Personal condition but social cure: Agentic ingroups elevate well-being in chronically ill patients through perceptions of personal control

Objectives: Social-cure research has shown that ingroup identification can be beneficial for personal health and well-being. Initial evidence for healthy participants suggests that this might be due to group membership providing a sense of personal control. In this research, we investigate this pathway for chronically ill patients, assuming that any ingroup (even patient identity) can serve as social cure by increasing control as long as the ingroup is perceived as agentic (i.e., effective).

Design: We conducted six correlational field studies with patients suffering from different chronic conditions, e.g., cancer (N_total = 795).

Methods: All participants were asked about one specific ingroup, e.g., their self-help group. Our main measures were ingroup identification, ingroup agency, personal control and well-being, as well as self-esteem and social support (both discussed as alternative mediators). We performed simple mediation and/or moderated mediation analyses for each study and across studies (merging Studies 2-6).

Results: Overall, the impact of ingroup identification on personal well-being was uniquely mediated via personal control (Studies 1, 2, 3, 6) but, as expected, only for those perceiving their ingroup as highly agentic (Studies 4, 5, 6).

Conclusions: Ingroup agency is a boundary condition for the control-based pathway of the social cure effect supporting the model of group-based control. This has practical implications for clinical interventions with chronically ill patients.