Tajfel and Turner (1979): Social Identity Theory:

Question 1

What is a person’s Social identity?

Answer 1

It’s their own sense of who they are based on the groups they feel they belong to and identify with.

Question 2

What does SIT suggest occurs with the creation of groups?

Answer 2

Groups create a sense of belonging and belonging to an in-group will cause conflict between groups which can lead to prejudice.

Question 3

What is Social Categorisation?

Answer 3

Where we decide which group we belong to and this helps us understand the social environment. We divide into “us” and “them”.

Question 4

What is Social Identification?

Answer 4

We adopt the identity of the group we have categorised ourselves as belonging to conform to the norms of the group. This helps us create a sense of belonging.

Question 5

What is Social Comparison?

Answer 5

We enhance the in-group status by exaggerating their positive qualities making the in-group superior. We also show in-group favouritism.

Question 6

Supporting Evidence: Levine:

Answer 6

I: Found that football fans are more likely to help an injured stranger who tripped in front of them when wearing colours of the team shirt they supported (in-group) as opposed to neutral or those of a rival team shirt (out-group).
J: This suggests that groups show favouritism to their ingroup as opposed to the outgroup when helping.

Question 7

Supporting Evidence: Jane Elliot:

Answer 7

I: Jane Elliot found that categorising school children into groups based on eye colour was enough to cause conflict, as the dominant group attacked (verbally & physically) the submissive group and school performance dropped for the submissive group.
J: This suggests that groups show favouritism to their ingroup as opposed to the outgroup when helping.

Question 8

Critical Evidence: Sherif:

Answer 8

I: Found that creating competition between the Rattlers and Eagles such as tug of war, was enough to cause prejudice such as name calling.
J: This suggests that competition is needed for prejudice to arise, rather than just belonging to a group.

Question 9

Critical Evidence: Adorno et al:

Answer 9

I: Found that those with an authoritarian personality were more likely to be hostile to people not in their group who are of an inferior status.
J: This suggests that social identity theory is not a full explanation of prejudice, as it only focuses on group membership and not on individuals’ personalities causing prejudice.

Question 10

Conclusion of SIT:

Answer 10

Useful: Overall, this theory is useful as it suggests that the separation of groups causes prejudice which means practical suggestions can be created to bring groups together to reduce prejudice in society such as setting superordinate goals.
Not Useful: However, this theory is less useful as groups will always naturally occur within society and so we cannot always remove prejudice as groups will always exist.