Hogg And Turner's Social Identity Theory

Social Identity Theory was developed by Tajfel and Turner in 1979. The theory was initially developed to understand the psychological basis of intergroup conflict and discrimination. Tajfel attempted to identify the minimal conditions that would lead members of one group to discriminate in favour of the ingroup to which they belonged and against another outgroup. Intergroup behaviour refers to the way in which people behave towards one another as members of different social groups. (Hogg and Abrams, 1998). Racial and ethnic identity includes three basic components: membership which is knowledge that one is affiliated with a specific and ethnic group; Beliefs which is about how the individuals of these groups act, what they believe in, what

The social groups in which people place themselves are parts of a structured society and occur only in relation to other conflicting groups for example, white vs black. Each has more or less prestige, power and status. (Hogg and Abrams, 1998) Nevertheless, there is evidence to propose that fondness for one's own group varies between white children and African American. (Andereck 1992). This is evident to findings that specified that by age 4, white children favour playing with other white children. At the same age a bigger percent of African American children have no preference. From the age of 7, there are conflicting findings regarding group preference for both white and African American children. (Rice, Ruiz and Padilla 1974). Ethnic minority group differences must be taken into account in regards to the model of social identity. Social identity has a positive effect on whites in relation to privilege but this is not inevitably the case for ethnic minorities. This is evident to one of the conditions highlighted and noted “I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.” (McIntosh