Chapter 1 - Identities and Diversities Flashcards
Introspectionism
Method for gaining indirect access to people’s mental processes through their verbal reports. (William James and Wilhelm Wundt)
Embodiment
Indicates that we live in and through our bodies and that we simultaneously experience our bodies physically and biologically as well as socially and psychologically.
Neuropsychological approaches
These study brain function by examining damaged brains, the structure of the brain and neural activity.
Social model of disability
A model that considers that people with physical impairments are as disabled by the limitations imposed by society as by their impairments.
Psychosocial
Psychosocial identity recognizes the influence of both personal and social factors on identity development.
Core identity
The central identity that individuals have to achieve from different aspects of their identities if they are to be psychologically healthy.
Ego identity
Erikson’s term for a secure feeling of who and what one is. It suggests the psychosocial nature of identity.
Psychosocial moratorium
A socially approved period in which young people can try out different social roles and so find their own niche in society.
Identity crisis
A period in which some young people find it impossible to make commitments to adult roles and many experience some difficulty.
Role diffusion
The failure to achieve a secure ego identity.
Semi-structured interviews
Interviews designed to cover particular themes that allow flexibility in how questions are asked.
Identity diffusion
Period in which young people are neither exploring social roles nor committed to a consistent set of values and goals.
Identity foreclosure
Period in which young people commit themselves to identities without having explored other options.
Moratorium
An active process in which young people search for the identity to which they want to be committed.
Identity achievement
Young people have experienced and resolved their adolescent identity crisis by going through a period of moratorium.
Social Identity Theory (SIT)
A theory of the social processes by which people come to identify with particular groups and separate themselves from others.
Experimental method
The most commonly used psychological method. It examines causal relationships between variables by controlling factors that may affect the results.
Ingroup
People who belong to the group to which we consider we belong.
Outgroup
People who do not belong to our group.
Minimal groups
Groups set up in Social Identity Theory research to identify the minimum conditions necessary for group identities to form.
Social categories
The division of people on the basis of characteristics, such as gender, ‘race’, nationality, class, occupation, religion, etc., that have differential power and status.
Social mobility
Process by which members of groups improve their status by leaving behind their (previous) social group.
Social creativity
A process of positive redefinition of a devalued social group in order to improve the social identity of its members.
Social competion
Strategies that advance social change by demanding alternative social arrangements based on new ways of thinking about social groups.
Social construction
Theory that the ways in which we understand the world are not just ‘natural’, but are ‘constructed’ between people in everyday social interactions.
Discourses
The ways of thinking and talking about issues currently available in our culture – that is, the processes by which people construct meanings.
Blue eyes/brown eyes experiment.
Teacher Jane Elliot segregated the class according to eye colour to observe ungroup/outgroup relationships and performance in school work.
20 Statements test
Kuhn and McPartland (1954) devised a test which asked the participants to write 20 answers to the question ‘Who am I’. The answers were then categorised into characteristics, social roles, personality, interests, attitudes and current state. Objective was to find which self descriptions are most important to identity.
Erikson’s Psychosocial theory of identity
Erik Erikson’s theory split identity development into eight stages. Identity is achieved in the fifth stage (adolescence).
The identity status model
Developed from Erikson’s theory of identity, James Marcia proposed a variant which could be used to assess how adolescents identity changed over the long period of adolescence.
