July 8, 2021
Social Identity Theory: Overview
This is the first part of a series exploring social identity and social location.
When we think about where we fit in the world outside our homes, whether institutions like UW or broader society, we tend to identify ourselves by our group memberships. This forms the foundation of social identity theory. Social identities can include groups like an ultimate frisbee team, a D&D group, or a knitting club that are meaningful within a small community of people. Generally, though, when people talk about social identity they are thinking of nation-spanning categories like race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, class, ability, religion, etc.
All of these concepts are rooted in social interactions and help us identify ourselves in relation to people similar to and different from us. For example, the concept of “class” wouldn’t exist without a group of people buying into it and agreeing to use certain behaviors and manners of dress as a way to categorize and interact with others. The history of the social construction of race is a particularly salient example within the context of the United States.
Categorizing things helps us make sense of the world we are in (think taxonomy, freshwater vs marine environments, etc.), and categorizing people likewise helps us make sense of the social world we inhabit. Knowing whether or not someone is an employee of a store helps us get assistance from the right people. Likewise, knowing someone’s sexual orientation will affect whether you ask them out or not.
At some point, we identify ourselves as members of a group, adjust our behavior to fit the norms and expectations associated with the group, and connect our sense of self to membership in the group. This is extremely visible in high school, when adolescents are developing their sense of identity and can be especially vulnerable to social pressure. Do you remember students at your school changing their hair, their clothes, and their behavior to fit in with a new social group? Were there popular kids, goth kids, theater kids?
To maintain a positive sense of self, we then begin to compare our group to other groups. We do this not only to differentiate one group from others, but also to make sure that we do as well as or better than members of other groups. People who place value on being thin or fit often compare themselves to fat people and others who don’t conform to their concept of an ideal body size/shape. Thin and fit people often consider themselves to be healthier, more attractive, more hardworking, and generally better than people who are visibly larger than them. This can help thin and fit people feel good about themselves, but it leads to prejudice and discrimination against people who aren’t thin and/or fit enough to belong to the group.
Social identities are always bound by their context. Within the institution of UW, being faculty carries a certain amount of status and privilege, but out of that context, such as riding a public bus, that social identity is virtually meaningless. In the United States, race is a life-altering category, but in a country like China, for example, ethnicity and nationality are much more salient to how people see themselves and others. Many countries outside of the English-speaking world don’t have a concept of race that is similar to that in the US, or they don’t have a concept of race at all. It’s important to be aware that people may not consider themselves members of the social group you might ascribe to them.
When people come to the US from abroad, they are swiftly labeled as belonging to various social identities (e.g., immigrant, non-native English speaker, Asian) that they may not personally identify with but nonetheless will affect how others perceive and treat them. As people figure out how to adapt to a new context, they may or may not come to identify themselves as members of these new groups, and when they return to their original context, they may continue to identify with these new groups, or return to identifying with their home groups, or identify with a new group (for example, Third Culture Kids).
Before we can do any work to make a community more inclusive and equitable, we need to recognize what social identities we hold. If this is new for you, take ten or fifteen minutes to write down the social identities you hold. Are there any social identities you used to hold but don’t anymore? Are there any social identities that have been ascribed to you, and how strongly do you identify with them, if at all? Which social identities are most salient to you within SAFS? Within the United States? With your family and friends?
The second part of this series will explore dominant social identities and societal privilege.