ABSTRACT
Imagine a person living her entire life in one country. After some time of increasing dissatisfaction of a majority of the people in this country, the economic, social, and political structure changes rather dramatically: The government of the country decides to merge with another country, which has been the wealthy neighbor for a long time. Facing this change, the person may experience joy, enthusiasm, and hope, because of the new opportunities. She may also experience insecurity, anxiety and threat, because of the uncertainty and the risk of becoming marginalized in her own country. Such a scenario happened during the unification of Germany in the late 1980s. After 40 years of separation, the two German countries merged into a new country. In the beginning, positive attitudes and expectations predominated throughout Germany. However, after the first enthusiasm, intergroup conflict between both groups (East Germans vs. West Germans) emerged. On the one side, many West Germans complained about the high costs of the unification, on the other side, many East Germans felt inferior and stigmatized by the West Germans. Thus, apart from the importance of this event for the people involved, German unification has been an excellent opportunity to test social psychological theories in the field as well as their applicability to social change. Amélie Mummendey and her colleagues – including the first author of this chapter – perceived this situation as a windfall for the scientific study of social change and worked on a large research grant examining change in intergroup relations in Germany.
