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Social Identity Theory
Tajfel (1972) introduced the concept of “social identity,” which refers to a person’s knowledge that he or she belongs to certain social groups and which involves emotional and value significance because of that group membership. A social group is defined as more than two people who (1) identify and evaluate themselves in the same way, (2) have the same definition of who they are and what attributes they have, and (3) follow the same patterns for how they interact with others who are not in their group (Hogg, 2006). Group membership refers to a collective sense of “us” versus “them,” and self-identification refers to an individual sense of “me” versus “you.”
Social identity refers to those aspects of an individual’s ...
