Construing multiple ingroups: Assessing social identity inclusiveness and structure in ethnic and religious minority group members

Abstract The combination of multiple social identities into a coherent ingroup construal is of immediate relevance in today's complex and diverse societies. This paper proposes a conceptual and operational framework to examine how individuals subjectively construe their ingroup in the context of multiple, cross‐cutting group memberships. The subjective combination of multiple social identities is described in terms of structure (social identity structure) and inclusiveness (social identity inclusiveness (SII)). Two studies assess SII and social identity structure in community samples to whom the subjective combination of multiple, cross‐cutting ingroups is of particular relevance: a sample of Turkish‐Belgian Muslims (Study 1) and Turkish‐Australian Muslims (Study 2). Across both studies, SII uniquely predicted attitudes toward a range of outgroups, over and above identification with singular ingroups. Moreover, a wide range of social identity structures were identified, further attesting to broad individual differences in the construal of the perceived ingroup. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.