social identity theory

• Social identity theory - Ao1

  social categorisation

  • the separation of individuals into either in or out group
  • basic characteristic of human thought
• Social identity theory - Ao1

  social identification

  • individual adopting the beliefs, values and attitudes of the groups they belong with.
  • Alter behaviour to fit in with the norms
  • eg, football club fans wearing club shirts
• Social identity theory - Ao1

  social comparison

  • viewing your social identity as superior to others by comparing
  • basis of prejudice
  • to boost self esteem
• Social identity theory - Ao1

  self esteem

  • the value attached to your self-concept
  • high self esteem means you feel good about yourself
• Social identity theory - supporting

  • minimal group experiment
  • Tajfel worked with 15 year old boys and created ingroups and outgroups
  • found that boys opted to inflict maximum damage upon outgroup rather than maximum profit
  • shows how social categorisation is sufficient to trigger ingroup favouritism and discrimination against the outgroup
• Social identity theory - conflicting

  • minimal group experiment's task of privately allocating points lacks mundane realism
  • IRL, we may be less discriminatory as there may be an unpleasant social consequence pf actions.
  • Discrimination is rarely this covert, so lacks ecological validity
• Social identity theory - conflicting

  • research suggests that it may only explain intergroup begaviour in western societies
  • Wetherell - found that indigenous polynesian children were more generous to outgroup than white peers
  • suggests SIT might be ethnocentric as it fails to predict behaviour from more collectivist backgrounds or people from minority grouos
• Social identity theory - application

  • provides testable suggestions about how prejudice can be reduced through efforts to increase self-esteem
  • Fein and spencer - people with higher self-esteem were more generous to Jewish outgroups which decreased antisemitism
  • suggests that prejudice in society could be decreased by implementing polcies which target low self-esteem