Essay On Social Identity Theory

“Stereotypes are categories that have gone too far,” says John Bargh, Ph.D., of New York University. “When we use stereotypes, we take in the gender, the age, the colour of the skin of the person before us, and our minds respond with messages that say hostile, stupid, slow, weak. Those qualities aren’t out there in the environment. They don’t reflect reality.” Bargh believes that stereotypes emerged from the social psychology term of “in group/out group dynamics” found exclusively in the social identity theory.

The concept of social identity theory describes a person’s sense of identity or who they truly are based on their group membership(s). Human beings, as social animals, crave the feeling that they are part of a group, and as clans, villages and other traditional groupings have lost their popularity over time, our identities have attached themselves to more ambiguous classifications (ie race and social

For example, someone from Canada might claim that “Canada is the best country in the world!” whereas someone from Ireland will claim Ireland is the best country in the world and so on. On the other hand, while enhancing our groups to boost our egos, we also tend to discriminate and hold prejudicial views against the out group (any group to which one doesn’t belong). For example, if Ireland and Canada were competing in a rugby match, the Irish side would discriminate against the Canadian side by yelling insults, playing to politically incorrect stereotypes or other forms of harassment and vice versa. Therefore, the world is divided into categories of “them” and “us” distinguished through a process of social categorisation (meaning the action of people into social groups). We see members of our own group as individuals who just happen to be one part of a whole, whereas any individual from an outgroup is seen as undifferentiated from the others and therefore part of a stereotyped