The mediating role of social creativity strategies in the relationship between identification with female identity and collective action

Abstract

Social identity theory argues that social creativity strategies undermine tendencies that foster social change, such as collective action orientation, and provide continuity for the existing social status system by reinforcing it. However, various findings indicate that this is not the case, at least for the strategy of "changing value of the in-group dimension". The findings suggest that as identification with the ingroup increases, this strategy motivates individuals to engage in social competition and thus bring about social change. This study, conducted with 219 female college students in Turkey, aims to examine the mediating role of social creativity strategies in the relationship between identification with female identity and participation in collective actions intended to improve women's social status through structural equation modeling. Political view was included in the model as a control variable to ensure that the possible relationships were not due to political view. The present study is unique in that it examines the relationship between social creativity strategies and collective action orientation, on the one hand, and reveals a new mechanism that plays a mediating role in the relationship between identification and collective action orientation, on the other. The structural equation modeling results show that changing the out-group strategy negatively predicts collective action orientation, while the new dimension and changing the values strategies predict it positively. In addition, as participants' political views shift to the left, their collective action orientation increases. In the relationship between identification with female identity and collective action orientation, changing the out-group has a negative mediating role, while the other two strategies play a positive mediating role. These findings indicate that social creativity strategies can have important implications for collective actions aimed at reducing social inequality and increasing social status. Based on the findings, it can be said that social creativity strategies are not only cognitive strategies affirming ingroup identity and enhancing self-esteem but also instruments that reinforce or weaken collective action motivation.