Individuals and Groups

Self Concept

• The individual's belief about himself or herself, including the person's attributes and who and what the self is (Baumeister, 1999)

Rogers view of self concept

• The view you have of yourself (Self image)
• How much value you place on yourself (Self esteem or self-worth)
• What you wish you were really like (Ideal self)

Tajfel (1979) proposed that the groups (e.g. social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem.

Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.

To increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong.

Enhancing self image: Boosting groups

• Australia is the lucky country!
• The Dockers are awesome!
• Omg how good are Krispy Kremes?!

We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudice views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to)

Enhancing self image: Discriminating

• The Eagles suck.
• England sucks.
• Everything other than Krispy Kremes sucks.
• The opposite of what I like sucks.

We divide the world into “them” and “us” based through a process of social categorisation.

This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them). Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image.

Prejudiced views between cultures may result in racism; in its extreme forms, racism may result in genocide, such as occurred in Germany with the Jews, and in Rwanda between the Hutus and Tutsis

In social identity theory the group membership is not something foreign or artificial which is attached onto the person, it is a real, true and vital part of the person.

Remember in-groups are groups you identify with, and out-groups are ones that we don't identify with, and may discriminate against.