Social Identity Theory & Group Behaviour (DP IB Psychology): Revision Note

Social identity theory & group behaviour

• Social identity theory (SIT) refers to the identity an individual forms of themselves based on their group memberships

• An individual’s social identity is a combination of the various different ingroups to which they belong

  • E.g., family, college, psychology class, rugby team etc.

• An individual may choose their ingroups but there are many ingroups over which an individual has no control

  • E.g., nationality, given sex at birth, ethnicity, age group

• Groups to which an individual does not belong are known as outgroups

• Negative attitudes towards outgroups can lead to prejudice and discrimination

Social categorisation

• Social categorisation is the process by which people arrange others into groups according to specific group characteristics

  • E.g., . Millennials, Boomers, Americans, Italians, punks, hippies, etc.

  • Social categorisation can be a starting point by which stereotypes form

• Social categorisation occurs as an easy way of understanding others, as it requires little cognitive energy

• Social comparison is the process by which an individual or group compares themselves either favourably (downward comparison) or unfavourably (upward comparison) to other groups

  • E.g., downward comparison would be a businessperson looking down on someone who is unemployed

  • Upward comparison would be a businessperson looking up to someone who is a highly successful entrepreneur billionaire

SIT & ingroup preference

• Homogeneity of the outgroup and positive distinctiveness of the ingroup (also known as ingroup favouritism) are processes by which:

  • the ingroup appears as a collection of distinct, varied individuals

  • the outgroup is viewed as a ‘mass’ of identical, indistinct members with no individuality

• Favouring the ingroup can mean that the outgroup is easier to dismiss and, more worryingly, to demonise

  • E.g., Jewish people in pre-war Germany were reduced to a set of unpleasant, negative characteristics by anti-semitic propaganda to the extent that they simply became ‘them’ as opposed to ‘us’ (i.e., the German people)

Research support for SIT & group behaviour

Tajfel (1972)

Aim:

• To investigate social identity theory in terms of preference for the ingroup via the minimal groups paradigm

Participants:

• 48 males aged 14-15 from the same state school in Bristol, UK

Procedure:

• The boys were randomly allocated to three groups, each consisting of 16 members

• They were shown slides of paintings by Klee and Kandinsky and asked to state their preference

• They were then told that their group assignment was based on this preference, but in reality, this was not the case — the groups were minimal groups created artificially

• The boys were not told who else was in their group, and there was no face-to-face contact with other members

• Each boy was shown individually to a cubicle and asked to assign virtual money to other participants, either to their ingroup (same artist preference) or outgroup (other artist preference)

• They only knew participants by a code number indicating group membership (ingroup or outgroup), not by identity

• The trials were randomised and tested different allocation strategies, including:

  • maximum joint profit (benefiting both groups)

  • maximum ingroup profit (benefiting their own group)

  • maximum difference (favouring their ingroup while disadvantaging the outgroup)

Results:

• The boys tended to favour the ingroup members, choosing to go for a higher reward and to penalise the outgroup

  • They went for the choice which maximised the biggest profit/loss difference between the ingroup and the outgroup, often at the expense of possible maximum joint profit

• This was based solely on the idea of the other group rather than on any actual interaction between ingroup and outgroup members, even when the difference between the groups was minimal

  • Group membership was not based on any shared group characteristics but on the (illusion) that the other boys in the group also preferred the same artist

Conclusion:

• Ingroup favouritism can be manipulated via the minimal groups paradigm

• People use social categorisation to make decisions; i.e., simply knowing that another (rival) group exists is enough to suggest the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’

Evaluation of SIT & group behaviour

Strengths

• SIT provides a clear framework for understanding how people categorise themselves and others into groups

  • This could help to inform interventions to tackle racism, bullying and other forms anti-social behaviours based on group membership

• The boys in the above study did not meet or see the ingroup/outgroup members

  • This increases validity as it eliminates possible sources of bias from the decision as to how to award money

    • E.g., physical appearance and personality factors cannot have influenced the decisions made in the task

Limitations

• SIT over-emphasises the influence of group membership

  • People have agency over their actions; they are not solely at the mercy of group pressure

• There was no jeopardy involved in Tajfel's task

  • Assigning virtual money to faceless strangers does not reflect real-life situations; therefore, the study lacks ecological validity

Link to concepts

Causality

• SIT is based on the idea that people sort others into categories according to a range of usually superficial criteria: age, gender, and employment, for example

  • While this is at least anecdotally apparent, it is an unformed and vague theory, making it difficult to test and to measure

  • People are complex and may view others via the prisms of personal and social identity, rather than adopting the rather mechanistic approach of labelling and categorising others as if they were jars of jam!

Bias

• The boys in Tajfel's study might have succumbed to participant expectations, which is a form of bias

  • They might have thought that a particular response was being sought by the researchers (i.e., rewarding the ingroup over the outgroup)

  • It is possible that the study was set up in a way that made the schoolboys conclude that they were supposed to show preference for their Klee/Kandinsky ingroup and so they behaved accordingly

  • Children in this age group are used to being guided to the ‘right’ response by adults, so perhaps the boys were influenced thus rather than being influenced by the mechanisms of SIT