Social identity theory has a number of integrated conceptual foci (for contempo- rary overviews of social identity theory see Hogg, 2003, 2006; Turner, 1999a).
Thus far I have largely discussed the original social identity theory of intergroup relations (e.g., Turner & Tajfel, 1979). A crucial development in the early 1980s was the social identity theory of the group, self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985;
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Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987), which focused on the role of the categorization process in group identifi cation and group behavior. The main feature of this theory is its explanation of the way that social categorization dep- ersonalizes perception so that people are viewed in terms of group prototypes rather than their individual attributes, and the way that categorization of self, self- categorization, depersonalizes self-construal, self-perception, and people’s atti- tudes, feelings and behaviors.
Depersonalization is not the same as dehumanization or deindividuation (con- trast Zimbardo, 1970, with Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). It does not refer to behavior in which people behave impulsively, antisocially or aggressively; rather it refers to a phenomenon where we represent and experience ourselves and others as relatively “interchangeable” members of a collective, rather than as unique sep- arate individuals.
As with the earlier social identity research, most self-categorization research focused on group and collective phenomena such as stereotyping (e.g., Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994), group cohesion and solidarity (e.g., Hogg, 1993), crowd behavior (e.g., Reicher, 1984), deindividuation phenomena (e.g., Reicher, Spears,
& Postmes, 1995), and conformity and normative behavior (e.g., Abrams & Hogg, 1990). However, self-categorization theory left the door open for more serious attention to be paid to the study of individuality in the context of group life.
There were a number of reasons for this, all hinging on the new, more inclusive focus on group behavior as a whole rather than just intergroup behavior between large social categories. For example, when you study social identity processes in small interactive groups, you immediately confront the fact that although social identity processes play out in the usual way, individuality, personality, and inter- personal processes are also very obvious (Hogg, 1996; Hogg, Abrams, Otten, &
Hinkle, 2004). The family is a good example—clearly a group, but also very clearly a context for personality and interpersonal processes.
Another example is the study of group norms and social infl uence in groups (Turner, 1991; also see Hogg & Smith, 2007). Although norms emerge to charac- terize a group as a whole in distinction to specifi c outgroups, there is absolutely no doubt that some individuals are more infl uential than others in shaping the group’s norm. This suggested that social identity theory needed to properly consider the role of individual differences in the context of group life. As we shall see below, the problematic of relative infl uence was addressed, not in terms of idiosyncratic per- sonality or individuality, but in terms of relative group prototypicality (e.g., Abrams
& Hogg, 1990; Hogg, 2005; Turner & Oakes, 1989). This was the foundation of the social identity theory of leadership (Hogg, 2001b; Hogg & van Knippenberg, 2003) and social identity analyses of deviance (e.g., Marques, Abrams, Páez, & Hogg, 2001; Marques, Abrams, & Serôdio, 2001).
Some key elements of a self-categorization perspective on personality and individuality have recently been described by Turner and his colleagues (Turner, Reynolds, Haslam, & Veenstra, 2006). There are two key points to this perspective.
The fi rst is that all self-defi nitions and self-conceptions are based on self-categories defi ned by category prototypes. Self categories vary in size (inclusiveness); large, highly inclusive categories are social groups that defi ne social identity, whereas
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small exclusive categories, which effectively only have one member, clearly defi ne personal identity or individuality. Most categories are in the middle.
The second key point is that self categories are not stored in mind to be carried from one context to another;they are constructed in situ to defi ne self in that par- ticular context. In this way self-categories and attendant perceptions and behaviors are tied into contexts rather than invariant properties of individuals: If people’s lives are circumscribed by a limited number of contexts, their behaviors will appear routinized, with the inference that it refl ects invariant personality attributes; if their lives are in greater fl ux, then their behavior will appear more varied and less easily construed as personality.
Put this way, this second point veers towards social constructionism, appearing on the surface to argue that aspects of self are entirely determined by the immediate social context and are not stored in memory for the individual to bring into play to defi ne self in a particular context. However, most social identity researchers do not take this stance, and a close reading of social identity theory, particularly its descrip- tion of the process of salience (below), shows it to be quite consistent with Kurt Lewin’s far reaching “person-situation” view that “every psychological event depends on the state of the person and at the same time on the environment, although their relative importance is different in different cases (Lewin, 1936, p. 12)
Psychological Salience
Context infl uences self-conception and behavior via a process of psychologi- cal salience (e.g., Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, &
McGarty, 1994). People draw on accessible social categorizations—ones that are valued, important, and frequently employed aspects of self-conception and social perception (they are chronically accessible in one’s memory) and/or because they are self-evident and perceptually salient in the immediate situation (they are situ- ationally accessible). People are very ready to use accessible categories to make sense of their social context, investigating how well the categorization accounts for similarities and differences among people (structural or comparative fi t) and how well the stereotypical properties of the categorization account for why people behave as they do (normative fi t).
If the fi t of a particular categorization is poor, people cycle through other accessible categorizations until an optimal level of fi t is obtained. This process is primarily fast and automatic; people strive to reduce feelings of uncertainty about self-conception, social interaction, and people’s behavior (e.g., Hogg, 2000, 2007).
However, it is also more deliberatively strategic because people strive to make psy- chologically salient those social categorizations that mediate a more evaluatively positive social identity and self-concept (cf. Tajfel & Turner, 1979). The categoriza- tion that has optimal fi t becomes psychologically salient in that context as the basis of self-categorization, group identifi cation, and prototype-based depersonalization.
It triggers social identity related perceptions, cognitions, affect, and behavior.
The process of salience explains how self-construal and associated behavior are generated and confi gured by an interaction between, on the one hand, social categorizations and self-knowledge brought by the person to the situation and. on
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the other hand, information in the situation that points to certain social categoriza- tions and situation-specifi c confi gurations of such categorizations.
However, salience is not entirely mechanical; it is infl uenced by chronically accessible categories and by people’s motivations and goals and so forth (e.g., Hogg, 2003, 2006; Simon, 2004). Turner and colleagues write: “Self-categorization is not free to vary in any which way, but is always constrained by the motives, goals, values, experiences, theories and knowledge the perceiver brings to the situation, as well as by the psychological nature of the categorization process and the social situation within which the perceiver defi nes himself or herself” (Turner, Reynolds, Haslam, & Veenstra, 2006, p. 25).
Personality and individuality certainly play a role here, in so far as people differ in terms of chronic category accessibility and the subjective importance of particu- lar identities, motives, goals, and life experiences; in any given context some of us may be more ready to use one social categorization than another to make sense of the situation and socially locate and defi ne ourselves and others in that situation.
It is also worth noting that the social identity model of salience is not entirely inconsistent with contemporary perspectives on personality, discussed above, in which contexts evoke preexisting dispositions (the interactional perspective) and people are disposed to place themselves in particular situations (the situational perspective; Snyder & Cantor, 1998; Snyder & Ickes, 1985). However, it differs from and goes beyond personality treatments in its focus on a highly differentiated self that structures, and is structured by, the world in terms of social categories.
Personality and Individuality
Personality and individuality may also be a product of the particular level of social comparison that one employs: Where intergroup comparisons are made, then self is clearly defi ned in collective terms as a group member, but where self-other com- parisons are made within a group, individuality may come to the fore (Turner et al., 1987). In this formulation the group is primary because it is the frame of refer- ence that allows individuality and personality to emerge (Hogg, 2001a; Hogg &
Williams, 2000). However, it is not clear whether self-other comparisons within a group are truly interpersonal comparisons resting on emergent individuality and personality or actually intragroup comparisons resting on appraisals of self and other as more or less prototypical members of the group (see below).
Another take on individuality within the context of social identity is provided by the notion of “relational self.” Drawing on cross-cultural research showing that people in different cultures construe the relationship between individual and group in different ways (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002), Brewer has described the relational self as a form of collective self-construal where social identity is defi ned in terms of networks of interpersonal relationships (Brewer & Gardner, 1996; Yuki, 2003). This form of social identity may be more prevalent in non-Western cultures, but it may also characterize friendship cliques and the family in Western societies.
This analysis does seem to suggest that the network of relations that defi nes the group is constructed from the bottom up, and thus individuality and personality
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are primary (e.g., Sedikides & Strube, 1997). However, this does not have to be the case; one can readily see how relational identity and selves can be constructed top down, as described by self-categorization theory.
The notion of relational identity raises the question of roles: Are they personal or social identities? The notion of role identities is important in more sociological social psychology (e.g., Ridgeway, 2001; Thoits & Virshup, 1997). From a social identity point of view, roles describe relationships between people and so can defi ne social or personal identities, depending on whether the role relationship is constructed as being between individuals or between groups (Hogg, Terry, &
White, 1995). So, for example, airline pilot vs. cabin crew and professor vs. under- graduate refl ect intergroup relations and social identities, and “mother” is more a personal identity when played out between mother and daughter and more a social identity when confi gured as “soccer mom” vs. working woman.
Finally, Brewer’s optimal distinctiveness theory opposes individuality to the group, much as does social identity theory, but argues that people strive for a bal- ance between standing out as a unique individual within the group and being totally immersed in the group (Brewer, 1991; Pickett & Brewer, 2001; Pickett, Silver, & Brewer, 2002). There is a dynamic relationship between individual and group.
Overall, social identity perspectives on the self reject what Turner and Onorato (1999) have recently called the “personality model of self” (also see Hogg 2001a;
Onorato & Turner, 2002, 2004) in which the self is a unique, idiosyncratic, endur- ing, fi xed and bounded entity—the view that “I” and “me” rule supreme. Instead, the self is experienced differently depending on context, and individuality and personality are less likely to be behavioral and experiential progenitors than more transitory emergent properties of an interplay of contextual factors and motives, goals and experiences brought to the context. A subjective sense of self and per- sonality does exist, but it is more context-dependent, less enduring and stable, and more group membership-based than allowed by most personality and individual differences research. And of course we habitually construct stable underlying per- sonalities for other people through processes of attribution (e.g., Gilbert & Malone, 1995) and essentialism (e.g., Haslam, Rothschild, & Ernst, 1998).