Toward a Psychological Understanding of Consequences of Shifts in Group Status for Intergroup Relations (Research Brief)

Societies undergoing drastic transformations are often inundated with group violence, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism, particularly when the transformation is accompanied by drastic shifts in groups’ status within the societal hierarchy. Yet, social psychological research has remained virtually silent about how intergroup relations are affected by societal change and shifts in group status (see Moghaddam, 1999, 2000; Moscovici, 1972; Tajfel, 1972). The goal of my project is to fill this gap in the literature by exploring how drastic shifts in group status – as an outgrowth of broader societal transformation – affect intergroup relations and what psychological processes drive these effects. I ground my research ideas in theoretical discourse on societal transformation, early social psychological research on the role of status shift in intergroup relations, and examine relative deprivation, uncertainty, status legitimacy and stability as psychological processes that link perceived group status shift with intergroup outcomes. To explore this link, three studies in Ukraine and Russia were conducted.

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Katya Migacheva, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was a 2010-11 Individual Advanced Research Opportunities (IARO) fellow.