IB Psychology HL - SCLOA - Evaluate Social Identity Theory with reference to relevant studies

• theoretical †framework developed by Tajfel

SIT is based on 4 interrelated concepts:

• social categorization

• social identity

• social comparison

• positive distinctiveness

Main studies:

• Cialdini et al. (1976)

• Tajfel et al. (1971)

divides the social environment into in-groups and out-groups

In-groups show:

• ethnocentrism

• stereotypical thinking

• self-serving biases

similar to SSB but the self-serving effect applies to everyone we perceive as in-group members

• how we think of ourselves according to our membership of social groups

• Turner (1982): it’s different from personal identity as personal identity is how we label our personality

• when establishing relationships with members of different groups, the social identity can influence our behavior

• our social identity influences how we feel about ourselves

• to maintain and build up self-esteem, we seek positive social identities

• we continuously compare our in-groups with relevant out-groups and usually conclude that our in-group is superior

• occurs when we establish superiority of in-group over out-groups

• we make sure that our social identities (and therefore our self-esteem) are positive enough

• observed college football supporters

• after their college team won, supporters were more likely to be seen wearing college clothing

• vice versa for after a loss

• supports the notion of positive distinctiveness as the supporters wanted to be associated with a positive social group (a winning team)

• British schoolboys were randomly grouped

• participants were informed that their groups were according to a preference for Klee or Kandinsky paintings

• with knowledge of which groups they belonged to, the boys worked individually to give points to both in-group and out-group members

• they were not allowed to award points to themselves

• participants showed ingroup favoritism: strong tendency to award more points to in-group members

• category accentuation effect/positive distinctiveness: some would give up point gains for their in-group just to make sure there was a difference in points between in-group and out-group

• this supports the notion of social identity

• social identity was still established despite the arbitrary method used to form groups

• the boys still regarded themselves as belonging to a group even when they were working individually

Strengths:

• supports SIT

• showed formation and features of SIT

• lab study: clear determinism

• despite the arbitrary method to determine groups, participants still showed characteristics described by SIT

• controlled environment minimized chances of confounding variables

Weaknesses:

• sample bias: all participants were male schoolboys from the same country

• boys may have misinterpreted the study as some sort of competitive game

• lab study: low ecological validity

• reductionist: simplistic reduction of a complex psychological phenomenon, focusing just on minimal groups and performance of a simple experimental task

• empirical support

• raises the idea that intergroup conflict is not necessary for discrimination to occur

can explain behaviors such as:

• ethnocentrism

• ingroup favoritism

• positive distinctiveness

• stereotyping

• conformity

• Rubin and Hewstone (1998) against self-esteem explanation: increase in self-esteem associated with out-group discrimination is too short-lived to have long-lasting effects on how in-group members view themselves

• SIT describes but does not predict human behaviour

• SIT does not explain why in some cases our personal identity is stronger than the group identity

• SIT fails to take the environment into consideration

• generally, experimental methods used to study SIT have low ecological validity