Anna Kapantai, Catarina Morais and Fatima Tresh interviewed Professor Dominic Abrams, the current Director of the CSGP, to gain some insight into some of the research being conducted at the Centre (2016)
The Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP) was established in 1992 at the University of Kent. It is a research centre that emphasises the significance of groups in Social Psychology and intergroup relations. Professor Dominic Abrams founded the Centre along with five other social psychology researchers: Professor Rupert Brown, Dr Noel Clark, Professor Steve Hinkle, Dr Lorne Hulbert and Professor Geoffrey Stephenson. The Centre holds an excellent international reputation and remains a prominent influence in Social Psychology research, postgraduate training and teaching.
Why did you start the Centre? And how did it start?
The UK had been a major centre for a unique brand of ‘European’ social psychology but after Henri Tajfel’s research group in Bristol dispersed it was clear that Kent, which had originally been established as the Social Psychology Research Unit by Professor Geoffrey Stephenson, had the largest concentration of researchers with expertise in group processes and intergroup relations in the UK and we wanted to continue that important legacy.
What kind of subjects and topics are studied at the CSGP? Could you describe in a bit more detail what you do here?
This has grown and changed over the years. To begin with, our work mainly examined intergroup prejudice and contact, and organisational and community relations but by the mid-1990s there was a larger group of academics and our interests widened to include small group decision making, polit- ical engagement, equality and diversity, developmental aspects of prejudice and social cognition. After that and through the last 10 years we became a really wide ranging centre that researches almost every aspect of the psychology of group membership and group categorisation. One or two areas have been less prominent though such as neuroscience and evolutionary approaches. The Centre reflects the shared interest of its members which largely focus on connecting up with wider societal questions.
Could you give some examples of how such research findings can be applied in every day life?
Some research has indirect application – experiments are particularly useful for shed- ding light on why things happen or could happen in the future. Other research has direct application – large-scale surveys and studies of whole organisations can help to explain the way things are or provides an insight into a particular event or situation. We do both types of research. For example, our experiments on leadership help us to understand why there are so many instances where leaders of large organisations engage in questionable or corrupt practices and it also helps us to understand when and why leaders are most able to introduce changes or innovations. Our studies of organisations have shown how the combination of people’s satisfaction with their work and their identifi- cation with their organisation influence their commitment to remain a member of the organisation. This sort of insight can make a huge difference to an organisation’s compet- itiveness and viability. Our developmental experiments give us insight into the different ages at which children figure out how other members of their groups will respond to conformity and non-conformity (deviance). These sorts of studies tell us a lot about when and why children may include or exclude one another from social relationships at school, which in turn has implications for their psychological health and wellbeing. We also do archival research, such as our analysis of the composition of lynch mobs which showed that the severity and barbarity of lynchings increased as the proportion of the number of crowd members increased relative to the number of victims.
Could some of your research/knowledge also be applied to the general public rather than specific crowds?
Some early research examined the rise of Scottish nationlism amongst 16- to 18-year-olds during the 1980s. We were recently able to conduct a survey of a similarly aged group of young people in Scotland and to test whether our theory of political change accurately predicted their choices to vote ‘Yes’ in the referendum on Scottish independence. This work has been very exciting because it offers a really tough test of a psychological theory and at the same time reveals how that theory can really help to make sense of social change.
A different type of research has been our work on ageism and age-related attitudes. We’ve worked with major charities such as Age UK as well as the Government Department for Welfare and Pensions over a number of years. Here we led an international team to design part of the European Social Survey. Using evidence from over 50,000 participants from 27 countries we have been able to show how age discrimina- tion is linked to people’s wellbeing, how psychological definitions of age are cultur- ally framed, how serious a problem age discrimination is, and on international differences in age stereotyping. A third core of our work is to understand how prejudice and discrimination work across society. We’ve done extensive work with the Equali- ties and Human Rights Commission (and are just about to commence a new project) which addresses the question of how different types of prejudice are connected and how they occur. For example a recent paper based on this work revealed a phenomenon we called ‘equality hypocrisy’ – people’s willingness to advocate greater equality for some groups but not others.
Why is it important to have a diverse community involved?
It is hard to imagine researching group processes without encompassing different types of group! Diversity is crucial for our research in many different ways but I’ll mention two. First, it is great to have a diversity of researchers – colleagues and students in CSGP always comprise a very broad national and cultural mix as well as a good age and gender balance and other diverse characteristics. This means that our work is constantly building on insights from different perspectives and comparisons, which is a great strength. I think at present we have members from more than 10 different countries (England, Scotland, the US, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, Australia, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, visitors from Chile, etc.).
Do you think GPIR has helped attract more social researchers to the UK particularly?
It would be very nice if that is the case but I’m not sure how I’d estimate that. What I think we have done is to define the field for psychology, and that has created a larger space for particular types of research. Our explicit goal was to link research on what happens inside groups to research on what happens between groups — previously two completely different traditions of work. It’s not that each piece of research has to do that job but by constantly putting research of both types side by side it helps to generate cross-connections and integration. These days I guess ‘Group Processes and Inter- group Relations’ is viewed as a coherent concept, as illustrated by the frequent use of this title for preconferences at the major scientific conferences.
To what do you think you owe the success of creating a world-class journal?
We had academic credibility and connections on our side so that we were supported from the start by a very distinguished and high profile set of editorial board members from across the world. And these people (one of whom is still one of our Associate Editors) were all very committed to the project and devoted a lot of effort to attract good contributions from authors and to ensure the operation was highly professional from the start. We’ve also been supported by a succession of outstanding editorial assistants, most of whom started as PhD students at Kent and all of whom have gone on to have successful careers
Since the start of GPIR, there must have been different trends/emphases in group and Inter- group relations research. Where do you think research is headed now?
That’s an excellent question. There are always fashions and fads but the central questions largely remain the same (social influence, prejudice, change). I think that GPIR is a natural place for continuing to make cross-level connections (that is, linking the individual, group, intergroup, and societal levels). As issues become more globalised (such as climate change, migration, responses to human crises, demographic shifts, and cross-national/cultural relation- ships) and as modes of communication and information sharing are changing rapidly, there is an ever growing need for social psychological research to address how people respond and approach such issues. Research techniques and types of data are always developing too so the field is constantly moving.