prejudice: social identity theory Flashcards
(16 cards)
what does SIT suggest brings about prejudice?
the presence of another group
define ‘social identity’
A person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership.
Give 3 examples of social groups.
- social class
- gender
- ethnicity.
Football team.
What did Tajfel (1979) propose causes stereotyping?
tendency to group things together
Define ‘in-group’.
the group we belong to
define ‘out group’
a group different to our own
What mentality leads to in and out groups?
us and them
How do in-groups enhance their self-esteem?
By seeking negative aspects of the out-groups.
Tajfel proposed that there are 3 cognitive processes involved in evaluating others as “us” and “them”, what are they?
social categorisation
social identification
social comparison
describe social categorisation
- We categorise humans in order to understand them and the social environment
- Seeing yourself as part of a group due to shared traits and interests
- We define appropriate behaviour by referencing the norms of groups we belong to
describe social identification
- We adopt the identity of the group we belong to through their norms and values by changing behaviour and appearance
- Your self-esteem will become bound with the group membership
describe social comparison
- Viewing your in-group and superior and using group identity to compare yourself with outgroups
- We find negative things about other groups to compare to maintain our self-esteem
- This can lead to prejudice and discrimination of out-groups
strength PEE and CA
- supporting evidence
a strength of the study is supporting evidence from Tajfel’s minimal groups study. they Found that minimal groups of boys (based on things such as preference for a painting) when asked to award points to boys either on their team or the others, consistently allocated more points to boys they saw as being on their own team. therefore, this demonstrates that we have in-group favouritism. Sherif also supports, he found that during the bean collecting task where the boys had to estimate how many beans their in group and the out group had collected, that the in group consistently over estimated their own group and underestimated the out group, showing how social comparison can be used to maintain high self esteem.
however, the study lacks generalisability. this is because the sample was only made up of 14-15 year old boys from Bristol. therefore this cannot be generalised to groups of people who aren’t at school or are ages such as 40+ from different cultures
weakness PEE
- opposing evidence
- wetherall
a weakness of the study is rejecting evidence from Wetherall. she Found that Polynesian children were more generous to the out-group in comparison of attitudes with white children. This demonstrates there are cultural differences as some emphasise cooperation
application
there is positive applications as it highlights how social identity is a perception not a fact, and so therefore we can tackle issues such as discrimination by getting people to expand their sense of identity to reduce social comparison and keep self esteem high.
Strength- credibility.
This theory can explain prejudice better than RCT theory can as it explains why in the first stage of sherifs study the boys began to become prejudiced towards the other group when they were first told about them- as the presence of another group had caused hostility. Social comparison was also seen when the rattlers became derogatory towards the eagles in stage one- to increase their self esteem, showing how this is a better explanation than the over simplified explanation of RCT.
