Social Identity Theory

Abstract

Political psychology focuses upon a diverse range of contexts, including leadership, policy making, nationalism, racism, political extremism, war, genocide, voting, group mobilization, and many others. Given the centrality of the social political group in many of these contexts, theories of intergroup relations have proven to be very useful in political psychology research. In attempting to elucidate the origins and mechanisms of discrimination and in-group favoritism, the Polish-born British social psychologist Henri Tajfel, in collaboration with John Turner and some other European social psychologists, developed social identity theory (SIT) in the 1970s, which has since become one of the most important theories of intergroup relations in social and political psychology.