Professor Dr Amélie Mummendey (✝︎)

Amélie Mummendey’s research focuses on the social psychology of social identity, intergroup relations, and intergroup behaviour. In particular, she is interested in determinants of negative types like social discrimination, ingroup favouritism and outgroup devaluation, as well as positive ones like intergroup tolerance and appreciation of outgroups.
Recent empirical research, experimental as well as field studies have dealt with what we call the positive-negative-asymmetry in social discrimination on the one hand and testing models to predict the preference of strategies to cope with threatened or negative social identities. The positive-negative-asymmetry means the rather robust phenomenon showing that ingroup favouritism by differential allocation of burdens follows rules different from those which are followed by favouritism in the area of positive resource allocation. The question is, how these valence effects can theoretically be explained. As to the prediction of strategies to cope with threatened identities, up to now mixed models based on relative deprivation theory and social identity theory look rather promising.
More recently, Mummendey’s research addresses determinants and conditions for discrimination versus tolerance between social groups. Conflict and cooperation, constructive versus destructive coping with radical change, in particular with threats of social identity, boundaries of tolerance, rejection and exclusion of outgroups.