Effects of Deterrence on Intensity of Group Identification and Efforts to Protect Group Identity -- Special Issue on Effort

Group identification serves important functions such as motivating group members to work
towards group goals and sustaining their efforts to maintain a positive group identity. Thus
increasing or decreasing group identification has implications for group members’ commitment
to achieving group goals. We propose that pursuit of group-level goals has the same properties as
the pursuit of individual goals: both are affected by obstacles to goal achievement. We show that
group identification and group-level efforts to protect group identity can be reduced or enhanced
by deterrents to feeling identified with the ingroup. We exposed participants to different types of
deterrents: a reason for not liking the ingroup (Study 1), difficulty of achieving an ingroup goal
(Study 2), and a threat to ingroup identity (Study 3). Group identification and strength of efforts
to achieve a group goal increased with the strength of deterrence, to the point where it decreased
in the strong deterrent condition. Implications for intergroup motivation are discussed.