social identity theory

• Tajfel and Turner (1979) suggest that prejudice comes from the formation of two groups, without any other factor being present. The mere existence or perception of another group’s existence can lead to prejudice and discrimination. It is also a human trait to distinguish ourselves by our membership of certain groups (our in-groups). This is called our Social identity.
• Categorisation: Separation of people into groups. The most simple instance of this is "us" and "them". The "us" group is the ingroup, the "them" group is the outgroup. It is argued that this process is automatic and can occur without conflict.
• Identification: Over time the individual will adopt the values and beliefs of the group that they think they belong to. They may also alter their behaviours to fit into their own group's norms better. This identity will affect the person’s self esteem
• Comparison: The individual will then compare their own groups to others. In these comparisons, people tend to notice things that makes their group appear superior. This more positive light can make the person feel better about belonging to their group (positive distinctiveness). At the same time, they would further see or treat the outgroup in negative or unfavourable terms.
• Social identity can impact on personal identity because group members are often a source of our self-esteem. This means that when the social identity is favourable, personal identity of group members are positive. This is achieved via:

  1. In-group favouritism – the tendency of group members to see the individuals within their group as unique (heterogeneous) and favourable (positive prejudice/positive distinctiveness)

  2) Negative out-group bias – the tendency to view members of the out-group as ‘all the same’ (homogenous) and in an unfavourable light (negative prejudice)
• One strength is that there is supporting evidence from Tajfel who randomly assigned boys to different groups with completely arbitrary names and played a game where they had to allocate points to their own and other groups, they could choose max fairness, max gain for ingroup or max difference, they always chose max difference in the ingroups favour as doing better than the other group seemed more important than doing what was best for their own group. This is a strength as it shows negative outgroup bias in social comparison and the fact that seeing the outgroup as similar led to prejudice.
• A problem with the theory is that perhaps it can only explain intergroup behaviour in Western societies. Margaret Wetherell (1982) conducted a replication of Tajfel’s experiment using 8 year old school children in New Zealand. She found that indigenous Polynesian children were significantly more generous in their allocation of points to outgroup members than their Caucasian New Zealand classmates. This suggests that SIT may be ethnocentric because it fails to predict the behaviour of people from more collectivist backgrounds.