In 1979
British psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner
introduced the Social Identity Theory, where our ‘social identity’ within a group shapes our norms, attitudes and behaviour.
Henri Tajfel’s
greatest contribution to psychology was social identity theory. Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.)
Social identity theory developed from
a series of studies, frequently called minimal-group studies
, conducted by the British social psychologist Henri Tajfel and his colleagues in the early 1970s. Participants were assigned to groups that were designed to be as arbitrary and meaningless as possible.
This process of favoring one’s in-group happens in three stages:
social categorization, social identification, and social comparison
. (1) People first categorize themselves and others into social groups based on external or internal criteria.
An individual’s social identity indicates who
they are in terms of the groups to which they belong
. Social identity groups are usually defined by some physical, social, and mental characteristics of individuals. … Some instructors may believe that social identities are not relevant to their courses.
Social identity theory is built on three key cognitive components:
social categorization, social identification, and social comparison
. Generally, individuals wish to maintain a positive social identity by maintaining their group’s favorable social standing over that of relevant out-groups.
Social identity theory can be used in the contexts of multicultural counseling, research, and practice to understand the processes by which individuals develop and maintain social identities and groups. The theory includes three core elements:
social categorization, social identification, and social comparison.
Social identity
allows people to be part of groups and gain a sense of belonging in their social world
. These identities play an important role in shaping self-image. … Social identification is important because it influences how people see themselves and how they interact with others.
A weaknesses of the Social identity theory is that its
application is restricted in the sense that it has very low ecological validity
. Another weakness is that SIT favors situational factors rather than dispositional is not supported by evidence.
Social identity theory is described as a theory that
predicts certain intergroup behaviours on the basis of perceived group status differences
, the perceived legitimacy and stability of those status differences, and the perceived ability to move from one group to another.
Social loafing describes
the tendency of individuals to put forth less effort when they are part of a group
. Because all members of the group are pooling their effort to achieve a common goal, each member of the group contributes less than they would if they were individually responsible. 1
As a social identity category,
age identity includes the relative sense of feeling “young”
or “old,” which does not necessarily coincide with chronological age.
What is ascribed identity?
ascribed identity is
the set of demographic and role descriptions that others in an interaction assume to hold true for you
. Ascribed identity is often a function of one’s physical appearance, ethnic connotations of one’s name, or other stereotypical associations. 2.
Languages
symbolise identities
and are used to signal identities by those who speak them. People are also categorised by other people according to the language they speak. People belong to many social groups and have many social identities.
Personal identity refers to self-categories which define the individual as a unique person in terms of their individual differences from other
(ingroup) persons. … Social identity refers to the social categorical self (e.g., “us” versus “them”, ingroup versus outgroup, us women, men, whites, blacks, etc.).
Social identity refers to
a sense of identity based on the social groups that an individual considers themselves to belong to
. These social groups that many of us identify with can be many things such as race, religion, profession, economic class, etc.
