Questioning the entitativity of social categories in Turkey and its intergroup implications

Entitativity is the perceived unity or coherence of social aggregates. The present research was mainly interested in measuring this concept and questioned its implications for social identity processes and intergroup relations, focusing on ethnic (Kurds vs. non-Kurds) and religious (Alevis vs. Sunnis) divides in Turkey. In Study 1, with 314 participants, the content domain of entitativity was qualitatively examined about eight different social categories, representing ethnicity, sect, political groups, and women. By drawing on the emergent themes about entitativity from this study, a novel, category-specific (ethnicity-based) entitativity scale was offered in Study 2. The scale was used to test the degree of the entitativity of Kurds and Alevis from ingroup and outgroup perspectives. Accordingly, four different respondent groups (i.e., Kurds & non-Kurds; Alevis & Sunnis) were reached (ns = 230). The exploratory factor analysis yielded four factors for the newly proposed entitativity scale: interdependency, boundary-making, common fate, and essentialism. The instrument yielded acceptable internal consistency and demonstrated convergent validity by significantly correlating with generic entitativity measures. Based on the scores on this scale, for the minority members (especially in the dataset of the Kurdish participants), ingroup entitativity (through the interdependency and common fate scales) led to greater anti-majority attitudes by increasing ingroup identification. For the non-Kurdish and Sunni participants, outgroup entitativity (through the boundary-making scale) played a mediatory role in explaining the relationship between ingroup identification and anti-minority attitudes. The findings were discussed considering intergroup relations in Turkey.