social identity theory

• who introduced social identity theory?

  Tajfel and Turner in 1979
• what is the social identity theory?

  the view that your behaviour is motivated by your social identity
• what components does a person’s self image consist of?

  personal identity

  social identity
• personal identity

  based on your characteristics and achievements
• social identity

  determined by the various groups of people you belong to - your ’ingroups’
• how is our self concept made up?

  many social identities that are linked to groups we belong in
• what is our self esteem based on?

  group membership and acceptance
• social categorisation

  when you see yourself as part of a group

  social identity may involve belonging to groups based on your gender , social class, religion, school or friends
• social identification

  once you have a social identity, you automatically perceive everyone you meet as part of your ingroup or outgroup
• ingroup

  those who share the same identity as you

  you may adopt their values, attitudes and behaviours
• outgroup

  those who have a different social identity
• social comparison

  when you view your social identity as superior to others - comes from regarding your ingroup as better than the outgroup
• what can social comparison lead to?

  prejudice and could lead to discrimination
• what can prejudiced views between cultures lead to?

  racism
• what can racism lead to?

  genocide - nazi germany and jews
• strengths on tajfel’s minimal group experiment

  controlled experiment - no other variables affecting it and can be replicated

  relavance to social identity theory

  generalisability of the findings to other social settings
• weaknesses of tajfel’s minimal group experiment

  low ecological validity - artificial setting and doesn’t represent real life

  sample bias - only tested teenage school boys

  lack of long term insights - would they maybe persist if experiment was longer