Self-Categorization Theory: Tajfel And Turner's Social Identity Theory

Introduction
Think about your daily life. What does your schedule look like? Where do you go? What do you do? Most importantly, who are you with? No matter what you are doing or where you are going, I am sure you aren’t doing it alone; if you are alone, you are more than likely on your way to meet up with others. This is simply because we are social creatures; The human species as a whole was made to interact with each other; we weren’t meant to do life alone. We tend to seek out a group of other individuals who share similar beliefs, ideas, and interests; we look for the “me too” from others. This is what Tajfel and Turner (1979) defined as the Social Identity Theory.
First, it begins with an individual’s personal identity. An individual

Some suggest that the self-categorization theory that is imbedded within the Social Identity Theory is invalid. In the 1970s, empirical research was conducted to prove self-categorization theory, however, most fell up short. Apparently, many researchers couldn’t provide a consistent correlation between ingroup identification and ingroup bias; this also meant the self-categorization theory was inconsistent with the Social Identity Theory (Hornsey, 2008). However, others argue that the self-categorization theory is too broad and powerful to be proven false (Hogg & Williams

Good prototypical leaders gain a greater amount of trust from their followers. However, the issues that challenge this concept of prototypicality are that it is utmost importance that the leaders represent the group well and have unwarranted trustworthiness. Thus meaning that prototypical leaders are viewed more importantly than the ingroup followers and yet this doesn’t determine how well they will perform; the outlook of the leader is analyzed more so that than their input in the group. Another issue is that prototypicality can cause followers to have false perceptions of the leader’s effectiveness (Gissner 2008). The followers may interpret the leader as being representative of their group and leader them well although it may simple be because of the position the leader