4 Social Identity Flashcards
Define social mobility. Which theory?
SIT
Everybody is able to climb the ladder, rise to an elite position in society regardless of their background. e.g. moving through the classes
Define social change. Which theory?
SIT
Very difficult to break out of your social group. you need group action to get any promising future for yourself, it has to be a collective effort. e.g. you can’t change your ethnic identity, your group has to act to change societys opinion of them or society has to change.
When might a persons social behaviour vary?
Which theory?
SIT
whether you interact with people on a personal level or through/with a group through group behaviours.
e.g. war - shooting at germans is not inter personal interaction, its intergroup interaction.
at the intergroup social change end of the spectrum what does each social group wan’t to move towards?
Inferior group - the groups that have less - towards social change
Superior groups - maintenance of the status quo
Our social identity is
Perceiving ourselves to be part of a category
Belief system scale: Tafjel and turner 1979
social change –> social mobility
Social behaviour scale: Tafjel and Turner 1979
interpersonal —> intergroup
Social identity theory:
The theory that our definition of self comes from our group memberships.The groups that people are part of are an important source of self esteem and pride. people tend to perceive thier ingroups more positively because of this
Why do people socially categorise?
it gives perceiver a position in the world
social identity theory. when who?
Tafjel and Turner 1979
What conditions need to exist for SIT to be applied?
- Individual must be identified with ingroup
- intergroup context must be salient
- outgroup must be relevant (e.g. a political party having a conference that day would be the relevant outgroup to the protesters)
interpersonal —> intergroup
SIT
Social behaviour scale: Tafjel and Turner 1979
social change –> social mobility
SIT
Belief system scale: Tafjel and turner 1979
What is perceiving ourselves to be part of a category
Social identification
How do people respond to threatened social identity? (3.5)
SIT
individual mobility - change the group you are part of
social creativity - change your perception of your ingroup
social competition - potentially, social conflict. - group action in order to change the system to get your group where it needs to be - could be political action (e.g. black people in america)
Turner et al 1987
Self categorisation theory (followed SIT)
SCT
A theory to explain how individuals act and think in a group.
Categorisation of the self depends on the context just as when you have a dinner party and don;t have enough chairs, a crate can stand as a chair and is labelled ‘chair’ for that evening.
Can be hierarchical (Rosch)
Rosh’s categorisation can be applied to self:
SCT
human beings –> social groups –> personal identity
Metacontrast
SCT
Essentially the differences between differences
prototypicality = the mean perceived difference between the target and outgroup member/ the mean perceived difference between the target and ingroup member
(in that context?)
How do we determine which group people belong in
SCT
metacontrast
e.g. a guardian journalist went outside to interview the protester in a tory march wearing her conference badge and she got abused by them despite being on their side because they perceived her as part of the outgroup
Depersonalisation
SCT
when you begin to act as you be expected to because you’re part of that group. you stop acting as you would and start acting as members of that group would. you use the group label to tell you how its appropriate to act. e,g, I am a tottenham fan, how would a tottenham fan act in this situation.
You do things you wouldn’t necessarily do while on your own because you are in a group.
Self categorisation theory
Turner et al 1987
individual mobility, social creativity and social competition are part of which theory
SIT
Levine et al 2005
self categorisation - shared category membership between individuals should cause them to be more willing to help one another
conducted an experiment on man utd fans:
-filled out a questionnaire identifying themselves as man u fans , making this identity salient
on their way to second area a person slips over in either man u, liverpool, or plain shirt
Many more helped man u, few plain, less liverpool
However when identify themselves as just football fans the liverpool fans got almost as much help as the man u fan
Football fan vs man u fan experiment
levine et al 2005
What is social change?
Social change occurs when a whole society adopts a new belief or behaviour which then becomes widely accepted as the ‘norm’. - often influenced by minority groups
Tafjel and Turner 1979
Social identity theory
