ABSTRACT
Enough progress has been made in thinking about conflict from the perspective of social identity, that it is time to move that point of view forward by revisiting the psychological underpinnings of identity theory. At its heart, identity-based conflict imagines members of one psychologically integrated group pitted against another in a struggle between “people like us” and “people like them.” In strong forms of the theory, it becomes hard to imagine a world in which ideas not tied to group divisions matter at all – where “we” would begin to think like, fight for, and eventually become one of “them.” Because such cases are common, however, the further development of conflict theory and practice requires a perspective grounded in social psychological science and perhaps clinical practice that is compatible with and explanatory of conflicts based on principled political action toward a cause greater than the self or the reference group. The identity paradigm, for all of its accomplishments, is not well suited to this task even when it can force the square peg of conflict based on values and principles through its round hole of cultural difference and group affiliation.
