Social Identity Theory Literature Review

Rupert Brown (2000), in his Journal, “Social Identity Theory: past achievements, current problems and future challenges” focused on how Social Identity Theory has influenced the study of intergroup behavior while trying to define various factors such as in-groups favoritism and how they relate to out-groups due to their differences in positions and status. 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

In this, the author relies on Relative Deprivation Theory (Gurr 1970) which suggests that what makes people feel not satisfied thereby resolving to undertake collective action is the difference between what the in-group gets or experiences and what they believe they are supposed to be getting. Tyler and Smith (1998) posit that sources of these discrepancies may be due to past injustices or rather present-day actions but are majorly occasioned by social comparison. In general, it is due to social deprivation that leads to collective or group protest. Similarly, social identification, a part from deprivation, is a major contributor of social discontent. Group identification increases the feelings of deprivation. This can be seen in the study by Gurin and Townsend (1989) which found that women were driven to engage in politics by gender identification due to the joint dissatisfaction among them. The author notes that in some studies, deprivation is the determinant factor for mass action with group identification just being a precursor while in some studies; it has been found that group identification is the original prognosticator of tendency to partake in social movements for change which is autonomous of

According to him, Social Identity Theory is on the premise that positive social identity is based on advantageous intergroup evaluations, that a positive dependence exists between forte of the group identification and the quantity of positive intergroup diversity. First, he explains the relationship between group identification and in-group bias. In this, he maintains that where group identification is founded on a positive in-group assessment and that if individuals are inspired to realize and/or uphold a constructive social identity, and if in-groups are assessed based on their relation to pertinent out-groups, then there should be a relation between an identification and prejudice. Citing various researches, the author asserts that there is a probability that groups can vary from each other widely in their social identity purposes and these identity functions are not properly captured by Social Identity Theory as