Social Identity Theory: Practice Q Section A

Explain, how SIT may be applied to explain human behaviour?

One major human behaviour that can be explained using social identity theory is in-group favoritism. The social identity theory outlines the manner in which one’s sense of self is biased by social groups through categorization, identification and comparison. Thus, individuals assimilate into their groups and adopt the established behaviour, forming an in-group. For instance, Tajfel el al. (1970) investigated out-group discrimination by randomly allocating boys into two groups and instructing them to award points to two other participants, one in their in-group and one in their out-group. This was conducted with the only information the awarding participants were given being the name of the group each boy belonged to. The results concluded that subjects awarded more points to their fellow members. Therefore, the natural tendency of individuals of a group to favour their in-group, regardless of not knowing persicely who they were, indicated the ability to instantly identify with respective social categories and hence create a positive collective identity.