ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents at a conference on the social self held at the Institute of Personality and Social Research of the University of California, Berkeley, in July 1996. The conference participants generally agreed that the core argument of social identity theory that people use group memberships to define themselves was an important and valuable beginning point for a wide variety of analyses. Social identity and self-categorization theories offer more effective models of the self, with the self highlighting the important role of groups in the definition of the self and with individuals defining themselves at least partly through common social category memberships. The approaches spring from a core assumption that groups are important to people not only because they allow them to exchange resources with others but also because they provide them with information that they use to construct the social self.
