In 1989, Alberto Melucci published Nomads of the Present, which introduces his model of collective identity based on studies of the social movements of the 1980s.
He considers collective identity as a process that is negotiated over time with three parts: cognitive definition, active relationship, and emotional investments.
[3][4][need quotation to verify] Social psychologists had interest in concepts of identity and individuality since its early days, tracing as far back as the work of George Mead.
Sue Widdicombe has demonstrated that people construct, accept, resist being cast as members of specific group through discourse.
People construct and present themselves as members of specific group to make sense of their suffering as well as their positions in regard to armed conflicts.
[10] Marxist concepts of class consciousness can be considered a root of one form of political collective identity.
Max Weber, in his book "Economy and Society", published posthumously in 1922, critiqued Marx's focus on production and instead suggests that class, status, and party form the three sources of collective identity.
[15][16] According to Jordania, human ability to follow the rhythm in big groups, to sing together in harmony, to dance for many hours and enter the ecstatic state, as well as the tradition of body painting, were all the parts of the first universal rituals.
These were primarily developed as the means to synchronize each individual group-member's neural activity (through the release of neuro-chemicals), in order to reach the state of collective identity, also known as transcendence.