Self concept and social identity

Question 1

What is the work of Lewis Terman (1877-1956)

Answer 1

Adapted the Binet-Simon test to California, 40 new items

Test used 1000 children (4-14) to create norm

Question 2

What is a bell curve (normal distribution)

Answer 2

68% of normative sample sits in the center
95% one standard deviation from the center
99,7% 2 standard deviations from the center

Question 3

What is Self

Answer 3

The person, including mental processes, body and personality characteristics

Question 4

What are the two representations of one’s identity?

Answer 4

Personal identity 
Social identity (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)

Question 5

Personal identity

Answer 5

Person’s concept of themselves; a schema that guides the way we think about and remember info about relevant to ourselves
Has three components

Question 6

Three components of personal identity

Answer 6

Affective: how we feel (self-esteem)
Behavioural: how you act according to abilities
Cognitive: how we reason with ourselves

Question 7

What is social identity?

Answer 7

Part of self-derived from membership in a social group

Question 8

What is Henry Tajfel’s 1974 Social Identity theory?

Answer 8

Theory of group membership and intergroup relations based on self categorization, comparison, and construction of shared self definitions in terms of ingroup-defining properties

Question 9

Social identity theory - Groups

Answer 9

Groups give sense of pride and self esteem (social identity)

Enhance self image by enhancing status of ingroup and discrimination of outgroups

Question 10

What was Henry Tajfel central hypothesis?

Answer 10

Group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of outgroups to enhance self-image

Question 11

What is ingroup bias?

Answer 11

Behaviour that favors one’s group over other groups

Question 12

What is intergroup difference?

Answer 12

Behaviour that emphasizes difference between our group and other groups

Question 13

What are the three mental processes of social identity? - (Tajfel and Turner, 1979)

Answer 13

Social categorisation
Social identification
Social comparison

Question 14

What is social categorization?

Answer 14

Categorise to understand social enviroment

Categorise ourselves to understand where we “fit”

Question 15

What is social identification?

Answer 15

We adopt identity of group we belong to

Emotional and self esteem ties to group

Question 16

What is social categorisation?

Answer 16

Once we have categorized we start to compare to other groups
Us vs Them
Maintain self-esteem - we must be seen as better than other groups
Prejudice: stems from thinking other groups are rivals and we are forced to compete with them