Approaches to Emergent Group Differences

• Main Author: CHAN, David
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2015
• Subjects: Singapore; cultural pluralism; race relations; Asian Studies; Social Psychology; Social Psychology and Interaction
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1902
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Our traditional narratives on Singapore's vulnerability and strengths relating to multi-culturalism, social harmony and national identity are primarily based on the official groupings of race and religion. With the rapid changes in Singapore's economic, social and political environment, particularly those associated with the significant increase in Singapore's population due to the inflow of foreigners, we need to go beyond these traditional and official groupings to examine 'new' ways of grouping people in various contexts and for various purposes to address emergent differences. A segmented approach to policy making is effective only if we know what the relevant groupings are or how to segment the population relation to the issues in question. Issues of emergent differences across "new" groupings of people in Singapore are much more complex than simply including additional group membership variables such as age, education or nationality. To unpack the complexity, we need to examine how people think, feel and act in various situations and contexts, including individual, social, organisational and cultural settings. These variations in human cognitions, emotions and behaviors may account for or be accounted by emergent group differences.