Social Identity Theory Flashcards
What is a prejudice?
A pre- judgement
What are the 3 components of prejudice?
A for affect as it is experienced as an emotion
B for the resulting behaviour, which is discrimination
C for cognitive because prejudice is a biased belief held about an individual or group prior to direct experience of that person/ people.
Such attitudes are often based on stereotypes and/ or group characteristics. Individual attributes are ignored
What is Social Identity theory?
The view that your behaviour is motivated by you social identity. A person’s self image has 2 components: personal identity and social identity. Personal identity is based on your characteristics and achievements. Social Identity is determined by the various groups of people to which you belong, your “ingroups”.
What are the 3 identities linked to social group to which we belong?
- Social categorisation
- Social Identification
- Social comparison
What is social categorisation?
Refers to the separation of individuals into one of these groups: “like me” and “us” (ingroup) or “not like me” and “them” (outgroup)
What does the mere existence of an outgroup cause according to Tajfel and Turner?
prejudice
What does social identification inolve?
Involves the individual adopting the beliefs, values and attitudes of the groups to which they see themselves belonging. They will also alter their behaviour to fit with the norms of the groups. Identification includes a shift in a person’s thinking and involves a change to his or her self concept as a new social identity is formed
What is social comparison?
An individual may boost their self esteem though making comparisons between the ingroup and outgroup.
What is the minimal experiment?
Tajfel worked with 15 years old Bristol school boys. Ingroups and outgroups were created by telling each boy which other boys had behaved like them or not like them in a previous task. Later the boys were asked to allocate points to the other boys and wer told these points would be exchanged for cash. Tajfel found that more points were awarded to ingroup member than outgroup members. Boys even opted to maximise the difference points awarded to the ingroup compared to the outgroup, even if this reduced the total final sum awarded to the ingroup
Wetherell conducted a replication of Tajfels experiment in New Zealand and discovered what?
Found they were more generous in their allocation of points.
Suggests that SIT may be ethnocentric
