Restricted intergroup boundaries: Tokenism, ambiguity, and the tolerance of injustice - Wright - 2001 - Article

Determination of limits in a group

Women and minorities are hired more often and are increasingly employed. Nevertheless, the majority of minority groups and women still encounter many barriers. Individual upward mobility is limited for many disadvantaged groups. A few members of minority groups may be able to penetrate these borders, but most of them will not succeed. Tokenism is an intergroup context in which boundaries between the favored group and the disadvantaged group are not completely closed, but where there are serious restrictions on access of the favored positions on the basis of group membership. In the context of tokenism, three perspectives can be viewed:

• The disadvantaged group
• The successful tokens
• The favored group

The subject of tokenism receives little attention in major theories, such as social identity theory.

Three groups are confronted with the effects of tokenism. The tokens themselves (the individuals who, despite the barriers, have been given access to the favored positions), the disadvantaged group that also remains disadvantaged, and the favored group.

The disadvantaged group

Martin, Price, Bies and Powers (1989) have shown that limited access to the favored group can lower the aspirations of those left behind. The awareness of the difficulties experienced by the successful tokens can lead to lowered aspirations among other members of the group.

Categorizing disadvantaged group action: a behavioral framework

A distinction must be made between behavioral and non-behavioral responses (perceptions, cognitions) versus deprivation. The stability of a social structure that includes discrimination is primarily based on the actions of disadvantaged groups.

The behavioral framework consists of three distinctions: the first is between inaction and action, the second is between actions aimed at improving someone's personal conditions (individual action) and action aimed at improving the conditions of the entire group (collective action), and the third is between actions that fit the standards of the existing social system (normative action) and actions that violate existing social rules (non-normative action)

The result of these three distinctions are five discrete categories of behavior:

1. When inactive, no attempts are made to change the status quo.
2. Individual normative actions are socially accepted behaviors aimed at improving one's personal status.
3. Individual non-normative actions are attempts at individual mobility in a way that violates social rules, such as criminal activity or sabotage.
4. Collective normative actions are socially acceptable actions that are intended to raise the status of the group, such as voting.
5. Collective non-normative actions in which someone tries to raise the status of the ingroup against social norms, such as illegal protests and terrorism.

The framework only focuses on behavior

The distinction between normative and non-normative action is also psychological. Someone just needs to be aware that he or she is breaking the social rules and then it is already non-normative action.

Investigating disadvantaged group action

In the study by Wright and Taylor (1998), the reactions of different participants were compared. The participants who were members of the disadvantaged group were confronted with three different conditions:

• Access to a privileged position (meritocracy)
• Absolutely no access to a privileged position
• Limited access to a privileged position (tokenism)

Consistent with the social identity theory and the five stage model of Taylor and McKirnan (1984), it was found that the participants in the open access condition often showed inaction or individual normative action. The participants who were in a completely closed condition showed a strong preference for collective non-normative behavior. A unique pattern was found in tokenism; individual non-normative behavior was the most selected response and tokenism led to little interest in collective action. This pattern is surprising but also worrying.

A preference for individual action is also unexpected because tokenism and the closed condition have many similar effects on both personal and collective outcomes. On the personal level, it results in identical experiences: despite demonstrating certain skills, the individual is deprived of substantial personal gains. Both contexts are clearly discriminatory at group level. Many skilled ingroup members are denied access to a privileged position. Nevertheless, victims of tokenism respond with individual action instead of collective non-normative behavioral patterns, which is preferred in the closed condition.

Explaining the preference for individual action

Ingroup identification makes an important contribution to the interest in collective action. But a lack of ingroup identification is not a good explanation for the interest in individual action in response to tokenism. Ingroup identification is an important determinant for collective action. Increasing the uncertainty (salience) of the ingroup is not enough to increase the interest in collective action in response to tokenism. Another possibility is that the preference for individual action may result from the ambiguity associated with tokenism.

Tokenism creates ambiguity across borders: the favored group is neither open nor closed. The perceptions of the ingroups low status position can be experienced as illegal and unstable. Uncertainty about illegality can cause uncertainty about ingroup support for collective action. It can also cause uncertainty about the stability of the ingroup status. When confronted with uncertainty, individuals can be influenced by information from others. When a person's social identity is uncertain, this person can be influenced by people with roughly the same identity. This is called informational influence. In the context of tokenism, the ambiguity, permeability, legality and stability of the ingroup can increase the need for clarity of the ingroup standards.

Tokenism makes disadvantaged group members very receptive to informational influences. If a group member labels tokenism as discrimination, this should increase the perceived illegality. This is called ambiguity theory. It is predicted that labeling tokenism as a discriminating rage would evoke what would increase the perceptions of illegality and instability. According to the prediction, this information would lead to collective action. It turned out that disadvantaged group members were indeed susceptible to informational influence. The level of perceived collective injustice was significantly higher when the favored group action was described as discrimination than when the word discrimination was not used.

The perceptions of instability were significantly higher when more anger was shown. Participants' responses to the five behavioral options also supported the predicted impact of informational influence. The collective action was greater if anger was expressed. The manipulation of the illegality had the greatest effect on the behavior that was undertaken. Many more participants took collective action when discrimination was mentioned. Only when both the label of discrimination (high illegality) and the expression of anger (high instability) was shown was the behavior for collective action greater than the behavior for individual action. These results support the social identity theory. Tagging tokenism as discrimination appears to change participants' interpretation from injustice, and it focuses on them as individuals until injustice is targeted at the disadvantaged group as a whole. Tokenism can therefore cause individual action because tokens regard injustice as personal rather than collective.

A subsequent study showed that participants in the low uncertainty condition of collective injustice started to focus more on individual non-normative action. Participants in the high uncertainty condition of the collective injustice condition were more inclined to select collective action as behavior. The low uncertainty of the collective injustice condition was a standard tokenism condition. The high uncertainty of the collective injustice condition was a condition where the favored group had to draw attention to the collective injustice.

Increasing the general uncertainty of the ingroup can focus attention on intragroup heterogeneity and can increase interest in intragroup comparisons. This would undermine the interest in collective action. If the attention of the disadvantaged group members is focused on the collective injustice, this would increase the feelings of shared destiny and ingroup similarities, and increase intergroup social comparisons. Specific attention to collective injustice, instead of a general increase in in-group uncertainty leads in particular to greater collective action in response to tokenism.

General insights into collective action

The impact of limited border permeability on collective action is partially mediated by the perceptions of legality and instability. Considering the perspective of the disadvantaged group, there are many situations, procedures and practices that can reduce out-group prejudice and discrimination, but they also reduce the interest in collective action of members of disadvantaged groups.

Successful tokens

Fraternal deprivation refers to feelings of dissatisfaction and injustice about the treatment of a person's group. Selfish (personal) deprivation describes feelings of injustice and dissatisfaction with someone's personal treatment. Fraternal deprivation is associated with collective action. Personal success of tokens does not have to make feelings of fraternal or group deprivation disappear or their support for collective action.

Black party organizations (caucuses) are described as self-employed law groups formed by members of minority groups in predominantly white, formerly excluded racial organizations. Self-initiated groups propose solutions for inequality and prejudice and attempts to increase the representation of their group. These groups provide evidence that tokens work to improve the chances of other members of their group.

The social identity theory provides different evidence. A central assumption of the social identity theory is that membership of a favored group gives a positive social identity, and contributes positively to self-confidence. Membership in a disadvantaged group creates a negative social identity and reduces self-confidence. The social identity theory predicts that upward mobility will have a positive impact on someone's social identity, resulting in stronger identification with the new high status group and rejection of the old low status group that had a negative contribution to self-confidence. This can cause tokens to ignore the discrimination of their 'old' group. The five-stage model even states that the tokens want to prove that there is no longer discrimination.

Comparing tokenism with an intergroup context

It appears that successful tokens became angry with the collective injustice of the policy of tokenism, but they did not intend to support collective or non-normative actions as responses to this injustice.

Testing current statements

Psychological processes that were responsible for the findings were investigated. Tokens are likely to experience strong social pressure not to give in to collective actions in response to the injustice of the ingroup. It can also be due to self-interest, since the new status can be threatened if the disadvantaged group takes action.