Ingroup-outgroup perspectives in perceiving group entitativity

Recently, there have been a growing interest on how individuals perceive groups in terms of entitativity (Campbell, 1958).Building upon the notion of entitativity, the main aim of this research was to contribute to clarify the psychosocial processes underling adolescents’ perception of their ingroup and outgroups. Members of formal (sports, religious and political) and informal peer groups, contacted during their meetings, rated their ingroup on several characteristics such as interdependence, interaction among members, similarity, permeability, roles’ organisation and rules, and reported their perception of self-integration into the group. Additionally, they judged their ingroup and the other types of peer groups in terms of their degree of entitativity. Results showed that groups differed with respect to several properties, and that different group characteristics are predictive of perceived entitativity in different types of groups. Moreover, they suggest interesting implications relative to the discrepancy between ingroup and outgroup perspectives on group entitativity, that are discussed referring to Doise and Dann’s (1976) categorical differentiation approach.