LECTURE 6- Social identity theory
0-Who are you?
When you are asked this question, you can answer either with things that are very specific to you and make you unique
(personal identity) or with things that mark your belonginess to certain groups (social identity). Together they make you.
1-Social identity theory (SIT)
Tajfel (1978), Tajfel and Turner (1979) were the first to come up with an influential theory of social identity:
“Social identity is that part of an individual’s self-concept that derives from his knowledge of his membership of a social
group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership”.
So, our social identity is activated when we think of ourselves as belonging to a certain group. And people attach great
psychological importance to membership of various groups and probably value certain groups more than others.
Assumptions:
People prefer to have a positive self-concept
Group membership is part of self-concept
In-groups positive: according to the two first assumptions, it benefits us to regard our ingroup, the group we belong
to, as more positive than other groups.
Group evaluation is relative (comparison with other groups) and biased towards maintaining the positive view we
have of our own group. All so that we can see our own group in the best possible light.
1.1-SIT applied
Brown applied the Social Identity theory to 3 domains:
Occupational groups:
He himself carried out a study among groups of factory workers, who were quite concerned about the size of their weekly
salary relative to other groups. He asked them if they would rather have situation A, where they would earn 69 pounds 30 a
week and the other group 70 pounds 30, or situation B, where they would earn 67 pounds 30 and the other group 66 pound
30. If they were just concerned about how much they earned, they would
go for situation A, but, that was not what they case. They went for
situation B, where the absolute amount that they got was less, but what
was important to them is that they earned MORE than group B. As long as
of justice was restored in their mind, that that's really what mattered.
By doing so they were trying to distinguish their group favourably from the outgroup. This is called ‘ establishment of
positive distinctiveness’. So, it doesn’t matter how much you earn, as long as it’s more than someone else.
Selective comparisons: Groups of workers also tended to be selective regarding what they compared themselves on. If other
groups were better on a certain task, then they acknowledged this, but toned it down, but when they were better than the other
group, they exaggerated it. So, they said “you’re a little bit better than us on X, but we are MUCH better than you on Z’. This
is all so that the own group is seen in the best possible light.
Language:
Language is first of all a means of communication, but it has other functions as well. It is something very powerful with
which a group can really set themselves apart from other groups, gives positive group identity and belonginess to a culture.
It also provides a unique worldview, because there might be words in your language that you don't have in any other
language. It is a personality descriptor. Example: gezellig makes a Dutch feel part of Dutchness.
Language also influences behaviour, how we behave towards other groups (out-group). Groups can choose to integrate by
speaking a common language or can choose to shut themselves off. So, you can use your language to maintain or enhance
your Social Identity.
Studies have also shown that when identity is threatened, when people say bad things about your group or about your
language, people's actions tend to get stronger. It's as if to emphasise their culture even more. hat if your language has
negative connotations, either historically or socially? (e.g., the way Dutch people might feel about a German accent)
According to SIT you can do two things: people are motivated to maintain a positive social identity, so they may try for
,social mobility (e.g., trying to hide their accent), or the reverse; trying to emphasize positive aspects of the language (“our
language is more authentic”).
There is another way in which Social Identity influences our language that has to do with whether we use abstract or
concrete language. People use different language when they describe behaviour of the ingroup and outgroup. You can use
language to show bias in favour of your ingroup. And that is in whether we use abstract or concrete language.
The experiment by Maass, Salvi, Arcuri, and Semin (1989) on the bias in intergroup language, counted with Italian
participants. they were shown a picture of somebody comforting another distressed person and they were asked to describe
what was in the picture. Half the participants were told that these two are Italian like them, the other half were told these are
Spanish.
When people thought that these two were Italians just like them, they said she's being compassionate (stable character trait).
But when they thought they were Spanish, different group, they said, “she's hugging someone” (one off behaviour). And this
was totally reversed when it wasn't a positive behaviour, but a negative one. So
So, the ingroup is essentially perceived as good. The outgroup is seen as a sentiment. But when negative things happen to the
in group, that's because it's just a bad day, when a negative thing happens to the outgroup, then typical. We do this to preserve
our good image of our own group.
*Extra reading: Tylen et al (2010). Language as a tool for interacting minds. http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/3241915/media1165.pdf?
AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ56TQJRTWSMTNPEA&Expires=1477491585&Signature=g7z7jS48K9TNNLx1BCuhZ7pxBjY%3D&response-content-
disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DLanguage_As_a_Tool_for_Interacting_Minds.pdf
Gender segregation:
A third illustration of the application of Social Identity Theory is gender segregation in young children. From the age of 3
years old, and even younger in girls, children show a clear preference for playing with children from their own gender.
Maccoby and Jacklin argued that these own-gender preferences are not a result of socialization pressures from their parents,
or their parents’ own gender roles, but it seems to be something quite primitive, based on physical characteristics, on noticing
physical differences. It is one of the earliest forms of identity development.
2-Consequences of social identification: intergroup comparisons
High-status group vs Low-status group (“Upper class”): belonging to a high-status group and comparing yourself with a
low-status group usually means there’s no identity threat. So, there is no need for extra intergroup differentiation (it’s
pretty obvious to both you and the outgroup that you’re very different), just a strong in-group bias to maintain your
already secure dominance.
Equal status groups (McDonalds vs Burger King): the whole idea of in-groups and out-groups is that you want your
group to be unique, you want your group to be special and different from other groups. As they are on the same level,
the psychological proximity of the outgroup may be threatening, therefore the group displays a strong in-group bias and
crucially, tries everything to make themselves as different form the other group as possible.
Low-status group vs High-status group (low paid jobs): if you are a member of a low status group, comparing yourself
to other groups might turn out unfavorably. The other groups may be better, more competent, and this mat lead to a
decrease of self-esteem.
Mechanisms to cope with this:
o Disindentification: leave in-group and join out-group. But it is not always possible. Something similar is when
something negative happens to your social group, you may be able to preserve your self-esteem by switching,
in your mind, to your membership of a different social group, e.g., your team loses the champions and then
you support a different team.
o Compare in-group with other low status groups.
o Compare in-group with out-group but only on those dimensions where in-group is likely to get a good
outcome.
In sum, people go to great lengths to maintain a positive view of their group, because it makes them feel better personally,
even if they’re in a low-status group.
We also are interested in attribution: do fans attribute a win to a skill, to an internal attribution and a loss to bad luck, which
is an external attribution?
2.1-World cup 2014 experiment
Do football fans talk in terms of ‘we’ when their team wins, but in terms of ‘they’ when their team loses? (individual
mobility). Does this effect occur only for those who identify weakly with their national team? The strong identifiers might
, just feel sad because they can’t dissociate themselves. Do fans attribute a win to ‘skill’ (internal), but a loss to ‘bad luck’
(external)?
The experiment tested internal mobility: we classified them either as a weak, medium, or strong identifier.
Independent Variable 1: Match outcome (win, loss)
IV2: Identification with team (weak, medium, strong)
Dependent Variable 1: ‘personally affected’ rating
DV2: difference between percentage first-person pronouns before and after match
DVs 3, 4, 5, 6: competence, incompetence, good luck, bad luck ratings
Participants: 50; 14 ppts tested in ‘loss’ condition; 36 ppts tested in ‘win’ condition. Weak: 22, Medium: 16, Strong: 12.
So, when your team wins you obviously are not going to attribute to bad
luck. So, the interesting part is the ‘loss’ bit. Here, we can see that the
strong identifiers are most inclined to attribute the loss to bad luck. This
is exactly what we predicted. However, the sample sizes were very
imbalanced. (we need more strong identifiers).
2.2-Her current research
How do injured athletes manage their athlete identity?
How do postgraduate tutors manage their dual identity of student and teacher?
How do women transition to motherhood when giving birth during Covid-19 lockdown?
Qualitative: interviews – analysed with grounded theory (e.g., ‘what are the features of ‘coping’ with an injury?) and
descriptive thematic analysis (common themes across interviews).
Collinson, J. A., & Hockey, J. (2007). ‘Working out’ identity: Distance runners and the management of disrupted
identity. Leisure Studies, 26(4), 381-398.
Winstone, N., & Moore, D. (2017). Sometimes fish, sometimes fowl? Liminality, identity work and identity
malleability in graduate teaching assistants. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 54(5), 494-502
2.3-Another case study
Stapel, D. A., Koomen, W., & Spears, R. (1999). Framed and misfortuned: Identity salience and the whiff of scandal.
European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 397-402.
Background:
In August 1996, a Dutch professor in clinical Psychology was found guilty of large-scale fraud. He had committed
plagiarism.
As soon as this became known, Stapel and colleagues set up an experiment to find out what the effect of the scandal was on
the rest of the psychology community. According to Social Identity Theory, scandals that involve a member of the ingroup
are perceived as a potential threat to the in-group image, and so also to the self.
Turner (1987) said we all have multiple identities (we are students, psychology students, Scottish, religious, Aberdeen
supporters, etcetera), and they’re usually not all salient to us at the same time. So, what happens if a certain group
membership is salient, while something negative happens to one of the other groups you belong to? Would the impact then be
less?
