Dear Dr. Dixon, Thank you for your positive response to our manuscript entitled
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| April 19, 2010
Dear Dr. Dixon, Thank you for your positive response to our manuscript entitled, The Cultural Narratives of Francophone and Anglophone Quebecers: Using an Historical Perspective to Explore the Relationship between Relative Deprivation and Collective Well-Being. We greatly appreciate your comments along with those of the two reviewers and have now made the suggested revisions. Below is a detailed account of how we addressed your comments as well as each of the reviewers’ comments and suggestions. We have incorporated the revisions into the manuscript itself. Editor: You point out that the reviewers raise several substantive issues, which concern the clarity of our key constructs, the clarity of our theoretical explication of the relationship between relative deprivation, identity and well-being, and the meaning and operationalisation of the concept of “historical context”. We go into much more detail below in our response to the reviewers, but will summarize here three fairly significant changes that we have made to the revised version of the manuscript in order to address these substantive issues. First, in order to address problems with the clarity of our constructs as well as our theoretical model, we have further examined our own understanding and measurement of the collective identity clarity concept and its role in our hypothesis. The second reviewer suggested that, among others, the collective identity clarity concept brought to mind the concept of entitativity. The reviewer’s observations led us to examine what we were actually hypothesizing, and doing so led us to replace the clarity concept with current ingroup entitativity, measured by the well-known and validated Ingroup Entitativity Scale (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Bourguignon, 1999), in the model that we tested. Furthermore, the first reviewer mentioned that he/she was unsure how past relative deprivation should influence current collective esteem without reference to current relative deprivation or current identity clarity. For this reason, we are now measuring current entitativity rather than perceptions of past identity clarity. Second, both reviewers were uncomfortable with our use of the terms “relative deprivation” and “intergroup threat” as interchangeable concepts. As our hypotheses are focused primarily upon relative deprivation and its relationship with collective esteem, we have therefore removed references to intergroup threat from the manuscript and limited our discussion to the more specific concept of relative deprivation. We specify that it is relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during important historical low-points (rather than periods of intergroup threat) that is one of the key concepts in our hypothesis. Finally, we have re-worked the goals and results of Study 1. Rather than using the narratives to identify periods of intergroup threat, we now argue that the cultural narratives generated in Study 1 are essential for testing and understanding an important assumption of our over-riding hypothesis—that perceived historical low-points are particularly important for defining a group’s collective identity. More details on each of these major revisions are described below in our response to the reviewers. Reviewer 1: 1a) The reviewer states that the real “action” in the paper is all in Study 2. He or she questions the extent to which Study 1 is relevant to the purpose of our paper and argues that it simply provides an interesting method of pretesting to establish the relevant “chapters” to be described in Study 2. In order to address this concern we have re-worked the goals of Study 1 (pp. 10-11) and the results section of study 1 (pp. 13-18), so that the relevance of Study 1 to the larger purpose of our paper is made more clear. We argue that Study 1 is relevant for two reasons. First (goal 1, Study 1), when previous articles purport to use an “historical perspective” they often do not situate this perspective in participants’ actual perceptions of their own group’s history. Often, historical chapters are chosen according to a more objective history, i.e., from a history textbook. We argue that it is essential to adopt a cultural narrative approach as we did in Study 1 to truly anchor our research in the perceived history of a group, from the perspective of members of this group. The chapters that we use in Study 2 are therefore not imposed on participants, but arise from group members’ own perceptions of history. Second (goal 2, Study 1), in this revised version of the paper, we now argue that the cultural narratives generated in Study 1 are essential for testing and understanding an important assumption of our over-riding hypothesis—that perceived historical low-points are particularly important for defining a group’s collective identity. The cultural narrative analysis allowed us to examine if historical low-points were indeed a central focus of the cultural narratives. Finding that the cultural narratives of both Anglophone and Francophone participants were spontaneously centered upon historical low-points would lend support to our view that these low-points were particularly important for defining the Anglophone and Francophone current collective identities (see p. 11 of the manuscript). 1b) The reviewer states that he or she does not understand the second goal of Study 1. He or she questions the value of determining which narrative chapters are perceived to be intergroup threats and points out that our use of the term “intergroup threat” is problematic as intergroup threat can emerge from a variety of situations or events other than relative deprivation. We agree with the reviewer that the second goal of Study 1 was unclear and that our desire to use the cultural narratives to pinpoint periods of intergroup threat was inherently problematic. In addition, we agree with the reviewer that our use of the term “intergroup threat” throughout the paper was problematic. We have therefore re-worked the goals of Study 1 (pp. 10-11 ) as well as the results section of Study 1 (pp. 13-18), so that identifying periods of intergroup threat is no longer a goal of Study 1, and we have changed our terminology so that we no longer use “intergroup threat”. The second goal of Study 1 is now instead to examine the extent to which participants’ narratives included and were spontaneously focused on perceived historical low-points. We now explain that, using the narratives, we sought to explore the extent to which historical low-points are in fact important for defining the group’s collective identity. As stated above, finding that the cultural narratives of both Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers are focused upon historical low-points would lend support to our hypothesis that these low-points are particularly important for defining the Anglophone and Francophone collective identities. 1c) The reviewer states that it is unclear how the intergroup threat data were organized and analyzed in our results section of Study 1. We agree that it was unclear and have thus removed this section from the paper, and re-worked the entire results section of Study 1 (pp. 13-18). We now more systematically describe and test each of the two goals of Study 1. We test goal 1 by identifying the historical chapters that were most often mentioned by participants. We describe the proportion of participants who referred to certain historical events when constructing their narratives. We then test goal 2 in three ways. We first examine the spontaneous attention given to historical low-points. Second, we examine the nature of participants’ reported “most important event” in their narratives and explore if these important events were in fact historical low-points. Finally, we examine participants’ “narrative nadirs” and explore if these nadirs, self-reported historical low-points, corresponded to the “most important events” and the spontaneous attention given to certain historical periods A convergence of the spontaneous narrative, the reported “most important event” and the “nadir” around periods representing historical low-points would lend support to our hypothesis that historical low-points, characterized by collective relative deprivation, are particularly important for defining a group’s collective identity. 1d) The reviewer points out that the results section of Study 1 is confusing and contradictory. Specifically, he/she highlights our contradictory conclusions that 1) there was a consensus among Anglophone and Francophone Quebecers regarding which chapters they described in their narratives, but that 2) there were many differences between the Anglophone and Francophone narratives. He or she points out that it is unclear how the emergence of an event and the amount of attention given to that event was determined. We agree with the reviewer that this section and the details of the reported results were unclear and difficult to interpret. As mentioned above, we have re-worked the results section in order to clarify how the narratives were analyzed, what emerged from these analyses, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them (pp. 13-18). First, we now make it more clear that both Anglophones and Francophones mentioned and described a very similar set of historical chapters, and we describe the specific results that led us to draw this conclusion. Second, we point out that although both groups mentioned and described similar periods, they gave different amounts of attention to these periods, as evidenced by where, in time, they situated their narrative “chapters”. That is, for the majority of Anglophone Quebecers “Chapter 2” was situated in the second half of the 1900s; whereas for all Francophones, “Chapter 2” was situated before 1838. Francophones therefore spontaneously accorded relatively greater attention to earlier historical periods in that the majority of the Francophone narratives were spent explaining what happened when the English defeated the French in the early years of European colonization. Whereas, the majority of the Anglophone narratives were spent describing what happened during the period corresponding to rising Francophone nationalism. 2a) The reviewer points out that there is a lot of “slippage” in our key terms/concepts. First, he or she questions our use of the terms “intergroup threat” and “relative deprivation” interchangeably. We agree with the reviewer’s point and realize that intergroup threat is a much broader concept than relative deprivation. As our hypotheses are focused primarily upon relative deprivation and its relationship with collective esteem, we have therefore removed references to intergroup threat from the manuscript and limited our discussion to the more specific concept of relative deprivation. We specify that it is relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during important historical low-points (rather than periods of intergroup threat) that is one of the key concepts in our hypothesis. Second, the reviewer points out that we have equated collective well-being and collective esteem. We have now limited our discussion to the more specific concept of collective-esteem as we do not measure other variables, such as satisfaction, associated with well-being. Furthermore, we now refer to “collective” relative deprivation, rather than “social” relative deprivation throughout the paper as the reviewer has suggested to do. 2b) The reviewer states that the concept of collective identity clarity is unclear. He or she points out that we have associated it with “clarifying” one’s collective identity, as well as “defining” one’s collective identity and that our definition and explanation of this concept is not sufficiently or clearly elaborated. Prompted by the comments of both reviewers about our collective identity clarity concept, we decided to further examine our own understanding of the clarity concept, that is, what we meant when we hypothesized that relative deprivation perceived to be experienced at a certain point in a group’s history might serve to define a group’s collective identity, thereby leading to an association with collective self-esteem. Upon reflection, we decided that what we were actually referring to was perhaps closer to the concept of current ingroup entitativity than it was to the vaguer feeling of clarity or certainty about events perceived to be experienced at different periods in a group’s history. Thanks to the comments of both reviewers, we realized that it makes more theoretical sense that relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during an important historical low-point for the group would serve to define, or make more real, one’s current collective identity and that this in turn would be related to collective self-esteem. We have therefore replaced the concept of collective identity clarity, which we agree was not particularly well-explained or well-measured in the first version of our paper, with perceptions of current ingroup entitativity, measured by an ingroup entitativity scale (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Bourguignon, 1999) the results of which we did not include in the first version of the paper. In fact, the second reviewer suggested that, among others, the collective identity clarity concept brought to mind the concept of entitativity. The reviewer’s observations led us to examine what we were actually hypothesizing, and doing so led us to replace the clarity concept with ingroup entitativity in the model that we tested. 2c) The reviewer questions our measurement of both collective identity clarity and collective esteem. We agree with the reviewer that our measurement of collective identity clarity was problematic in that we measured it as an overall feeling of certainty of what happened to a group during a particular chapter. As stated above, this concept was not really representative of what we were trying to test, and was thus replaced with current ingroup entitativity as measured by a well-researched, valid and reliable ingroup entitativity scale (Castano, Yzerbyt, & Bourguignon, 1999). Furthermore, the reviewer wonders why we chose to include only the membership and private subscales of the collective self-esteem scale as our measurement of collective self-esteem. We agree with the reviewer that this was problematic and have now instead used the entire scale (Luhtanen & Crocker, 1992), including all subscales, to measure global collective self-esteem. 3) The reviewer questions what we mean when we say that our data is “historically contextualized”. He or she points out that rather than being historically contextualized, we have instead measured the perceptions of participants who are situated in the current historical context but who are asked to consider the degree of deprivation/privilege that their group experienced at different periods in history. In order to address this, we have changed our terminology throughout the paper so as to be more consistent with what we are actually measuring. Rather than saying that our measures are historically contextualized, we are careful to describe them as participants’ current perceptions of their group’s history. The reviewer also makes a broader point by stating that he or she is unsure of the role history actually plays in our paper. He or she wonders about the effect of reminding people about past events on their current collective identities. We see this point as actually speaking to the value of Study 1 in our manuscript. In Study 1, we asked participants to spontaneously narrate their group’s history. Rather than reminding them about specific historical periods, we sought to examine what, in the present, they chose to spontaneously describe. In this second version of the manuscript we now make this contribution of Study 1 more clear (see p. 34), and we conclude that the historical periods that participants chose to describe might be particularly important for defining their current collective identities. In this way, we attempt to more concretely emphasize the role that a group’s history can have on current perceptions of collective identity. Furthermore, in Study 2, we remind participants of certain historical periods and examine how their perceptions of relative deprivation experienced during each of these periods relates to current feelings of ingroup entitativity and collective self-esteem. Again, we explore how perceptions of history lead a person to define and positively evaluate his or her collective identity. 4) The reviewer questions our proposed model. He or she is not clear how past relative deprivation and past identity clarity should influence current collective esteem without reference to current relative deprivation or current collective identity clarity. The reviewer questions the role of current feelings of collective relative deprivation and wonders if we should include current feelings of relative deprivation in our model predicting collective esteem. He or she also wonders if current, rather than past collective identity clarity plays a more important role in predicting collective esteem. We found this to be a very important point, a point that led us to the realization that relative deprivation perceived to be experienced at past important points most likely serves to define one’s current collective identity, thereby leading to greater feelings of current collective esteem. Upon reflection, we realized that this more accurately described our thinking surrounding our hypothesis. In order to address this, our analysis now includes current feelings of ingroup entitativity rather than collective identity clarity or certainty measured at different points in the past. We find that this model, a model that includes current perceptions of one’s collective identity, makes much more theoretical sense. Reviewer #1 Minor Points and Specific Questions and Suggestions: 1) The reviewer found parts of the introduction to be repetitive. We have now re-worked and tightened the introduction. 2) The reviewer points out a number of wording problems, such as our use of “numerous others”, “research implies”, “research demonstrates without systematically testing”, and “devised in a more structured manner” All of these statements have now been re-worded so as to express our ideas more clearly. 3) The reviewer states that there is no information about how participants in Study 1 were recruited. We have now included this information on pp. 11-12. 4) The reviewer points out that we interpreted a drop in beta as an effect “completely disappearing”. We have reworked this section (pp. 28-30) of the paper, include different variables in our analysis, and therefore no longer interpret the data in this manner. 5) The reviewer wonders if previous research has shown that thinking about historically positive events produces a negative relationship between relative deprivation and collective esteem, why we did not find this relationship in our data for periods of apparent relative privilege. We now discuss these discrepant findings more thoroughly in the discussion section of the paper (pp. 33-34). 6) The reviewer points out that both studies don’t employ the cultural narrative method, only the first one. We now make this clear in our discussion section (p. 34). Reviewer #2: 1) The reviewer questions our theoretical case that the relationships among relative deprivation, collective identity clarity and well-being would differ depending on the historical frame. He or she questions why greater mean levels of relative deprivation would also change the nature of the relationship between relative deprivation and the other variables. In the revised version of the paper we attempt to be much more clear when describing the rationale behind our model. On p. 5 and p. 8 of the introduction, we now make it clear that we are looking specifically at the impact of historical low-points, characterized by feelings of relative deprivation, on the nature of these relationships. We argue that when looking back at important historical low points, the relationships among past relative deprivation, current ingroup entitativity, and collective esteem will be positive because relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during these periods is particularly useful for defining an individual’s current collective identity and by extension, positively influencing well-being. We do not provide hypotheses about the nature of the relationships between these variables at other time points that are not historical low-points, as it is beyond the scope of the present paper. However, we now include a discussion of this issue and call for future research into the nature of these relationships (p. 32-34). 2) The reviewer points out that he or she was disappointed by the fact that we equated threat with the more specific concept of relative deprivation, as measured by a self-report scale. We agree that our use of threat and relative deprivation as interchangeable concepts was problematic and have therefore removed the concept of intergroup threat from the paper. As we mentioned in our response to the first reviewer, we have limited our discussion to the more narrow concept of relative deprivation, as we did not truly assess threat in this paper. For example, instead of exploring “threat” in the cultural narratives, we have revised our focus to explore “historical low-points” characterized by the experience of relative deprivation. In addition, to respond to the reviewers request that he or she would have liked to see a discussion of what constitutes “threat” or “relative deprivation” and how this itself is historically contingent or variable in meaning, we have now more comprehensively discussed the contextual nature of relative deprivation in the discussion section (p. 33-34). 3) The reviewer points out that the judgements of relative deprivation and clarity in the first version of the paper are all made with historical hindsight. As we mentioned in our response to the first reviewer, we are now careful to describe what we measured, not as historically contextualized, but as individuals’ current perceptions of what their groups experienced in the past. In addition, in our discussion section, we now include a discussion of the importance of knowing what happens next, for example, knowing that a historical low-point turned out well in the end (p. 33-34). 4) Like the first reviewer, the second reviewer points out that our measurement of collective identity clarity was problematic. He or she posits that concepts such as ingroup homogeneity, self-stereotyping, or entitativity seem intuitively to map more closely on to the notion of the collective identity clarity, as we have explained it. As we mentioned in our response to the first reviewer, we agree completely with this criticism and have therefore used current ingroup entitativity instead of clarity in this second version of our paper, as we believe that this concept is more representative of what we actually sought to measure. 5) The reviewer states that our arguments reminded him or her of the rejection identification model (Branscome, Schmitt, & Harvey, 1999). We now relate our findings to this model in the discussion section of the paper (p. 32). 6) The reviewer points out that the evidence for the meditational relationships in the first version of our paper was actually quite weak. We believe that we have remedied this problem in the second version of our paper, as, by replacing collective identity clarity with ingroup entitativity, we obtain stronger results. For Francophones, ingroup entitativity partially mediates the relationship between relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during the conquest era and current collective self-esteem. For Anglophones, ingroup entitativity significantly mediates the relationship between relative deprivation perceived to be experienced during the Quiet Revolution era and current collective esteem (see pp. 28-30) . Although, in the case of Francophones, there might be another factor accounting for the residual positive association between relative deprivation and collective esteem, we have at least uncovered a significant mediator of this relationship for both groups. Furthermore, our analysis now includes both the Sobel test and bootstrapping analysis for measuring the indirect effect of relative deprivation on collective esteem. Reviewer #2 Minor Points 1) The reviewer found the paper to be repetitive in places. We have now re-worked and tightened the paper so as to avoid repetition. 2) The reviewer suggests explaining the rationale behind and the benefit of the trajectory analysis used in Study 2. On p. 23-24 of the paper, we now explain that the trajectory analysis allowed us to examine if every member of both groups perceived the relative deprivation experienced by their group during each historical period in a similar fashion. That is, the analysis allowed us to go beyond reporting mean levels of relative deprivation for each chapter, and instead enabled us to examine if there was a consensus among all group members about how their group felt across history. With the emergence of only one trajectory for each group (one trajectory for Anglophones and one for Francophones) we were able to demonstrate a shared perception across group members with regards to the relative deprivation experienced by their group across history, and to document what this representation looked like visually. Thank you and thanks to the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you regarding the revised version of our manuscript. Directory: delasabr -> PSY6322 -> Bougie all%20documents Bougie all%20documents -> Evelyne Bougie; Esther Usborne; Roxane de la Sablonnière; Donald m taylor Bougie all%20documents -> Cultural Narratives Running Head: cultural narratives Download 31.57 Kb. 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