Social Identity Theory

Joyce & Harwood (2014)

social identity theory

argues that individuals don’t just have one “personal self”, but a combination of many social selves that identify with different groups

social identity theory model

composed of three aspects:

• social categorization, such as classifying people based on similar characteristics

• social comparison, such as comparing the benefits of belonging to the in-group or out-group because of positive distinctiveness

• tendency to use group membership for self-esteem

salient

despite being made of many identities, there may be one that is more present; can be seen in behaviour.

aim

investigate the extent to which attitudes towards an out-group member can be manipulated via emotional valence (the strength and quality of the emotional content)

procedure

A sample of mostly white university students with a mean age of 20 (more females than males) watched excerpts of a documentary that featured US border control guard Frank, living with a family of illegal immigrants for 30 days

It showed the interactions between Frank and the daughters

Participants were split into three conditions:

• positive valence (footage featured only scenes of a positive nature)

• negative valence (footage featured only scenes of a negative nature)

• mixed valence (footage featured 50% positive and 50% negative scenes)

• control condition (participants watched scenes from 'Planet Earth')

After watching the scene, the participant filled out a questionnaire scored using the rating scale

It included topics such as their attitude towards illegal immigrants and other marginalised groups, such as the homeless, refugees

They also answered how they identified with Frank and their attitude towards the family's daughter

results

The difference between the positive and negative results is significant and points to the idea that positive media portrayals can improve the attitudes of in-group members towards the out-group

When a participant identified strongly with Frank, their rating of the out-group was less positive

The degree of liking of the daughter influenced the positive ratings of the out-group

tok link

members produced different opinions based on the clips they saw to match the behaviour shown