and generalization of anxiety towards outgroup members by using an adaptation of direct or first-hand (Olsson, Ebert, Banaji & Phelps, 2005) and vicarious or second hand (Olsson, Nearing & Phelps, 2007) aversive learning paradigms employed in previous research. The empirical work within this thesis employs self-reported and psychophysiological measurement tools, including skin conductance responses, to quantify episodic and chronic anxiety responses to outgroup stimuli, as well as examine the processes connecting episodic to chronic responses. Chapter 1 reviews the intergroup anxiety literature, with a focus on more recent behavioral and psychophysiological investigations (e.g., Blascovich et al., 2001). The literature review leads to the proposition of a learning model of intergroup anxiety that not only incorporates both episodic and chronic anxiety responding but also their interaction, suggesting that chronic responses moderate episodic ones. The four experimental chapters contained within this thesis provide an empirical test of the learning model of intergroup anxiety proposed in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 demonstrates that both direct and vicarious aversive experiences resulted in a comparable magnitude of episodic anxiety acquisition, and that acquisition is facilitated by increased perceived self-model similarity and increased model believability during vicarious experiences. Chapter 2 also demonstrates the facilitating moderating role of chronic anxiety in the development of episodic anxiety and the protective role of past contact quality. Chapter 3 demonstrates that chronic responses, indexed by generalization of acquired anxiety responses to new outgroup members, were most pronounced when new outgroup exemplar stimuli were perceived as similar to the original CS+, and when self-model similarity was high. Chapter 4 demonstrates that the order in which one undergoes direct and vicarious aversive experiences affects anxiety acquisition and generalization: Undergoing a direct learning experience followed by a vicarious one caused anxiety responses of a higher magnitude, whereas undergoing a vicarious experience followed by a direct one resulted in a peak shifted response to a new member of the outgroup. Moreover, model anxiety and contingency awareness both facilitated episodic and chronic anxiety responses. A minimal group paradigm was used in Chapter 5’s research to investigate the effects of aversive experiences towards artificial groups away from the influence of variables that typically confound interpretations of results from real social groups, including prior contact and group valence. This approach also enabled investigations into the relative contribution of group membership and facial cues to anxiety generalization. Results indicated that anxiety acquisition was stronger towards outgroup (vs. ingroup) stimuli, generalization was broader towards ingroup (vs. outgroup) stimuli, and group membership cues (vs. facial features) were more influential for generalization. Chapter 5 also confirmed that contingency awareness facilitates both episodic and chronic anxiety responses. Taken together, the research reported in the four empirical chapters provide empirical support for some of the proposed mediators and moderators of the learning model of intergroup anxiety, such as chronic anxiety and contact quality, and demonstrates the rich and dynamic interplay between episodic and chronic anxiety over the lifetime of an individual. Throughout the thesis and particularly in Chapter 6, the implications of the research for the proposed learning model of intergroup anxiety, evolutionary theory, learning theory, and contact theory are discussed.
- Subject
- intergroup anxiety; intergroup relations; aversive learning; intergroup contact; similarity; contingency awareness; model; individual-to-group generalization; individual-to-individual generalization; generalization along a gradient; model believability; chronic anxiety; anxiety learning; episodic anxiety; contact quality; Bandura; vicarious learning; classical conditioning; generalization; minimal group; social psychology; outgroup fear
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1310357
- Identifier
- uon:22023
- Rights
- Copyright 2015 Nicholas Charles Harris
- Language
- eng
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT01 | Abstract | 510 KB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download | ||
| View Details Download | ATTACHMENT02 | Thesis | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |