Institute of Social Psychology, LSE, Flagship lecture series, 2010-11
Identities, representations and prejudice
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY: A
BRIEF INTRODUCTION
Prof Catherine Campbell
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Learning outcomes
• Describe social identity theory with reference to
Tajfel and Turner
• Discuss the roots of SIT in the minimal group
experiments
• Outline the cognitive and motivational processes
underlying identity formation
• Critically evaluate how far the theory addresses
stigma and prejudice
• Identify the role of representations in the
construction of social identities and prejudice.
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ORGS focus
• How do people behave in groups?
• e.g. resistance to change in mergers of
commercial organisations
Haslam, A. (2001) Psychology in organisations: The Social Identity Approach.
London: Sage. (especially chapter 2).
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HCD focus
Positive experiences of participation enable people
to ‘revise’ negative social identities and build
more empowered views of themselves and their
communities
Ideally, this new sense of self as social agents
enable people to resist / challenge negative
social relations that place health and well-being
at risk and to fight for social change
Campbell, C and Jovchelovitch, S (2000) Health, Community and
Development: Towards a Social Psychology of Participation. Journal
of Community and Applied Social Psychology. 10. 255-270
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COMMs focus
• Media
• Education
• Psycho-therapy
Campbell and Scott chapter in The Social Psychology of Communication,
edited by Hook et al (2010)
Campbell and Scott chapter in Global Health Communication, edited by
Waisbord et al (2011)
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1. INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS
2 sub-systems of identity
• personal
• social
SI constructed via in-group/out-group
comparisons – SIT seeks to explain intergroup relations
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2. DEFINITIONS OF SOCIAL
IDENTITY
• “the individual’s knowledge that he (sic) belongs to
certain social groups, together with some emotional
and value significance to him of the group
membership” (Tajfel, 1972, p. 31)
• The SELF consists of a loose association of group
memberships. Different groups become SALIENT
(“switched on”) in different social situations.
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3. HISTORY OF
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
Realistic conflict theory (M & C Sherif)
• Inter-group conflict caused by
incompatible goals or competition over
scarce resources.
• Inter-group harmony results from
superordinate goals or cooperative
activities between groups.
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The mere fact of categorisation is enough to
cause ingroup bias.
Minimal Group Experiments
People assigned to groups on the basis of
very minimal identifications (e.g. Klee vs
Kandinsky) – persistently discriminated in
favour of the in-group
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4. PROCESSES UNDERLYING
IDENTITY FORMATION
COGNITIVE PROCESSES
• Categorisation – simplifies perception (cognitive miser
view)
• Social comparison – ingroups vs outgroups
MOTIVATIONAL PROCESSES
• Self-esteem/ self-enhancement
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5. SOCIAL IDENTITY AND SOCIAL
STRUCTURE
What strategies do members of devalued
social groups use to achieve self-esteem?
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Strategies
• Individual mobility
• Social competition
– Cognitive alternatives
– Illegitimate
– Unstable
• Social creativity
• Changing the comparison out-group
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6. SELF-CATEGORISATION THEORY
Turner et al. (1987) Rediscovering the social group.
Focus on cognitive processes
Talks about self-categorisations rather than group
memberships.
• Different self-categorisations become SALIENT
(“switched on”) in different social situations.
• How do we decide which categorisation to
switch on in which situation?
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•
The cognitive system is engaged in a
continual SEARCH FOR COHERENCE
•
FIT X ACCESSIBILITY
–
Accessibility: the readiness of a given category to
become activated (switched on) on the basis of past
experience of similar situations
–
Fit: the degree to which reality actually matches the
criteria which define the self-categorisation.
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Debate
How far does SIT address stigma and
prejudice?
What, if anything, needs to be ‘added’ to the
theory to expand its explanatory power?
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7. BILLIG’S CRITIQUE OF SIT’S
LIMITED VIEW OF COGNITION
- implies that racism is a necessary evil
- has limited account of the cognitive processes
underlying identity formation
Billig, M (1985). Prejudice, categorisation and particularisation: From a
perceptual to a rhetorical approach. European Journal of Social
Psychology, 15, 79-103.
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Billig criticises Tajfel’s account of categorisation:
• Tajfel “assumes the inevitability of prejudice,
while ignoring the phenomenon of tolerance”
• his model of human cognition “emphasises
categorisation, ignoring the equally important
cognitive process of particularisation”
• his approach ignores the role of social context in
shaping the categorisation process
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8. ‘REDUCTIONIST’ CRITIQUES OF
SOCIAL IDENTITY
SIT CAN explain that we tend to discriminate between
one social grouping and another
SIT CANNOT explain the criteria we use for
distinguishing groups (e.g. skin colour)
SIT CANNOT explain the meaning we give to these
distinctions
Foster, D (1991) Social Psychology in South Africa. Johannesburg:
Lexicon
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• SIT/SCT is ‘reductionist’ through its neglect of
social context
• For Foster, the categorisation of people into
different social groupings (e.g. black and white)
represents and INTERPRETATION of the world
rather than a DESCRIPTION of it.
• This process of interpretation is heavily
influenced by
– social context and
– power relations
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Reicher, S. (2004) The Context of Social Identity: Domination,
Resistance and Change. Political Psychology, 25(6)
• Reicher says its unfair to describe
SIT/SCT as ‘reductionist’
• If we ‘marry’ SIT/SCT with a theory of
society and power, it becomes a powerful
tool for understanding power relations and
the possibility of social change
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Duveen, G. (2001) Representations, Identities and resistance. In Deaux, K. and
Philogene, G. Representations of the Social. Oxford: Blackwells.
Social representations Theory:
-human beings collectively negotiate the contents of their social identities
through interaction in everyday contexts (Moscovici, Howarth,
Jovchelovitch)
-Social representations form the symbolic fields within which we construct our
social identities
-They are constructed in the constant process of communication between
people on a day to day basis
-Look at the processes through which we draw on social representations (of
blackness, whiteness etc) in constructing our social identities
-And look at the social circumstances and the power relations which perpetuate
the views and interests of certain social groups over those of others (rich vs
poor, men vs women, adults vs youth or elderly, white vs black)
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Howarth, C. (2002) Identity in Whose Eyes? The Role of Representations in
Identity Construction. Journal of the Theory of Social Behaviour. 32:2.
Howarth, C. (2002) ‘So, you’re from Brixton?’ The Struggle for Recognition and
Esteem in a Multicultural Community. (2002) Ethnicities 2:2
How far does the theory address stigma and
prejudice?
SIT explains the cognitive processes through
which stigma and prejudice are constructed, but
it needs to be combined with SRT to understand
the content and direction of stigma and prejudice
– Which groups are stigmatised?
– What are the social conditions within which prejudiced
representations are constructed?
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Social representations theory provides an
excellent ‘companion’ to SIT/SCT – to
complement its focus on cognitive
processes with attention to:
– the socially constructed representations that
shape the content of social identities; and
– the social processes through which social
representations are constructed, internalised
and/or resisted in particular social settings
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Advantages:
POWER: Its focus on the individual-society interface
(compared to SIT’s individual focus)
PROCESS: Its emphasis on the fact that social
representations are constantly constructed and
reconstructed as human beings collectively participate in
the ever-changing nature of society and culture
RESISTANCE: Opens up the possibility of understanding
resistance by stigmatised groups, sees them as capable
of empowerment and not just victims of their social
settings
*Howarth, C. (2006). Race as stigma: Positioning the stigmatised as agents,
not objects. In Campbell, C. & Deacon, H. (Guest editors). (2006). Stigma.
Special edition of Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 16.
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