ABSTRACT
When D.T.Campbell (1958) introduced the term entitativity to the social science literature, he was interested in the ontological status of social groups as units of perception. The criteria he suggested-similarity, proximity, common fate, (correlation), prägnanz (closure)—were derived from principles of Gestalt psychology and can be understood in two different ways. On the one hand, these criteria can be viewed as properties (actual or perceived) of groups themselves-properties that underlie or legitimate the perception of an aggregate as an entitative social unit. In this spirit, much of the initial empirical research on group entitativity has been devoted to identifying (e.g., Lickel et al., 2000; Harasty, 1996) or manipulating (e.g., Dasgupta, Banaji, & Abelson, 1999; L.Gaertner & Schopler, 1998; S.L.Gaertner et al., 1989; McGarty, Haslam, Hutchinson, & Grace, 1995; Welbourne, 1999) properties of social groups that lead to higher or lower ratings of those groups as “real” social entities.
