The Tajfel study is a highly controlled experiment. It is also highly standardized, so it is replicable in order to establish reliability. However, the task was highly artificial and may not reflect how the boys would have interacted in a more natural setting. In addition, the boys have interpreted the task as supposed to be competitive and tried to win - thus showing demand characteristics. Finally, the study was done using British schoolboys - so it may be difficult to generalize the findings of this study to other ages and cultures.

Once we categorize people into “us” and “them”, self-esteem is maintained by social comparison—that is, the benefits of belonging to the in-group versus the out-group. Cialdini et al. (1976) demonstrated this phenomenon among college football supporters. After a successful football match, the supporters were more likely to be seen wearing college insignia and clothing than after defeats. It is assumed that our need for a positive self-concept will result in a bias in these intergroup comparisons so that you are more positive towards anything that your own group represents. Tajfel calls this “the establishment of positive distinctiveness”.

There have been many applications of social identity theory – both to explain behaviour and to change behaviour.  An example of how SIT can be used to explain behaviour is a study carried out by Abrams et al (1990)  Abrams did a replication of Asch (1956) to see if, as Social Identity Theory predicts, people are more likely to conform to the behaviour of people in their in-group. Fifty introductory psychology students (23 males and 27 females) thought that they were taking a test of visual accuracy. At the start of the experiment, three confederates were introduced either as first-year students from the psychology department (in-group) or as students of ancient history (out-group).

The participants were shown a stimulus line, and then three other lines - one of which was the same length as the stimulus line. The task was to identify which of the three lines matched the stimulus line. There were 18 trials. In nine of the trials, the confederates gave the correct response. In nine of the trials, the confederates gave a unanimous, incorrect response. Abrams and his team found that the participants conformed to the erroneous confederate judgments more often when they believed the confederates were from their in-group. The average number of conforming responses was 5.23 in the in-group condition and only 0.75 in the out-group condition. The participants also revealed in the post-experimental questionnaire that they had been less confident about their own judgment in the in-group condition. The results seem to indicate that social categorization can play a key role in one’s decision to conform.

An example of how SIT has been applied is in crowd control during emergency evacuations.  Drury et al (2009) carried out an experiment using a virtual reality simulation of a fire in the London underground. Participants could either push people out of the way to get out as quickly as possible, or they could help others, but this would slow their escape from the fire. In one condition, the participants were given a “shared identity” – for example, all fans of the same football team.  In the other condition, they were not given a shared identity – for example, “you are on your way back from buying a pair of shoes.”  The team found that those who shared a common identity were more likely to help one another, even at risk to their own safety.  Drury has argued that making a collective identity salient by making announcements to “All customers” or “Real Madrid Fans” or “Americans”, will cause people to act as a group and not panic in an emergency situation.  This is better than using sirens or other emergency signals.

Social identity theory appears to be a useful way of understanding human behaviour in a number of areas. However, there are some limitations to the theory. First, it describes but does not accurately predict human behaviour. Although the theory argues that whichever identity is most salient is most likely to determine our behaviour, why is it that in some cases our personal identity is stronger than the group identity? Second, using the theory in isolation is reductionist—it fails to address the environment that interacts with the “self.” Cultural expectations, rewards as motivators, and societal constraints such as poverty may play more of a role in behaviour than one’s own sense of in-group identity.

 Teacher only box

The question is pretty straightforward. The key is for students to be able to explain why they work.

Pep rallies get students to be very much aware that they are a member of their in-group.  This is done by the methods described above, as well as wearing the "school colours" or cheering the school mascot.

For some people, they are not effective since they may not feel that they are part of this group.  Or they are not able to focus on this one aspect of their identity because of some other factor - e.g. they dislike the sport, they dislike the school, they are not happy that this rally is taking away time from something that they would rather be doing, etc.

Checking for understanding