Social Identity Theory

The social shelf

People’s sense of self comes from the groups that they belong to/people have a basic need for self-esteem

Cialdini

A: the role of social identity in self-esteem

P: field study on campuses of 7 large American universities with popular football teams/recorded what clothing students wore the Monday after a big football match against a rival university/also called students and asked them their opinion on the team’s performance

F: students were more likely to wear clothing associated with the university if they won/more likely to use first person pronouns if they won and third person pronouns if they lost

C: social identity plays an important role in self-esteem/people associate themselves with a successful group and create distance when it is less successful to maintain a strong sense of self-esteem

Evaluate Cialdini

• Natural observation of real world behaviour: high ecological validity

• All university students from the US: low generalisability

• Not clear if findings can be applied to other types of groups or only sports teams

Social identity theory - categorisation

The process of grouping people together based on certain characteristics: gender, age, nationality, religion, occupation.

Social identity theory - identification

The process of categorising yourself as a member of a particular group and taking on the values and beliefs of that group.

Social identity theory - social comparison

The process of comparing your group (in-group) with other groups (out-groups)/important for self-esteem as people are motivated to make comparisons that are favourable for their own group/creates a positive distinctiveness for your group

Tajfel

A: how even minimal groups affects behaviour

P: British schoolboys from 14-15/randomly divided into groups based on whether they overestimated or underestimated the number of dots on a picture/others were grouped based on whether they preferred paintings of one artist or another/played competitive games/given the opportunity to divide money or points to members of each group

F: most boys gave more money or points to their own group and less to out-groups/majority of participants divided moony or points between groups to maximise the difference between groups/participants rated their own group members are more likeable

C: supports social identity theory/people naturally categorise themselves into groups/suggests that even meaningless groups still have an effect of behaviour resulting in loyalty to in-group and hostility to out-group

Evaluate Tajfel

• All British schoolboys between 14-15: competitive so low generalisability

• Demand characteristics: competitive games ​