Social identity

Social identity is defined as "the individual's knowledge" of personal membership in specific social groups, together with the "emotional value and significance" placed on such membership by the individual (Tajfel, 1972, p. 31). Social identity, thus, is closely related to self-concept.

Individuals apply the process of categorization to "partition the world into comprehensible units" (Abrams & Hogg, 1994, p. 2). This process is accorded a central role in social identity theory. Categorization "involves the psychological accentuation of differences between categories and the attenuation of differences between objects within categories" (Tajfel & Wilkes, 1963, pp. 101-114). Accentuation occurs only on those dimensions believed by an individual to be correlated with the categorization process (Abrams & Hogg, p. 3). An individual can derive "a sense of involvement, concern and pride . . . from one's knowledge of sharing a social category membership with others, even without necessarily having close personal relationships with, knowing or having any material personal interest in their outcomes" (p. 3). To "the extent that the in-group is perceived as both different and better than the out-group, . . . one's social identity is enhanced" (p. 3).

The process of categorization "produces the search for distinguishing features" (Abrams & Hogg, p. 3). The need by an individual for a positive identity motivates an effort to differentiate in favor of the in-group.

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rting this proposition, self-awareness theory holds that "self-focused attention is central to the regulation of behaviour" (p. 96). A question then arises in relation to the precedence of salience and attention in this process. Abrams (p. 98) posited that "neither . . . takes precedence in any absolute sense but that whilst salience involves a process concerning relevance, attention involves a process concerning purpose. Thus, when social identity is salient, self-attention addresses the question of what action should follow." The preceding information provided the basis for the conduct of an experiment to test the effect of induced states of heightened private and public self-awareness on personal and social/collective identity orientations, and thus, on the subordinate (personal) and intermediate (social) levels of social identity. The hypotheses tested in this experiment were as follows: 1. A mirror will induce a state of heightened private self-awareness in subjects beyond that of subjects in the control or video conditions. 2. If a state of heightened private self-awareness is induced, it will be independent of self-consciousness and will cause a greater personal identity in orientation and identification. 3. A vi

Category: Psychology - S