social identity theory

Question 1

who first developed social identity theory?

Answer 1

Henri Tajfel (1919-1982) and his student John Turner.

Question 2

what are an individual identity and social identity?

Answer 2

A person’s identity is the way a person understands or perceives him/her-self to be. sometimes a person think of him/her-self as an individual with particular individual traits, characteristics, feelings, and thoughts. he/she then has an individual identity.
social identity theory suggests that people have both individual and social identities. sometimes a person thinks of him/her-self as a member of a group or a category. he/she then has a social identity. since we belong to many different groups and categories we have many different social identities.

Question 3

interrelated concepts of the social identity theory

Answer 3

• social categorization (people have an inbuilt tendency to categorize. We tend to think in in-groups and out-groups.)
• social identity
• self-esteem
• social comparison (we tend to compare ourselves to others)
• positive distinctiveness
• ingroup favouritism/ outgroup discrimination

Question 4

what is realistic conflict theory?

Answer 4

the view that direct competition for valuable but limited resources breeds hostility between groups is called realistic conflict theory (Levibe and Campbell, 1982).
limited resources and competition will always provoke prejudices (negative stereotypes) and hostility between groups. this pattern is known as ethnocentrism.

Question 5

study 1

Answer 5

Perdue et al. 1990 Us and Them: Social Categorization and the Process of Intergroup Bias.

hypothesis: nonsense syllables associated with in-group pronouns will be positively evaluated and nonsense syllables associated with out-group pronouns will be negatively evaluated.
pps: 23 undergraduate psychology students
procedure: 108 trials of apparently randomly paired letter strings on a computer screen. each pair of letter strings consisted of a nonsense syllable (xeh, yof, laj, giw, wuh, or qug) presented with either one of the in-group pronouns (us,we, or ours) one of the out-group pronouns (them, they, or theirs), or, on the control trials, one of the eight other pronouns (he,she,his,her,me,you,mine, or yours). pps were asked to say which word of the presented pair was a real word. then they were asked to rate each of the six nonsense syllables on a scale with endpoint of pleasant an unpleasant (+1 or 0)
results: syllables that had been associated with in-group pronouns were rated clearly above average and syllables that had been associated with out-group pronouns were rated clearly below average.

Question 6

study 2

Answer 6

Fein and Spencer et al. 1997 Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others.

aim: to investigate if self-image threat would exacerbate the effects of stereotyping or prejudice on individual’s evaluation of a member of a stereotyped group.
pps: 126 introductory psychology students
procedure: pps were told that they were participating in 2 experiments: an intelligence test and social interaction. pps were first given an intelligence test, and were given bogus positive (93%) or negative (47%) feedback. this feedback aimed to temporarily threaten their self-esteem. they then took part in what was supposedly a second experiment in which they evaluated a job applicant. all pps received a photo of a young woman, her resume, and a videotape of a job interview. half of the pps were given info that suggested that the woman (named Julie Goldberg) was Jewish. the other was given info that suggested that the woman (named Maria D’Agostino) was not Jewish. on the campus where study was held, there was a popular negative stereotype of the Jewish Americsn Princess that often targeted upper-middle-class Jewish women from the NY area. after rating the target, self-esteem was measured again.
results: 1)among pps whose self-esteem had been lowered, they rated the woman more negatively if she seemed to be Jewish. 2) pps who had received negative feedback and were given an opportunity to belittle the Jewish woman later exhibited a post-experiment increase in self-esteem- the more negatively they evaluated the Jewish woman, the better these pps felt about themselves.