The Social Identity Theory: Origins and Concept

The social identity theory (SIT) was suggested by Henri Tajfel & John Turner in 1979. They put forward that people obtain their identity by means of the groups within which they interact. This essay will firstly describe the theory. It will then go on to look at evidence to refute or support the theory. Lastly, this essay will explain how the social identity theory relates to the self categorisation theory. The SIT was developed in an attempt to give account to the predisposition for people to form themselves into groups and remain in those groups.

The idea of social identity is based upon many past theories such as ethnocentrism, which in turn has a base in stereotyping and in-group bias (Hogg & Abrams, 1988). The key features of SIT are that firstly, it recognizes the significance and presence of categorization. People have an inborn and strong inclination to mentally organise things and people (including themselves) into categories (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). To the extent that we associate ourselves with groups (i.

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e. categorise ourselves), we have social identities. Social identities (via our group memberships) are important aspects of how we define ourselves (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).

Social identities also dictate our perceptions of members of our 'in-groups' as similar to us, at least to the extent that defines the group (Tajfel, 1981). SIT proposes that we can think of self in terms of personal and social identities (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Tajfel & Turner (1979) put forward that social identity theory unambiguously defines the difference between behaviour the individual influences, and that which is influenced by group based processes.

A central principle of SIT is that individuals endeavour to attain and/or maintain a positive social identity.

Social identity influences inter-group bias and relations through the process of social comparison (Festinger, 1954). Social identity also affects inter-group bias and relations. People are highly motivated to achieve high self-esteem and therefore they select dimensions on which to compare, distort, promote or discriminate. (Tajfel, 1981) Tajfel (1971) carried out an experiment to demonstrate the theory of social identity. He split up a group of schoolchildren into two groups at random, although he told the children that the groups were designated according to results of a questionnaire he had previously given to them.

Once the children had been divided into the groups, they were split into pairs, one child being from each group. The children were then given some money to distribute how they saw fit, to one of the pairs of children. The only information known about the pairs when coming to a decision on how to distribute the money was the code name of each participant and which group they were assigned to. The results demonstrated that although there was a degree of fairness between money distributions, there was a tendency for the children to strongly favour members of their own group.

This is known as in-group favouritism strategy (Hogg & Vaughan, 1998), and suggests that even though the groups were formed on a random basis, members of each group believed their group to be the better group. This research does tend to support social identity theory, which suggests that individuals self-esteem is linked to the evaluation or prestige of the groups to which they belong (in groups) and it is presumed that there is a motivation to enhance or maintain that self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979).