Alum Cynthia Vinney, Ph.D., Offers a Perspective on Social Identity Theory

Alum Cynthia Vinney, Ph.D., Offers a Perspective on Social Identity Theory

Fielding Media Psychology alum (Media PSY, 2016), recently penned an article titled “Social Identity Theory—Are We the Company We Keep?” for Verywell Mind.
Dr. Vinney is a scholar, author, and freelance writer who focuses on psychology and popular culture topics. Her research examines how audiences understand, engage with, and respond to popular media. She has published two books and numerous academic articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, and Review of Communication. Her latest book, Finding Truth in Fiction, was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Vinney’s dissertation investigated how the strength of an individual’s personal identity as a fan impacts one’s meaningful cognitive and affective responses to a favorite television show.

Social Identity Theory—Are We the Company We Keep?

Social identity is part of an individual’s self-concept that derives from their knowledge of their group memberships.

Social identity theory describes the circumstances under which social identity is more important than personal identity and the ways social identity can influence behavior. The theory was originated by Henri Tajfel and his student, John Turner, in 1979.

The History of Social Identity Theory

Social identity theory arose from Tajfel’s early work on social groups. With his colleagues, Tajfel conducted a series of studies in the early 1970s that explored the way people interacted in groups with differences that were as meaningless as possible.

Minimal-Group Studies

These studies were named the minimal-group studies, Tajfel found these participants awarded more points to in-group members than out-group members despite having no direct benefits from the situation and no personal identification or history with group members.

This showed that merely categorizing individuals into groups is enough to make people think of themselves in terms of in-groups and out-groups.
Then in 1979, Tajfel and Turner added a cognitive component to the theory, which specifies the cognitive processes that lead to group membership and behavioral motivations that enable people to maintain positive social identity.

“It is [social identity theory] a European theory… [and] it’s really a social answer to the individualized notion of identity in American social psychology,” says Regina Tuma, PhD, Doctoral Faculty and Chair in Media Psychology at Fielding Graduate University.

Continue reading this article on the Verywell Mind site. This article is republished with permission from Verywell Mind.