Social Identity Theory

Henri Tajfel (1979) - He proposed that the groups, (such as social class, family, football team etc.) which people belonged to were an important source of pride and self-esteem. These groups are said to give us a sense of social identity.

To increase this self-image we enhance the status of the group we belong to, we can do this by saying our group is 'the best' or promote it positively. We can further do this by discriminating against opposing groups and acting prejudice towards the out group. The 'out' group is a reference to the group which we don't belong. 

We thus live in a divided world, divided into 'them' and 'us'. This is based on social categorization (social groups).

Social Identity Theory Outline

Tajfel and Turner (1979) proposed the 3 mental processes that are involved in evaluating others as 'us' or 'them'/ 'in' or 'out' groups.

1: We categorize objects in order to understand them and identify them. We do this similarly with the categorization of people in order to understand the social environment.

2: Social identification - We adopt the identity of the group we have categorized ourselves into. With this there will be an emotional significance to the identification within a group, also your self-esteem will become influenced within the group you're a part of.

3. Social comparison - Compare the group we are in with other groups which can lead to conflict and competition.

Through this social identity theory we can create different tribes by categorizing individuals into different groups. These tribes are proud of their own tribe but can have conflict with others in competition for who is a better one. An example of theses tribes would be within  music genres such as the pop and rock followers. These are genres with which their ideologies contrast and so they separate themselves into what the social identity theory conveys as 'tribes'. These tribes further go on to contrast through which 'tribes' are 'in' or 'out'; this is distinguished through the popularity of the 'tribe'. 'Out' groups are 'tribes' that are unheard of  and therefore they are unpopular and not well known amongst the other 'in tribes'. The 'in' groups are therefore part of a popular or trendy 'tribe' that are more well known.

 

An example of this is the ideology of pop; the pop genre has a large following that all retain similar characteristics, the artists also retain these characteristics and promote them to their audiences. Pop is a genre where its ideology is based on conformity; artists mainly have a clean cut image, are good-looking, perform songs about love and non-threatening or sexual subjects, they perform in a conventional way (typical song structure, sing well and contain catchy hooks), their ability to play live is not important, they conform to the norms, they are manufactured by those in the industry, they are ephemeral and are mainly targeted towards children or those very young.

Music magazines incorporate a genre's ideology through the main image; this can be seen in pop magazines through the clean image produced, with no nudity, drug/drink references or subjects of violence.

These two examples of pop magazines represent the ideology of pop music artists. The clean image and innocence presented appeals to the young target audience. These types of covers are also mirror images of many other pop music magazine covers and they lack any individuality or uniqueness which could be seen in a genre such as hip-hop/rock which conveys quite a rebellious image. We can therefore identify a group of artists or audience by their image and the way they act through their conformity to what they believe is the 'best' way to be. therefore through the representation of artists and genres through media such as music magazines we are able to distinguish 'tribes' and their ideologies.