Emotional Implications Of Social Identity Theory

The second stage is social identification, where after categorizing ourselves into a given group, we espouse the uniqueness of that particular group. Our behavior will therefore be in-tandem with those of the members of that in-group. According to McLeod (2008), “there will be an emotional significance to your identification with a group, and your self-esteem will become bound up with group membership”. In an illustration, if you identify yourself as a member of a particular religion, chances are that the way you behave will be within the doctrines of that religion. The consequences of these are that one develops an emotional significance to that group, and the self-esteem is purely reliant on it. It is due to social identification that results

Social identity theory posits that an individuals’ social behavior is derived from both interpersonal and intergroup behavior. A distinct interpersonal behavior is reflected by a person’s characteristics and the relationships that exist between him and another person. The same applies to a distinct intergroup behavior which is the behavior exhibited by a given social group. Chances are that these distinct behaviors don’t exist. According to Tajfel & Turner (1986), behaviors are therefore a balance between these two ends. Social Identity theory tends to focus on the factors that have an impact on an individuals’ behavior in addition to the kind of behavior these may

The author further identifies five issues which, according to him, have been problematic to Social Identity Theory and he states them as “the relationship between group identification and in-group bias, the self-esteem hypothesis, positive-negative asymmetry in intergroup discrimination, the effects of intergroup similarity and the choice of identity strategies by low-status groups” (Brown ,