Critically assess the contibution of social identity theory

Tom Minor

Kathy Rastle Critically assess the contribution of Social Identity Theory to the social psychology of intergroup conflict.

This essay is concerned with the contribution of Social Identity Theory (SIT) to the social psychology of one of the most widely recognised aspects in the intergroup domainconflict. In order to critically assess this contribution, there will be reference to some background work to put the theory into context and note will be made of the key concepts from a rival theory: Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT). Often when discussing social psychology there are many real-world examples to be used to support the hypotheses; this essay will endeavour to draw upon these as often as possible to illustrate some of the main concepts of SIT and RCT. The conclusion will consist of an evaluation of SIT and some suggestions for improvements to the theory.

In the time since Dollard’s (1939) Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis, some 60 years ago, there have been a number of developments in the field of intergroup relations.

Firstly, Samuel Stouffer in his study of The American Soldier (1949) reported that there was a perceived discrepancy between what one has and what one could or should have.

The perceived deprivation was considered relative rather than absolute as it was always in comparison with another reference point, either individually within a group (classed as Egoistic relative deprivation) or collectively between groups (Fraternalistic relative deprivation). In this theory the gap between attainments and expectations was thought to be the root of social discontent and was presumed to lead to negative intergroup reactions (Brown 1995). Relative Deprivation Theory extends to comparisons being made in

retrospect and also to expectations being made with foresight. The crucial idea of this theory, which is still popular today, is that the disparity between what ones group has and what one feels ones group should have leads to conflict between groups. The next theory to arise from work in intergroup phenomena was Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT), forwarded by Sherif in 1966. As this is a contemporary rival to SIT further description will be delayed until the context of social identity and Social Identity Theory has been explored.

The social identity perspective has its origins in the work of Hanri Tajfel, the British based Polish psychologist, on intergroup phenomena in the late 1960s and early 70s.

Social identity theorists believe that social psychological theories of group processes and intergroup relations like the Authoritarian Personality Theory (Adorno, 1950) are limited because they explain the phenomena by simply combining the effects of personality predispositions and interpersonal relations (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002). According to Gross (2001) the authoritarian personality is prejudiced by virtue of specific personality traits that predispose hostility towards ethnic, racial and other minorities. Social Identity Theory is essentially about the part of the self-concept that is derived from group membership-our social identity. Turner (1982) says we have as many social identities as groups we feel we belong to, presumably because each group has a separate set of norms and relevant outgroups which are used for social comparison. We categorize ourselves into large groups such as nations and small groups such as sports clubs and each of these groups provides members with descriptive and prescriptive information about who they are and the types of behaviour that are appropriate for them to engage in (Colman, 2001).

A key hypothesis of SIT is that achieving and maintaining a satisfactory identity requires group members to search for various positive distinctions between themselves and other groups and the outcome of these comparisons will indirectly influence an individual’s self-esteem. Where positive distinctiveness is not possible, alternative groups offer scope for greater positive self-esteem and intergroup mobility occurs (Tajfel & Turner, 1986).

Also, in 1986 Breakwell argued that attempts to raise the status of a devalued group is one coping mechanism to deal with a threatened social identity. According to Coleman (2001), SIT views prejudice as an adjustive mechanism that boosts the self-concept of the individual who feels personally inadequate and this is supported by the finding that group members feel better about themselves after engaging in discrimination (Lemyre & Smith, 1985; Oakes &Turner, 1980).

Initially SIT is based on four basic assumptions: the first is that interpersonal and group behaviour are separate phenomena; secondly, human cognition is designed to guide the way in which the social world is perceived in meaningful and socially adaptive ways; thirdly, there are structurally distinct social categories in society that stand in status and power relations with each other (equal or unequal) and the final assumption is that people have a need for positive self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1982; Hogg & Abrams, 1988). Hogg and Vaughan (2002) go on to list the three causal processes that operate in order to produce group behaviour as distinct from interpersonal behaviour.

Categorization is the first: perceptual simplification of the world of stimuli available to us. When we categorize things we can feel more certain about what is being perceived than if everything were viewed as unique. Social comparison is the next process and Brown (2000) highlights how SIT is an extension of Festinger’s (1954) Social

Comparison Theory where we assess our own group’s worth through comparison with other groups. It is our need for positive self-esteem that drives us to make social comparisons and thus leads to intergroup behaviour like discrimination. The final causality is social beliefs, the belief that we have a choice of different behavioural strategies when it comes to intergroup relations.

In 1971 Tajfel became well known for his findings from a study of British schoolboys in a ‘Minimal Group Paradigm’. The boys were randomly divided into two groups and individual identity was concealed through the use of code numbers. The boys had to distribute money to both members of their own group (ingroup), but not themselves, and the other group (outgroup) via the use of matrices that were carefully and perhaps transparently designed to tease out certain strategies for allocation. Results showed a strong ingroup bias by maximizing the point allocation for the ingroup and maximizing the difference between groups in favour of the ingroup. A large number of minimal group studies have been conducted and the findings are robust: merely being categorized as a group member is sufficient to encourage competitive intergroup behaviour and ethnocentrism (Tajfel, 1982; Brewer & Kramer, 1985; Bourhis et al., 1994; Diehl, 1990).

SIT would claim that because the identity of the group members is anonymous, the only source of identity is the assigned group: this lack of distinctiveness contributes little to a positive self-concept so there is pressure to distinguish the ingroup by differentially allocating points (Brown, 1995).

One of Social Identity Theory’s strongest rivals is Sherif’s (1966) Realistic Conflict Theory. Sherif believed that when there was competition over scarce resources, intergroup relations became marked by conflict and ethnocentrism, where the ingroup is

considered superior (Colman, 2001). The theory was developed from the findings of three field studies in America (1949/53/54). Boys, all of whom were strangers to each other, were screened for stability and non-deprivation, this was so that the results could not be attributed to any prior relationships or existing issues. The experiment was disguised as a summer camp and the boys were allowed to form friendships before they were purposefully split up into two separate camps, breaking the friendships. Even at this stage the experimenters discovered some embryonic ethnocentrism, with boys from different camps proposing that they were better at certain activities than the other camp.

When the camps were brought back together for some competitions, where there were prizes for the winners (what Sherif coined a mutually exclusive goal because what one group gained the other lost), hostility and fierce competitiveness arose which rapidly generalized to any situation; ethnocentric attitudes and behaviour got worse and so did levels of intergroup aggression and ingroup solidarity. Two of the three experiments were concluded at this point due to the consistent degeneration of any situation into one of intergroup hostility. In the third experiment, superordinate goals were introduced such as the shifting of a truck that was stuck in the woods that had a movie on board for the boys to watch. The truck couldn’t be moved by one camp alone so both camps had to work together to achieve their goal. In this case there was a gradual improvement of intergroup relations and decrease in hostility (Hogg & Vaughan, 2002). The IsraeliPalestinian situation is a real world case of where there is a real conflict over an area of land which both sides lay claim to sole historical, political and religious ownership and rights. This conflict of interest has led to a competitive orientation towards the rival group that has extended to prejudiced attitudes and overt hostility (Brown, 2000). SIT

does not however, account for how conflict exacerbates negative intergroup relationships as RCT does, but it does still seem a very useful contribution to understanding why conflict may arise in the first place, stemming from a human desire to have a positive self-concept.

Where SIT goes further than RCT is in dealing with the specific understanding of group response to status inequality. Tajfel and Turner (1986) discuss that when the boundaries between groups are relatively impermeable, when the status differences are somewhat unstable and when these differences are perceived as illegitimate and founded on unfair principles, challenges to the current social order can arise. The best example of this is the abolition of apartheid in South Africa by the African National Congress in the early 1990s. Here is a situation where a low-status group, in trying to achieve a positive distinction, conceive that their only alternative is to conflict directly with the dominant group’s superiority by agitating for social change.

What makes SIT so attractive, and indeed useful, is that it can make sense of a wide range of intergroup phenomena including conflict, in natural contexts even where the intergroup favouritism has no obvious rational or material basis. In cases where there is a real conflict, RCT seems better at accounting for the ebb and flow of prejudice over time or across different social contexts, attributing conflict to economic and political change between groups (Brown, 1995). This certainly seems the case in the apartheid example when one considers the economic and political state of affairs in Africa at the time. It seems a theory combining SIT and RCT would be one way forward as Brown (2000) has suggested that the psychological processes specified by SIT are only applicable to discrimination and favouritism in the positive domain. SIT lacks the dimension that RCT

has when comparisons are being made across time and as conflict often arises from social history this seems to be a major flaw. There are many ways in which SIT could be improved in order to predict more accurately strategic group choices for achieving positive distinctiveness but more research is the only way forward for this. Overall SIT has widened the scope for understanding intergroup conflict immensely since the days of Dollard and the contribution has been facilitated by the theory’s flexibility and adhesiveness to existing theories such as Relative Deprivation Theory and Social Comparison Theory.

References: Bourhis, R. Y., Sachdev, I. & Gagnon, A. (1994). Intergroup research with the Tajfel matrices: methodological notes. In Zanna, M. & Olsen, J. (eds), The psychology of prejudice: the Ontario symposium (Vol. 7, pp. 209-32). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Breakwell, G. M. (1986). Coping with threatened identities. London: Methuen. Cited in Brown, (1995).

Brewer, M. B. & Kramer, R. M. (1985). The psychology of intergroup attitudes and behaviour.

Annual Review of Psychology, 36, 219-43. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Brown, R. (1995). Prejudice: its social psychology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Brown, R. (2000). Group processes, second edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. (a) Brown, R. (2000). Social Identity Theory: past achievements, current problems and future challenges. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30, 745-778. (b) Colman, A. M. (2001). Dictionary of psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diehl, M. (1990). The minimal group paradigm: theoretical explanations and empirical findings. European Review of Social Psychology, 53, 497-509.

Gross, R. (2000). Psychology, the science of mind and behaviour, fourth edition. Italy: Hodder and Soughtan.

Hogg, M. A. & Abrams, D. (1988). Social identifications: a social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. London: Routledge. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Hogg, M. A. & Vaughan, G. M. (2002). Social Psychology, third edition. London: Prentice Hall.

Lemrye, L. & Smith, P. M. (1985). Intergroup discrimination and self-esteem in the Minimal Group Paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 660-670. Cited in Brown, (2000) b.

Oakes, P. J. & Turner, J. C. (1980). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour: does minimal intergroup discrimination make social identity more positive? European Journal of Social Psychology, 10, 295-302. Cited in Brown, (2000) b.

Sherif, M. (1966). Group conflict and cooperation. London: Rouledge.

Tajfel, H. (1957). Value and the perceptual judgement of magnitude. Psychological Review, 64, 194-204. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Tajfel, H. (1959). Quantitative judgement in social perception. British Journal of Psychology, 50, 16-29. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Tajfel, H., Billig, M., Bundy, R. P. & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1, 149-77. Cited in Brown, (1995).

Tajfel, H. (1982). Social psychology of intergroup relations. Annual Review of Social Psychology, 33, 1-39. Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).

Tajfel, H. & Turner, J. (1986). The social psychology of intergroup behaviour. pp 7-24 in Worchel, S. & Austin, W. G. (eds). Psychology of intergroup relations. Chicago: Nelson.

Cited in Brown, (1995).

Turner, J. C. (1982). Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. In Tajfel, H. (ed), Social identity and intergroup relations (pp. 15-40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cited in Hogg & Vaughan, (2002).