Intergroup attitudes and competition over limited resources
| dc.contributor.author | Major, Kasia | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Gifford, Robert | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2006-09-29T22:03:35Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2006-09-29T22:03:35Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2006 | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2006-09-29T22:03:35Z | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of Psychology | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Science M.Sc. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | According to realistic conflict theory (RCT), people develop negative attitudes towards others as a result of competition with those others over limited resources. I hypothesized that participants would change their opinions of others in a greater negative direction if those others were competitive in resource use than if those others are cooperative. Additionally, I hypothesized that the participants' own resource use would influence how they changed their opinions of the others. Participants were asked to complete a ten-item trait-rating questionnaire before and after competing in a simulated fishing environment against a simulated group that fished either a little (cooperative opponent) or a lot (competitive opponent). As predicted, when fishing against competitive opponents, participants changed their ratings in a more negative direction than when fishing against cooperative opponents. In addition, participants' own fishing behaviour influenced some of their rating shifts. I discuss an alternative explanation of the results as based on group identity processes (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and suggest that the effects of such processes should be directly compared with competition over resources in the same study. Limitations of the study are discussed along with potential solutions. | en |
| dc.format.extent | 10601913 bytes | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/113 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | en |
| dc.subject | competition | en |
| dc.subject | intergroup relations | en |
| dc.subject | human behavior | en |
| dc.subject | conflict | en |
| dc.subject | interpersonal relations | en |
| dc.subject.lcsh | Social psychology | en |
| dc.title | Intergroup attitudes and competition over limited resources | en |
| dc.type | Thesis | en |