Intelligence Analysis Behavioral and Social Scientific Foundations (2011) / Chapter Skim
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9 Social Categorization and Intergroup Dynamics--Catherine H. Tinsley
9 Social Categorization and Intergroup Dynamics--Catherine H. Tinsley
Pages 197-224
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From page 197... ...
Strategic Plan lists "support[ing] unification of effort across the IC to promote horizontal integration fostering access to data and sharing information" as one of its five major strategic actions (Defense Intelligence Agency, 2007)
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From page 198... ...
In the context of the IC, where a salient group boundary is agency (or subagency) affiliation, social categorization suggests that analysts register whether other analysts are members of the same or different IC agency.1 This encoding can produce mental roadblocks to coordination by eliciting well-documented intergroup dynamics, including differentiation, ethnocentrism, and integration neglect (explained below)
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From page 199... ...
, but rather to attenuate negative externalities that this intergroup environment can produce. INTERgROUP DYNAMICS AS A FACT OF ORgANIZATIONAL LIFE Social groups exist in all organizations and often create cognitive and motivational roadblocks to cooperation and collaboration.
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EP-3 surveillance aircraft collided in mid-air with a Chinese fighter plane and the EP-3 landed on the Chinese island of Hainan, different IC agencies produced intelligence assessments that answered very different types of questions reflecting the interests and responsibilities of their different customers. Thus, the INR, whose primary customer is the Department of State, produced intelligence to answer questions such as: What are the diplomatic implications of the collision?
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From page 201... ...
As social creatures, we tend to carve up our social landscape into groups (see social categorization theory, Deschamps and Doise, 1978; Vanbeselaere, 1991) , in part to construct our own identities (Tajfel, 1969; Tajfel and Turner, 1979)
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Social categorization may be natural, effortless, and in some ways beneficial, but is not without the ethnocentric consequences discussed next. HOW SOCIAL CATEgORIZATION INFLUENCES INDIVIDUALS As noted above, individual thought and behavior is influenced by the social environment, such as how employees are split into groups, what behavior is rewarded, and what institutional routines develop.
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Social categorization processes can occur at any organizational level. The purpose here is simply to document the intergroup dynamics that emanate once these categorization processes occur.
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INTERgROUP DYNAMICS FROM SOCIAL CATEgORIZATION PROCESSES One of the most robust findings from cultural research is that of ethnocentrism, which literally means putting one's own group at the center of the universe. Anthropologists (Boas, 1940; Mead, 1964; Kroeber and Kluckhohn, 1952; Lowie, 1966; Malinowski, 1944)
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. This prejudice generally seems to entail withholding positive traits from the out-group rather than actively assigning negative traits to them (Fiske et al., 1999)
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Rather, in-group favoritism is rooted in the sociocognitive categorization mechanism, which primes a sense of difference that eschews cognitive and motivational roadblocks to cooperation. Recall that self-categorization is a process where someone cognitively assimilates his or her self-concept to the in-group prototype.
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From page 207... ...
Of course not, but social categorization and intergroup dynamics represent the backdrop against which everyday organizational activities occur. Like background music that sometimes fades out of awareness and at other times becomes an annoying distraction, intergroup issues can remain quiet or create a disconcerting amount of static.
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tend to increase the use of cognitive short-cuts such as social categorization processes. For IC analysts this might mean that analyses that are particularly complex and/or time sensitive (that put stress on the analyst)
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. The belief is that a strong culture represents a unique competitive advantage because it is an enduring and inimitable resource (unlike capital, which is easy to raise, or technology, which is often either shared or stolen)
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finds good empirical support that intergroup contact eases intergroup prejudice, particularly when Allport's conditions are followed (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006)
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This process requires no interaction among subordinate units for routine tasks that can be parsed and delegated. By contrast, "linked interdependence" occurs when work flows from one unit to another, as in an assembly line, and "reciprocal interdependence" describes the flow of work back and forth between two or more units, as might be the case with intelligence analysis (Thompson, 1967)
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She and her colleagues note that people differ as to their "social identity complexity," whereby people who are high on social identity complexity can see that they have divergent in-groups with different types of members, which tends to make them more open and tolerant of others. On the other hand, people who are low on social identity complexity perceive that their in-groups are highly convergent, making them less open and tolerant of others.
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From page 213... ...
Yet, this type of intervention might prompt the latter type of analysts to construct an even more exclusive and smaller "in-group," further restricting the unit for which they might naturally cooperate. Integration Through Individuation and Social Networks Aside from focusing "up a level" on how all agents are members of the larger IC or on forming broader and more expansive "in-groups," intergroup dynamics diminish when attention is focused down a level -- when others are seen as individual agents more than as members of a social group.
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The actor is not aware of the social categorization processes or, more specifically, that the target's categorical distinction from the self has evaporated. Social Networks Once actors are individuated, integration still requires a way for them to connect.
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Collaboration requires trust because the initiating analyst will identify and admit to a need (making the initiating analyst vulnerable) and responding analysts will share sensitive information to meet these needs (making responding analysts vulnerable)
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Moreover, do analytic networks grow organically, emanating from pockets of likability, commitment, and scarcity? 8 A communication medium richness is a function of (1)
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On the dialectics of discrimina tion: Dual processes in social stereotyping.
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2005. Social identity complexity and outgroup tolerance.
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1994. The contact hypothesis: The role of a common ingroup identity on reducing intergroup bias.
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2000. Social identity and self-categorization processes in orga nizational contexts.
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2002. Social identity complexity.
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In J Tajfel, ed., Social identity and intergroup relations.
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Harvard Business Review 83(12)
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