Social Identity Theory - Tajfel and Turner 1979 Flashcards
What is prejudice?
An attitude (usually negative)
What is discrimination?
An action that occurs because of prejudice
What is stereotyping?
Developing an idea about someone and carrying that idea forward to apply it to similar people.
What are stereotypes?
Common traits attributed to a large human group, and the idea comes from something read or heard rather than firsthand experience.
What does social identity theory claim?
That prejudice is a natural outcome of social grouping and is inevitable.
Competition is unnecessary, simply membership of a group.
How we feel about ourselves and our self-esteem depends upon how we feel about the groups we belong to.
To boost our self-esteem we automatically improve the status of our group - usually at the expense of another group.
What is social categorisation?
Seeing oneself as part of a group; this group is referred to as the in group.
What is social identification?
The process of taking on the norms and attitudes of the group members.
What is social comparison?
Occurs with the out-group when people start to see their in-group as better than the out-group; this involves comparison between the two. This boosts the self-esteem of the group members and causes prejudice to arise.
What is in group favouritism?
Belonging to a group creates in-group self-categorization, which leads to in-group favouritism and hostility towards the outgroup. To enhance self-esteem, people perceive their in groups as better.
What is in group favourtism affected by?
The extent to which the individuals identify with the in-group.
The extent to which there are grounds for making comparisons with the out-group.
The relevance of the comparison group in relation to the in-group.
What are the strengths/supporting evidence of social identity theory?
Tajfel’s minimal group studies
Reicher (1984) - real life cases of prejudice
Gaertner (1993) - useful applications
What are the weakness/refuting evidence of social identity theory?
Reductionist
Not all prejudice may be explained through social identify theory (Sherif)
Cannot explain social constraints
Why is Tajfel’s minimal group studies supporting evidence of social identity theory?
Tajfel’s found that schoolboys would favour members of their in-group when allocating points using matrices
They would also discriminators against members of the out-group demonstrating prejudice had arisen
Why is Reicher supporting evidence of social identity theory?
Reicher explained riots on Bristol using social identify theory
The police became the out-group for the local residents who joined together after a raid was carried out on the Black and White Cafe
Residents wanted to prove they were superior to police (social comparison)
Why is Gaertner supporting evidence of social identity theory?
Gaertner proposed the common in-group identity model which involves creating a new group which would include everyone
This produced a reduction in inter-racial tension
