To read this content please select one of the options below:

Beyond Three Faces: Toward an Integrated Social Psychology of Inequality

Advances in Group Processes

ISBN: 978-1-78560-077-7, eISBN: 978-1-78560-076-0

Publication date: 8 July 2015

Abstract

Purpose

We propose an elaboration of the social structure and personality framework from sociological social psychology that is intended to promote integration across social psychological traditions and between social psychology and sociology, using the study of inequality as an example.

Methodology/approach

We develop a conceptualization of “generic” proximate processes that produce and reproduce inequality in face-to-face interaction: status, identity, and justice.

Findings

The elaborated framework suggests fundamental questions that analysts can pose about the macro-micro dynamics of inequality. These questions direct attention to the “how” and “why” of macro-micro relations by connecting structural and cultural systems, local contexts, and the lives of individual persons; highlighting implicit processes; making meaning central; and directing our attention to how people act efficaciously in the face of constraint.

Practical implications

Applying this framework, scholars can use existing theories and generate new ones, and can do so inductively or deductively.

Social implications

Research on inequality is enriched by social psychological analyses that draw on the full complement of relevant methods and theories.

Originality/value

We make visible the social psychological underpinnings of sociological research on inequality and provide a template for macro-micro analyses that emphasizes the centrality of social psychological processes.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the many colleagues who gave us feedback on this manuscript over the years, including Celeste Campos-Castillo, David Heise, Neil MacKinnon, Michael Schwalbe, Peggy Thoits, and the participants in the Social Psychology, Health, and the Life Course workshop at Indiana University.

Citation

McLeod, J.D., Hallett, T. and Lively, K.J. (2015), "Beyond Three Faces: Toward an Integrated Social Psychology of Inequality", Advances in Group Processes (Advances in Group Processes, Vol. 32), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0882-614520150000032001

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2015 Emerald Group Publishing Limited