ABSTRACT
Since classic social identity theory had its origins in the minimal group paradigm and the study of ingroup bias, the focus of most of the initial research on social identity was on the consequences of salient social identities for intergroup relations (Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1975) and intragroup behavior (Hogg, 1992). It wasn’t until some time later that attention turned toward understanding the antecedents of social identity and the psychological processes underlying identification with ingroups in the first place. Self-categorization theory (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) provided one answer to the question of origins of social identity, implicating basic social categorization processes (Oakes, 1987). But for many social psychologists, the idea that social identification – with all its significant emotional and behavioral concomitants – is based solely on “cold cognition” was intuitively incomplete. Because group identity sometimes entails self-sacrifice in the interests of group welfare and solidarity, understanding why and when individuals are willing to relegate their sense of self to significant group identities requires motivational as well as cognitive analysis. Motivational explanations are also needed to account for why group membership does not always lead to identification and why individuals are more chronically identified with some ingroups rather than others.
