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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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The UK had been a major centre for a unique brand of \u2018European\u2019 social psychology but after Henri Tajfel\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Some research has indirect application \u2013 experiments are particularly useful for shed- ding light on why things happen or could happen in the future. Other research has direct application \u2013 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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 \u2018Yes\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
A different type of research has been our work on ageism and age-related attitudes. We\u2019ve 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\u2019s 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\u2019ve 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 \u2018equality hypocrisy\u2019 \u2013 people\u2019s willingness to advocate greater equality for some groups but not others.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2019ll mention two. First, it is great to have a diversity of researchers \u2013 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.).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
It would be very nice if that is the case but I\u2019m not sure how I\u2019d 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\u2019s 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 \u2018Group Processes and Inter- group Relations\u2019 is viewed as a coherent concept, as illustrated by the frequent use of this title for preconferences at the major scientific conferences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\u2019ve 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<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-prejudice"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2244,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/2244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.kent.ac.uk\/stop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}