Social Identity Theory

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Pages: 6

Social identity theory is a theory which is intended to explain how people develop a sense of belonging and membership in particular groups, and how the workings of intergroup discrimination work. Social identity theory plays an important role in the study of social psychology. To some degree, everyone is influenced by social identity theory. Social Identity Theory tries to explain such intergroup discrimination in the 'real world' as well as in the circumstance of the minimal groups. The theory claims a process of social identification and positive self-esteem, “People can boost their self-esteem through their own personal achievements or through affiliation with successful groups” (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2008, 150). When a person is …show more content…
The second group I am a member of is my gender group of females. For this group many of the norms are lots of communication such as talking, gossiping or just spending time talking to a friend about a problem. Other norms are being girly, such as putting on makeup, doing hair, getting dressed up in cute clothes, shopping or hanging out with girlfriends, among many others. I identify with this group in every way that was just described, those are many of the norms for this group and those norms are the norms of my group of female friends that I have. Some values of this group are to look good which could lead to competition within the group members to look better than one another, to be the most popular, to have the cutest boyfriend. These are all the norms and values of the gender group of females that I am a part of. My beliefs and values sometimes differ from this group because other members of this group can sometimes become very shallow and deceiving such as talking behind each other’s backs or lying, I am not that type of person and that’s the biggest way I differ from this group is in my personal values for myself to not become shallow like many members of the group of female gender do.
The out-group for my in-group of employees I