S Alexander Haslam
Biographic Data
| ID | 5523766 |
|---|---|
| NAME | S Alexander Haslam |
| GIVEN NAMES | S Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Haslam |
| SIGNATURE | HASLAM S A |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 106 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 568 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 104 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
A Social Identity Model of Leadership Development Implementation
Despite substantial investment in leadership development, organizations often struggle to implement relevant programs effectively. This reflects the fact that the success of program implementation is contingent on identity dynamics. Building on the social identity model of leadership, the ASPIRe model, and evidence-based programs such as 5R that apply these principles, we argue that, to be effective, implementation needs to ensure that the approa…
Theory in leadership and management
Zombie leadership
Considerable progress has been made in the field of leadership in recent years. However, we argue that this is undermined by a strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die. These, we term zombie leadership. Zombie leadership lives on not because it has empirical support but because it flatters and appeals to elites, to the leadership industrial complex that…
Meta‐identification
In the present research, we introduce and develop the concept of meta‐identification – perceptions of others’ identification with a group – and examine its capacity to shape group life. Across two cross‐sectional studies and three experiments ( N total = 3992), we investigate the relationship between participants’ meta‐identification in an intragroup context and their group meaningfulness, collective self‐efficacy, organisational citizenship beha…
The social grounds of personal self
Many lay people believe that the best way to develop a clear sense of ‘who you are’ is to shut yourself off from others and engage in introspection. Increasingly, however, empirical evidence points to the social aspects of identities and identity development. Building on this, we argue that a strong sense of personal identity is more likely to be derived from meaningful social interaction. More specifically, we argue that when communication allow…
Examining the role of Donald Trump and his supporters in the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol
Where is the human in human-centered AI? Insights from developer priorities and user experiences
Human-centered artificial intelligence (HCAI) seeks to shift the focus in AI development from technology to people. However, it is not clear whether existing HCAI principles and practices adequately accomplish this goal. To explore whether HCAI is sufficiently focused on people, we conducted a qualitative survey of AI developers (N = 75) and users (N = 130) and performed a thematic content analysis on their responses to gain insight into their di…
Innovation across cultures
Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) the mechanisms through which leadership impacts FIB; and (c) the degree to which relationships betwe…
Social identity makes group-based social connection possible
Reconciling identity leadership and leader identity
Collective mobilisation as a contest for influence
Leadership is central to understanding social continuity and change, though rarely features in the study of collective action. Across three experiments (total N = 687), we examine how followers’ support for pro‐change leaders (Experiments 1–3) and pro‐status quo leaders (Experiments 1–2) varies as a function of leader alignment with group normative trajectory, the presence (vs. absence) of competing leaders, and shared group membership with follo…
Neoliberalism can reduce well‐being by promoting a sense of social disconnection, competition, and loneliness
Neoliberalism has become the dominant ideology in many parts of the world. Yet there is little empirical research on its psychological impact. On the basis of a social identity approach to health, we hypothesize that, by increasing competition and by reducing people’s sense of connection to others, neoliberalism can increase loneliness and compromise our well‐being. Study 1 ( N = 246) shows that the more neoliberal people perceive society to be, …
Life Change, Social Identity, and Health
Life change affects health. Research aimed at understanding the consequences of life change has primarily focused on the important roles played by stress, social support, individual differences, and broader socioeconomic factors in shaping health outcomes, most notably mental health decline. In this review we extend these accounts by exploring social identity–based determinants of adjustment to life change. We do so by drawing on social identity …
Advancing the social identity theory of leadership
This research advances a social identity approach to leadership through a meta-analysis examining four novel hypotheses that clarify the nature and impact of leader group prototypicality (the extent to which a leader is perceived to embody shared social identity). A random-effects meta-analysis ( k = 128, N = 32,834) reveals a moderate-to-large effect of prototypicality that holds across evaluative and behavioral outcomes. The effect is stronger …
Knowing me, knowing us
Identity Continuity Protects Academic Performance, Retention, and Life Satisfaction among International Students
International students transitioning to university undergo dramatic changes in social identity, with a need to adapt to a new culture, language, environment, and way of living. This paper explores the impact of this social identity change on academic performance, academic retention, mental health, and life satisfaction. The Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) predicts that during life transitions of this form, an individual’s group m…
“There’s a Bit of a Ripple-effect”
Urban sociology highlights an important role that a city’s social infrastructure, or “third-places,” play in supporting healthy communities. Informed by social identity theorizing, this study explores when and why older adults engage with third-places and how a sense of wellbeing can be derived from their participation. Focus-group interviews were conducted with a sample of community-dwelling older adults ( N = 31) to examine the nature of one su…
Assessing the speed and ease of extracting group and person information from faces
The human face is a key source of social information. In particular, it communicates a target's personal identity and some of their group memberships. Different models of social perception posit distinct stages at which this group-level and person-level information is extracted from the face, with divergent downstream consequences for cognition and behavior. This paper presents four experiments that explore the time-course of extracting group and…
Conflict, what conflict? Evidence that playing down “conflict” can be a weapon of choice for high‐status groups
Three studies using pre‐existing (Studies 1 and 3) and minimal (Study 2) groups tested the hypothesis that ingroup status shapes whether “conflict’” with an outgroup is strategically acknowledged or downplayed. As predicted, high (vs. low) ingroup status led group members to downplay conflict, but only to an outgroup rather than ingroup audience (Studies 1 and 2; N s = 127 & 292), and only when the status difference was unstable (vs. stable) and …
The New Psychology of Leadership
This groundbreaking book provides a refreshing introduction to the field of leadership and is jam-packed with theoretical and practical insights derived from a wealth of applied scientific research conducted by the authors and their colleagues around the world over the last three decades. It starts from the premise that leadership is never just about leaders. Instead it is about leaders and followers who are joined together as members of a social…
Together Apart
Identity economics meets identity leadership
The approach–avoidance dilemma at the heart of group‐based support
Despite the benefits of shared group membership, group members often experience an approach–avoidance dilemma when seeking support. At the same time that group members’ willingness to seek support is increased by the positive implications of group identification (the approach hypothesis ), it is reduced by negative implications, including the capacity for support to threaten their standing in the group (the avoidance hypothesis ). As this dilemma…
The New Psychology of Health
British Psychology Society Textbook of the Year 2020 Why do people who are more socially connected live longer and have better health than those who are socially isolated? Why are social ties at least as good for your health as not smoking, having a good diet, and taking regular exercise? Why is treatment more effective when there is an alliance between therapist and client? Until now, researchers and practitioners have lacked a strong theoretica…
I follow, therefore I lead
It is acknowledged that identity plays an important role in a person's leadership development. To date, however, there has been little consideration of the possibility – suggested by the social identity perspective – that individuals who identify as followers may be especially likely to emerge as leaders. We test this possibility in a longitudinal sample of recruit commandos in the Royal Marines. Recruits rated their identification with leader an…
Advancing the social identity approach to health and well‐being
The health of people's body and mind is powerfully conditioned by social factors that affect their social identity. Consistent with this notion, there is a growing interest in the way that group memberships (and the social identities derived from belonging to these groups) affect health and well‐being. To the extent that group memberships provide individuals with meaning, support, and agency (i.e., a positive sense of social identity), health is …
From “we” to “me
There is growing recognition that identification with social groups can protect and enhance health and well-being, thereby constituting a kind of "social cure." The present research explores the role of control as a novel mediator of the relationship between shared group identity and well-being. Five studies provide evidence for this process. Group identification predicted significantly greater perceived personal control across 47 countries (Stud…
Social identities promote well‐being because they satisfy global psychological needs
Social identities are known to improve well‐being, but why is this? We argue that this is because they satisfy basic psychological needs, specifically, the need to belong, the need for self‐esteem, the need for control and the need for meaningful existence. A longitudinal study ( N = 70) revealed that gain in identity strength was associated with increased need satisfaction over 7 months. A cross‐sectional study ( N = 146) revealed that social id…
Mental Health Support Groups, Stigma, and Self-Esteem
Research into the relationship between stigmatization and well-being suggests that identification with a stigmatized group can buffer individuals from the adverse effects of stigma. In part, this is because social identification is hypothesized to provide a basis for social support which increases resistance to stigma and rejection of negative in-group stereotypes. The present research tests this model among individuals with mental health problem…
Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 1
During the 1990‐1991 Persian Gulf conflict an experiment was conducted with Australian university students (N = 200) to investigate whether the social stereotyping of Americans varied with social contextual manipulations related to the hostilities. The study, conducted in two phases at the start and end of the conflict, examined how the assignment of standard stereotypical traits to Americans was affected (a) by the large‐scale social change cons…
Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 2
This paper examines the hypothesis that patterns of stereotypic accentuation reflect the degree to which judged stimuli share the same social category membership as the stereotyper, Following self‐categorization theory, the degree of this shared identity is operationalized in terms of the meta‐contrast ratio as a function of the positions of (a) stereotyper and (b) stereotyped target relative to (c) the stereotyper's frame of reference. Three exp…
The Role of Personality and Group Factors in Explaining Prejudice
When are we better than them and they worse than us? A closer look at social discrimination in positive and negative domains
This article argues that in-group favoritism occurs on positive and negative dimensions only when the dimensions of comparison provide an appropriate and meaningful basis for self-other definition, that is, when traits comparatively and normatively fit in-group-out-group categorizations. Three studies are reported in which groups were evaluated on positive or negative traits that varied in their degree of normative fit to in-group and out-group i…
Identity Entrepreneurship and the Consequences of Identity Failure
The BBC Prison Study was an experimental case study in which participants were randomly assigned to groups as prisoners or guards. This paper examines the impact of interventions designed to increase prisoners' sense of shared social identity on processes of leadership. It presents psychometric, behavioral, and observational data which support the propositions that (a) social identity makes leadership possible, (b) effective leadership facilitate…
It’s not funny if they’re laughing”
Contextual changes in the prototypicality of extreme and moderate outgroup members
Previous social categorization research has tended to treat prototypicality (the degree to which a stimulus is representative of a category) as a fixed stimulus property. In contrast, self‐categorization theory sees prototypicality as an aspect of the categorization process that is dependent on features of the social context within which categorization takes place. To test this view two experiments ( N s = 256, 73) examined the perceived represen…
Nothing by Mere Authority
Milgram's classic studies are widely understood to demonstrate people's natural inclination to obey the orders of those in authority. However, of the prods that Milgram's Experimenter employed to encourage participants to continue the one most resembling an order was least successful. This study examines the impact of prods more closely by manipulating them between‐participants within an analogue paradigm in which participants are instructed to u…
Creative innovation or crazy irrelevance? The contribution of group norms and social identity to creative behavior
Rethinking the Psychology of Leadership
Leadership is an influence process that centers on group members being motivated to reach collective goals. As such, it is ultimately proven by followership. Yet this is something that classical and contemporary approaches struggle to explain as a result of their focus on the qualities and characteristics of leaders as individuals in the abstract. To address this problem, we outline a social identity approach that explains leadership as a process…
Multiple Social Identities Enhance Health Post-Retirement Because They Are a Basis for Giving Social Support
We examine the extent to which multiple social identities are associated with enhanced health and well-being in retirement because they provide a basis for giving and receiving social support. Results from a cross-sectional study show that retirees (N = 171) who had multiple social identities following (but not prior to) retirement report being (a) more satisfied with retirement, (b) in better health, and (c) more satisfied with life in general. …
What Makes a Person a Perpetrator? The Intellectual, Moral, and Methodological Arguments for Revisiting Milgram's Research on the Influence of Authority
In this article, we outline the rationale for reexamining Milgram's explanation of how ordinary people can become perpetrators of atrocity. We argue, first, that any consideration of these issues cannot ignore the impact of Milgram's ideas in psychology, in other disciplines such as history, and in society at large. Second, we outline recent research in both psychology and history which challenges Milgram's perspective—specifically his “agentic s…
Well‐being in cross‐cultural transitions
Two studies examined the effect of acculturation–contact discrepancies on well‐being. Specifically, we tested the prediction that well‐being will be compromised when cultural minorities' acculturation preferences are not met by the intergroup and intragroup contact in a new society. Study 1 found that for Polish immigrants ( n = 55) acculturation–contact discrepancies were associated with compromised well‐being. Study 2 followed a cohort of inter…
Group Ties Protect Cognitive Health by Promoting Social Identification and Social Support
Both studies provided evidence consistent with claims that group ties were especially beneficial because they cultivated social identification that provided the foundation for social support
Of the group’ and ‘for the group’
Previous research has focused on the importance of leaders being seen to be of the group (i.e. to be prototypical of a group) but less on the impact of leaders' own degree of identification with the group. Also, little is known about the combined impact of leader prototypicality and leader identification on followers' responses. This paper reports two studies that address these lacunae. Study 1 shows experimentally that perceived leader identific…
Leader performance and prototypicality
Research has demonstrated that leader performance and leader prototypicality are both predictors of leader endorsement. While performance and prototypicality have generally been considered to be independent, this paper suggests that performance and prototypicality are interdependent and have a bi‐directional impact both on each other and on leaders' capacity to engage in identity entrepreneurship (i.e., to define shared group norms and ideals). T…
Sugaring o'er the devil
We examined how a group's claim to moral superiority influences evaluations of rule‐breaking by ingroup members. Moral superiority was manipulated among researchers (Study 1) and British citizens (Study 2), after which group members were presented with ingroup rule‐breakers: a researcher violating ethical rules (Study 1) and British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners (Study 2). In both studies, higher and lower identifiers in the control condition …
In home or at home? How collective decision making in a new care facility enhances social interaction and wellbeing amongst older adults
Benevolent, long-term care can threaten older adults' sense of autonomy in a residential home environment. Increasing reliance on a hotel style of living has been seen to erode social identity, life satisfaction and even survival or lifespan. Drawing on evidence from both gerontological and social psychological literature, this paper examines the links between the empowerment of residents and their subsequent quality of life in the context of a m…
Illusory correlation as accentuation of actual intercategory difference
Distinctiveness‐based illusory correlation effects (ICEs) have been implicated in the formation of negative stereotypes of minorities. In standard experiments subjects are presented with information about a large and small group in which the ratio of desirable to undesirable members is the same. These conditions normally lead to a negative representation of the smaller group. Explanations of this effect suggest it is a product of (a) over‐represe…
The creation of uncertainty in the influence process
Social and cognitive psychologists have conceptualized judgemental confidence (how strongly a person holds the belief that some judgement is correct) as being proportional to the amount of evidence in favour of a response. Festinger (1950) argued that there are two separate processes by which uncertainty (the inverse of confidence) can be reduced. These two processes are physical reality testing (the perceptual processing of stimulus information)…
Becoming an In-Group
Penelope J. Oakes, S. Alexander Haslam, Brenda Morrison, Diana Grace, Becoming an In-Group: Reexamining the Impact of Familiarity on Perceptions of Group Homogeneity, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 52-60
Perceiving people as group members
It was hypothesized that the perceived social category membership of others becomes salient as a description and explanation of their behaviour where their attitudes ‘fit’ the social categorization. Fit is defined as the degree to which the attributes of others are perceived to correlate with group membership in a normatively consistent direction. In Expt 1 subjects viewed tape—slide presentations of six‐person groups where gender composition (‘s…
Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 2
This paper examines the hypothesis that patterns of stereotypic accentuation reflect the degree to which judged stimuli share the same social category membership as the stereotyper, Following self‐categorization theory, the degree of this shared identity is operationalized in terms of the meta‐contrast ratio as a function of the positions of (a) stereotyper and (b) stereotyped target relative to (c) the stereotyper's frame of reference. Three exp…
Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 1
During the 1990‐1991 Persian Gulf conflict an experiment was conducted with Australian university students (N = 200) to investigate whether the social stereotyping of Americans varied with social contextual manipulations related to the hostilities. The study, conducted in two phases at the start and end of the conflict, examined how the assignment of standard stereotypical traits to Americans was affected (a) by the large‐scale social change cons…
Illusory correlation as accentuation of actual intercategory difference
Distinctiveness‐based illusory correlation effects (ICEs) have been implicated in the formation of negative stereotypes of minorities. In standard experiments subjects are presented with information about a large and small group in which the ratio of desirable to undesirable members is the same. These conditions normally lead to a negative representation of the smaller group. Explanations of this effect suggest it is a product of (a) over‐represe…
The creation of uncertainty in the influence process
Social and cognitive psychologists have conceptualized judgemental confidence (how strongly a person holds the belief that some judgement is correct) as being proportional to the amount of evidence in favour of a response. Festinger (1950) argued that there are two separate processes by which uncertainty (the inverse of confidence) can be reduced. These two processes are physical reality testing (the perceptual processing of stimulus information)…
Self and Collective
The relationship between the self and the collective is discussed from the perspective of self-categorization theory. Self-categorization theory makes a basic distinction between personal and social identity as different levels of self-categorization. It shows how the emergent properties of group processes can be explained in terms of a shift in self perception from personal to social identity. It also elucidates how self-categorization varies wi…
Problems with the measurement of illusory correlation
The illusory correlation eflect (ICE) refers to a tendency for people to over‐represent rare behaviours performed by members of an infrequently encountered (minority) group. On the basis of an empirtcal study ( N = 245) this paper examines three procedural features that are common to studies in this field: (a) excluding subjects who assign too many behaviours to the minority group, (b) asking subjects to estimate the incidence of distinctive beha…
Social categorization and group homogeneity
Using the Katz‐Braly checklist subjects ( N = 65) assigned five traits to a national group and estimated the percentage of group members who had those traits. This was either an in‐group (Australians) or an out‐group (Americans), and subjects either judged that group alone (one‐group conditions) or also estimated the percentage of people from the other nation (the United States or Australia, respectively) who had those same traits (two‐group cond…
How context‐independent is the outgroup homogeneity effect? A response to Bartsch and Judd
Bartsch and Judd (1993) argue that outgroup homogeneity effects occur independently of any tendency for members of minority groups to see their ingroup as more homogeneous than the majority outgroup. This argument is based on evidence of an underlying outgroup homogeneity effect in a study which purports to unconfound the roles of judged group size and ingroup–outgroup judgement by presenting subjects first with a small or large ingroup (or outgr…
Becoming an In-Group
Penelope J. Oakes, S. Alexander Haslam, Brenda Morrison, Diana Grace, Becoming an In-Group: Reexamining the Impact of Familiarity on Perceptions of Group Homogeneity, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 52-60
Contextual changes in the prototypicality of extreme and moderate outgroup members
Previous social categorization research has tended to treat prototypicality (the degree to which a stimulus is representative of a category) as a fixed stimulus property. In contrast, self‐categorization theory sees prototypicality as an aspect of the categorization process that is dependent on features of the social context within which categorization takes place. To test this view two experiments ( N s = 256, 73) examined the perceived represen…
Context‐dependent variation in social stereotyping 3
A large body of research suggests that extremists make more accentuated (‘black and white’) judgements than moderates. This phenomenon has been explained in terms of individual differences associated with extremism or as the product of general processes of social judgement. Self‐categorization theory suggests that extremists represent the world in relatively polarized terms only because, and to the extent that, similar others are more similar to …
The effect of comparative context on central tendency and variability judgements and the evaluation of group characteristics
A study is reported that examines the effects of comparative context on central tendency and variability judgements of groups, and the evaluation of group characteristics. The central assumption is that these social judgements are not absolute, but depend on the social context in which they are grounded. It is demonstrated that people vary their description of the ingroup in terms of central tendency and group variability as a function of the pos…
When do stereotypes become really consensual? Investigating the group-based dynamics of the consensualization process
Although it has long been recognized that stereotypes achieve much of their force from being shared by members of social groups, relatively little empirical work has examined the process by which such consensus is reached. This paper tests predictions derived from self-categorization theory that stereotype consensus will be enhanced (a) by factors which make the shared social identity of perceivers salient and (b) by group interaction that is pre…
Social Identity Salience and the Emergence of Stereotype Consensus
In recent years, there has been a renewal of interest in the processes through which groups coordinate social perceptions and judgement. This topic is particularly important for the study of stereotyping, as most of the impact of stereotypes derives from the fact that they are widely shared within social groups. The present experiment (N = 132) tests the assertion that perceivers are more likely to generate a shared in-group stereotype to the ext…
An examination of resource-based and fit-based theories of stereotyping under cognitive load and fit
Should stereotyping be characterised as an act of cognitive miserliness of one of rational meaning-seeking? This paper uses a cognitive load paradigm to investigate the adequacy of popular resource-based explanations of stereotyping in comparison to an alternative fit-based or meaning-based explanation. In Experiment 1, load was increased by means of concurrent tasks within a highly fitting context (where targets generally behaved in a stereotype…
The effect of cognitive load on social categorization in the category confusion paradigm
The category confusion paradigm (Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff & Ruderman, 1978) was used to examine the relationship between cognitive load and the extent of social categorization. The original prediction made by Taylor et al. (1978; Experiment 2) and inferences from the cognitive miser model suggest that categorization should increase or be unaffected by cognitive load. In contrast, it is argued that social categorization can be an effortful and resour…
Social Identity, Self‐categorization, and Work Motivation
Traditional needs theories centre around hierarchies ranging from ‘lower‐level’ needs for security, existence, or hygiene through to ‘higher‐level’ needs for self‐actualisation, achievement, and growth. As applied to the organisational domain, such theories tend to assume that an employee’s personal need for challenge and development is the best source of work motivation. Based on social identity and self‐categorisation theories, this paper inter…
When are we better than them and they worse than us? A closer look at social discrimination in positive and negative domains
This article argues that in-group favoritism occurs on positive and negative dimensions only when the dimensions of comparison provide an appropriate and meaningful basis for self-other definition, that is, when traits comparatively and normatively fit in-group-out-group categorizations. Three studies are reported in which groups were evaluated on positive or negative traits that varied in their degree of normative fit to in-group and out-group i…
The Link between Leadership and Followership
Two experiments test the hypothesis that support for leaders is enhanced when their decisions affirm a distinct social identity that is shared with followers. In Experiment 1, participants showed less support for a leader who favored ingroup members who were relatively sympathetic to an outgroup position than for one who favored ingroup members who opposed an outgroup position. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which also showed that t…
The Role of Personality and Group Factors in Explaining Prejudice
Social identity, social influence and reactions to potentially stressful tasks
An experiment was conducted to investigate the role that social influence plays in the appraisal of a potentially stressful situation. Participants (N = 40) preparing for a mental arithmetic task were exposed to a message in which the task was described as stressful or challenging. The message was delivered by the same person in each condition but this person was said to be either an ingroup member (a University student) or an outgroup member (a …
It’s not funny if they’re laughing”
Psychology in organizations
Taking the strain
The social identity/self-categorization model of stress suggests that social identity can play a role in protecting group members from adverse reactions to strain because it provides a basis for group members to receive and benefit from social support. To examine this model, two studies were conducted with groups exposed to extreme levels of strain: patients recovering from heart surgery (Study 1), bomb disposal officers and bar staff (Study 2). …
Psychology (97 works) · Social Psychology (90 works) · Social group (59 works) · Social identity theory (57 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (54 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (36 works) · Identity (music) (34 works) · Political science (28 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Categorization (22 works)