Tajfel and Turner's social identity theory (pack 2 prejudice) Flashcards

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1
Q

What does social identity theory look into?

A

group membership

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2
Q

What does Tajfel suggest about prejudice that conflicts with Sherif?

A

being in a group is enough to cause conflict, don’t have to be in direct competition, we discriminate people just because they are in a different group to us

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3
Q

what are in-groups and out-groups

A

a group we have membership to and a group we do not…we favour our own group

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4
Q

what is our personal identity

A

our personality, unique qualities and self-esteem

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5
Q

what is social identity

A

formed through membership to our social groups

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6
Q

what does social identity affect

A

personal identity as they are identify

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7
Q

what does group membership affect?

A

self-esteem

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8
Q

how do people enhance their self-esteem?

A

perceive their in-groups as better and hostility towards out-groups

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9
Q

what three processes does SIT suggest is involved in becoming prejudice and what do they mean?

A
  1. Social categorisation- we categorise ourselves and others as part of particular social groups
  2. Social identification- people take on the norms and values of the group that they have categorised themselves in
  3. Social comparison- self-esteem comes bound up with group membership, if our self-esteem is to be maintained, our group needs to compare well against others
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10
Q

What is in-group favouritism and negative out-group bias?

A
  1. tendency to favour and see the individuals as unique
  2. view members as all the same and unfavourable
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11
Q

so why is there hostility between groups

A

competing identities

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12
Q

what piece of research supported SIT and what did they find?

A

Lalonde (1992)

studied a hockey team not doing well, members knew other team were doing better so they claimed they were playing dirtier, thus they claimed moral superiority. Re- looked at match and found they were not playing dirty so he found in-group bias

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13
Q

what are three variables that contribute to in-group favouritism?

A

i) extent to which the individuals identify with the in-group
ii) the extent to which there are grounds for making comparison with the out-group
iii) relevance of the comparison group in relation to the in-group

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14
Q

What two features of prejudice did Tajfel note?

A
  1. Attitudes of discrimination towards an out-group
  2. Discriminatory behaviour towards an out-group
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15
Q

What experiments did Tajfel do to test his theory?

A

minimal-group experiment
to test whether just being part of a group was enough to cause prejudice against another group, without competition

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16
Q

in a minimal group, group members are:

A
  1. Randomly and arbitrarily created
  2. there is no contact between group members
  3. membership of group is anonymised
  4. the tokens used as a form of currency to allocate rewards
  5. punishments have no intrinsic value
17
Q

why did Tajfel do minimal groups

A

ensure there was no competition

18
Q

What piece of research conducted an investigation into equal status contact that supported SIT?

A

Deutsch and Collins
studied desegregated housing project n NYC- predicted a reduction in negative out-group bias
found hat housewives regularly mixed when doing laundry, held each other in higher regard than segregated housing that found each other as inferior

19
Q

What was some of the procedure for Tajfels minimal group experiment

A

64 Bristol school boys, whom they assigned to meaningless groups
asked to allocate points to boys in their own group or another group and used a matrix to do this

20
Q

what was some of the results from tajfels minimal group experiment?

A

found that boys tended to allocate more points to people in their own group, even though they didn’t know who was in-group and who was out-group
evidence for in-group favouritism

they would try to maximise the difference even if it meant the in-group overall got less points- shows discrimination for out-group

21
Q

two weaknesses of Tajfel’s study?

A

low ecological validity- lacks mundane realism
May be see to only reflect the norms in some societies
lacks generalisability

22
Q

two strengths of Tajfel’s study?

A

received cross-cultural confirmation
well controlled lab experiment, so high in internal validity
reliability is high- standardised procedures

23
Q

What are three researchers that support social identity theory?

A
  1. Lemyre and Smith- replicated Tajfel, found that discriminating group ppt had higher self esteem after the study
  2. Cialdini- found that an individuals personal identity is affected by their association to with a football team
  3. Jane Elliot- showed that social categorisation, where students were divided into blue eyes and brown eyes could lead to prejudice and discrimination
24
Q

what are two strengths of SIT?

A

The study was well controlled with an IV and a DV which means that cause and effect can be inferred

useful as it can explain issues such as conflict between football teams and religious groups

25
Q

What are 3 weaknesses of SIT?

A
  1. theory might not apply cross-culturally as WEATHERALL found that new Zealand Polynesians were more likely to favour the out-group, emphasise collectivist cultures…un generalisable
  2. This was a lab experiment so this may mean demand characteristics
  3. SIT criticised for lack of completeness and only focuses on groups and no other factors
26
Q

How would SIT suggest prejudice can be reduced?

A

encouraging people to see themselves as a larger social identity can combat out-group discrimination