Social Identity Theory

the theory that your behaviour is motivated by your social identity. A person's self image has 2 components the personal identity (own characteristics) and the social identity (the ingroups one belongs to) leading to prejudice

- the ingroup is the group one sees themself belonging to
- the outgroup comprises anyone who is not part of the ingroup
- social categorisation refers to the separation of individuals into these two groups

- the individual adopting the beliefs values and attitudes of the groups to which they see themselves belonging
- they will also alter behaviour to fit with norms
- identification also involves a shift in thinking and involves a change to self concept as a new social identity is formed

- an individual may boost their self esteem through making comparisons between the ingroup and the outgroup
- self esteem is the value attached to self concept
- since the impact of these comparisons is our self esteem they are likely to be biased - perceiving the ingroup as superior and degrading the outgroup

- the desire to see the ingroup as different and better is known as the quest for positive distinctiveness
- differences between groups are emphasised and similarities minimised
- from thinking about outgroups negatively, prejudice occurs

- a strength of SIT is support from the minimal group experiment.
- Tajfel (1970) worked with 15-year-old Bristol school boys. Ingroups and outgroups were created by telling each boy which other boys had behaved like them or not in a previous task (choosing which painting they liked).
- Later the boys were asked to to allocate points to the other boys and were told these points would be exchanged for cash.
- Tajfel found that more points were awarded to ingroup members than outgroup members. Boys even opted to maximise the difference in
points awarded to the ingroup compared with the outgroup, even if this reduced the total final sum awarded to the ingroup
- This study Shows how social categorisation is sufficient to trigger ingroup favouritism and discrimination against the outgroup.
- Therefore providing evidence supporting social identity theory

- Although this study appears to support SIT, the task of
privately allocating points lacks mundane realism. In real life, we may be less discriminatory as there may be unpleasant social consequences of such actions
- Discrimination is rarely this covert, meaning that the study lacks ecological validity.
- meaning that social identity theory may be incorrect as this evidence is invalid and therefore has inaccurate results

- A weakness of SIT is that research evidence suggests that it may only explain intergroup behaviour in Western societies
- Wetherell (1982) conducted a replication of Tajfel's experiment using eight-year-old schoolchildren in New Zealand. She found that indigenous Polynesian children were significantly more generous in their allocation of points to outgroup
members than their white New Zealand classmates.
- This suggests that SIT may be ethnocentric because it fails to predict the behaviour of people from more collectivist backgrounds. It may also not apply to people who belong to minority groups.
- Therefore SIT is an incomplete theory unable to account for why prejudice does not occur in other cultures when social categorisation is evident

- decreased generalisability
- only children 8 years of age, adults have higher cognitive functioning and therefore the sample is unrepresentative of the wider population
- adults may be less/more inclined to prejudice leading to different results between cultures (than wetherell) in adults
- therefore social identity theory may still be valid and applicable to adult groups, social comparison may still be causing prejudice

RCT
- RCT claims that prejudice is produced by competition and happens when the circumstance is limited resources
- RCT has evidence from Sherif (1954/61) Robbers cave experiment where Sherif found that only 6.4% of the rattlers friends were eagles during the friction stage and that increased to 36.4% in the integration phase (reducing friction)
(CA would be generalisability bcs it's 22 middle class protestant 11 Yr old boys from oklahoma USA - children)

- SIT provides testable suggestions about how prejudice can be reduced through efforts to increase self-esteem.
- Fein and Spencer (1997) gave students a sense of high or low
self-esteem (using false feedback on an intelligence test). Students who now had low self-esteem later rated Jewish applicants for a job less favourably than Italian candidate but this was not true of those with high self-esteem.
- In a second study, self-esteem was increased by asking the students to write about something they valued. This had the effect of reducing anti-Jewish prejudice.
- This suggests that prejudice in society could be decreased by implementing policies which target low self-esteem

- categorisation / study tajfel / CA
- identification / opposing wetherell / CA
- comparison / different RCT / CA
- quest for positive distinctiveness / applications