Evaluate SLT as explantion for prejudice Flashcards
Summary p1
Tajfel & Turners’ concept of the social identity theory widely recognised that people tend to identify with their groups-“ingroup”, which is said to be where we get our self-esteem from. Social identity may involve belonging to groups based on your gender, social class, religion, school or friends. Also people tend to have negative views about some other groups-“outgroups”.
Summary p2
This idea of “ingroups” and “outgroups” is called social identification, it indicates that we pay particular attention to ingroup members and adopt their values, attitudes, appearance and behaviour. Social Comparison is viewing your social identity as superior to others; it comes from regarding the products of your ingroup as better than the products of an outgroup. This leads to prejudice and, if you have the power to influence the outgroup, it will lead to discrimination too.
Loogical chain 1
P
One strength of Social Identity theory is that it has supporting evidence increasing its credibility.
Logical chain 1
E
For example… Tajfel’s study (1970) worked with 15 year old Bristol school boys and created ingroups and outgroups within them by telling each boy who behaved like them or not in previous task. When asked to allocate points to the other boys, which would be exchanged for money, Tajfel found that more points were awarded to ingroup members than outgroup. The boys were even willing to reduce the amount of points when able to maximise the difference between the in/outgroup.
Logical chain 1
T
Therefore…this study demonstrates how social categorisation is sufficient to trigger ingroup favouritism and discrimination against an outgroup.
Logical chain 1
(C) p
However, a competing theory of prejudice is…the realistic conflict theory.
Logical chain 1
(C) e
Sherif’s Realistic Conflict Theory (1966) claims that prejudice is produced by competition and happens when there’s a scarcity of resources like food, money, jobs or status. Whereas SIT claims that prejudice is instinctive, and is as soon as you categorise yourself as belonging to an ingroup (social categorisation) and notice other people belonging to an outgroup (social comparison). In Sherif’s cave study experiment, researchers created intergroup competition in the form of a sporting tournament but only one group could win and there are prizes for the winners only. This situation of negative interdependence had an outcome of an escalation of violence and increased prejudice.
Logical chain 1
(C) t
This suggests…that competition leads to intergroup hostility & prejudice, unlike what SIT suggests.
Logical chain 2
P
Social identity theory has good application in helping to reduce prejudice through efforts to increase self-esteem.
Logical chain 2
E
For example…Fein & Spencer gave students a sense of high/low self-esteem, using false feedback from an intelligence test. Students with lower self-esteem later rated Jewish applicants for a job less favourably than an Italian candidate but this was not true for those with high self-esteem.
Logical chain 2
T
This is useful because…it suggests that prejudice in society can be decreased by implementing policies that target low self-esteem, which can be used it everyday life.
Logical chain 2
(C) p
However, a weakness of SIT is… that research evidence suggests that may only explain into group behaviour in western societies.
Logical chain 2
(C) e
for example, Margaret Wetherell . Conducted a replication of Tashas experiment using eight year old school for children in New Zealand and she found that indigenous Polynesian children were significantly more generous in the allocation of points to our group members then their white New Zealand classmates.
Logical chain 2
(C) t
Therefore… this suggests that the social identity theory may be ethnocentric because it fails to predict the behaviour of people from more collectivist backgrounds as well as not being able to be applied to people who belong to minority groups.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the idea that prejudice stems from social identity and levels of self-esteem, is useful in explaining group processes such as in/out group behaviour. The social learning theory also offers useful implications for reducing prejudice, and example of this being by increasing self-esteem. But, support for SIT is undermined by the fact that the minimal group experiments have low mundane realism.
