ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the importance of a sense of social self for psychological processes. It argues that the concept of social identity should not be taken to refer to a single unified sense of social self, but rather as introducing the notions of the multiple self and the variable self, there is the question of the underlying motivational processes and the different needs that a sense of social identity can fulfil. And it discusses the important topic of group identification and the related possibility of dis-identification. Social identity transforms self-related terms from the personal self to the group self. One's sense of ethnic identity is associated with basic human needs and motivational principles. In some situations, people are aware of their ethnic identity, but this awareness is stronger and more common among some individuals than others. Individual differences in the subjective tendency, or 'readiness', to view the social world in ethnic terms have social and psychological consequences.
