Social identity theory
[6][12][13] Social identity theory suggests that an organization can change individual behaviours if it can modify their self-identity or part of their self-concept that derives from the knowledge of, and emotional attachment to the group.
[4] The term 'social identity theory' achieved academic purchase only in the late 1970s, but the basic underlying concepts associated with it had emerged by the early twentieth century.
William G. Sumner, writing in 1906, captures the primary dynamics in this excerpt from his influential work Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals: By the late 1920s the collectivist perspective had all but disappeared from mainstream social psychology.
[4][17] The cognitive nature of personal vs. social identities, and the relationship between them, is more fully developed in self-categorization theory.
[6][12][19] A key assumption in social identity theory is that individuals are intrinsically motivated to achieve positive distinctiveness.
[6][19][21][22] Both the interpersonal-intergroup continuum and the assumption of positive distinctiveness motivation arose as outcomes of the findings of minimal group studies.
[3] In particular, it was found that under certain conditions individuals would endorse resource distributions that would maximize the positive distinctiveness of an in-group in contrast to an out-group at the expense of personal self-interest.
[citation needed] Building on the above components, social identity theory details a variety of strategies that may be invoked in order to achieve positive distinctiveness.
[31] This theory holds that political elites are individually rational, and they use identity instrumentally to cultivate minimum winning constituencies (e.g., via the "microtargeting" of ads).
An example of microtargeting is Russian use of social media advertising alleged to have influenced the United States 2016 presidential election.
basketball and hockey fans, for example, turned down a free, real chance to earn $5 if their team lost its upcoming game.
Some researchers, including Michael Hogg and Dominic Abrams, thus propose a fairly direct relationship between positive social identity and self-esteem.
Along those lines, John Turner and Penny Oakes argue against an interpretation of positive distinctiveness as a straightforward need for self-esteem or "quasi-biological drive toward prejudice".
[6][19][34] In what has been dubbed the Positive-Negative Asymmetry Phenomenon, researchers have shown that punishing the out-group benefits self-esteem less than rewarding the in-group.
[46] Elsewhere it has been suggested that this apparent inconsistency may be resolved by attending to social identity theory's emphasis on the importance of the perceived stability and legitimacy of the intergroup status hierarchy.
[26][15][53] That is, while the relationship between independent variables and the resulting intergroup behaviour may be consistent with the theory in retrospect, that particular outcome is often not that which was predicted at the outset.
[55][56][57][58][59] This is because social identity theory was proposed as a way of explaining the ubiquity of ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm.
[6][12][19][34][61][62][63] For example, Alex Haslam states that "although vulgarized versions of social identity theory argue that 'social identification leads automatically to discrimination and bias', in fact…discrimination and conflict are anticipated only in a limited set of circumstances".
[62] This raises the problem of whether social identity theory really does explain the ubiquity of ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm without making recourse to "the generic norm hypothesis" originally proposed by Tajfel but later abandoned.
