Understanding entitativity: are there real differences between approaches?

Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. 2017. Vol. 14. No. 3. P. 536–554.

Agadullina E., Lovakov A.

Entitativity is a key construct for understanding group perception. But the problem of understanding this construct is troublesome. There are three theoretical approaches and at least two different empirical strategy of measuring the entitativity. In the Study 1 entitativity is described as three related components: “essence” (group members' similarity), “agency” (goals and group members' interaction) and “unity” (cohesion of the group and the degree of group importance). A series of confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the three-component model of entitativity fitted the data well for different groups (ingroup, outgroup, intimacy groups and social categories) and demonstrated a better fit, compared to the alternative model. The results of study suggest that components of entitativity are interrelated, but not identical to each other. Study 2 demonstrated that using of different ways of  understanding entitativity (as “essence”, “agency”, “unity” component or common entitativity scale) doesn’t lead to differences in relationship with blatant prejudice, subtle prejudice, and identification. The implications of the obtained results for future research are discussed.

Keywords: identification, essence, agency, entitativity, prejudices