RESEARCH STARTER

Social identity theory and race relations

Social identity theory, introduced by Henri Tajfel in 1978, posits that individuals derive part of their self-concept from their social group affiliations. This theory is particularly relevant in understanding race relations, as it explains how individuals categorize themselves and others based on various criteria, including race, ethnicity, and socio-economic status. When individuals identify with a specific group, they tend to develop a positive self-image through the achievements and attributes of that group, often leading to in-group bias, where members favor their own group over out-groups.

In situations where a group is perceived negatively, individuals may employ strategies to enhance their self-concept. These strategies include "exit," where one leaves the devalued group; "pass," where individuals conceal their group identity; and "voice," a collective effort to improve the group’s image through activism or social change. Historical examples, such as the civil rights movement, illustrate how marginalized groups have sought to redefine their identity and challenge perceptions of inferiority. Social identity theory emphasizes the importance of positive self-image in motivating group members to engage in actions that promote social justice and equality. As such, it provides a framework for understanding the dynamics of race relations and the psychological underpinnings of intergroup behavior.

Full Article

SIGNIFICANCE: Social identity theory examines the relationship between group membership and self-esteem. It has provided insights into intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, cultural affirmation, and self-hatred, predicting both individual and group responses to an unfavorable self-concept.

Social identity theory maintains that all individuals are motivated to achieve and maintain a positive self-concept. A person’s self-concept derives from two principal sources: personal identity and social identity. Personal identity includes one’s individual traits, achievements, and qualities. Social identity includes the group affiliations that are recognized as being part of the self, such as one’s image of oneself as a Protestant, a blue-collar worker, or a conservative. Some individuals emphasize the personal aspects in their quest for a favorable self-image, while others emphasize their social identities. Social identity theory focuses on the latter. It attempts to explain when and how individuals transform their group affiliations to secure a favorable self-concept.

Psychologist Henri Tajfel introduced social identity theory in 1978. The theory maintains that a person’s social identity emerges from the natural process of social categorization. People categorize or classify themselves and others by many criteria, including occupation, religious affiliation, political orientation, ethnicity, economic class, and gender. An individual automatically identifies with some categories and rejects others. This creates a distinction between “in-groups,” with which one identifies, and “out-groups,” with which one does not identify. A person who identifies themselves as a Democrat, for example, would consider other Democrats members of the in-group and would view Republicans as members of the out-group. Individuals inevitably compare their groups with other groups; the goal of the comparisons is to establish the superiority of one’s own group, or the group’s “positive distinctiveness,” on some level, such as affluence, cultural heritage, or spirituality. If the comparison shows that the individual’s group memberships are positive and valuable, the social identities become an important part of the self. If, however, one’s group appears inferior, one’s self-image acquires “negative distinctiveness.” The individual is then motivated to acquire a more satisfactory self-concept.

Enhancing the Self-Concept

Tajfel and John Turner proposed three strategies that can be used to enhance one’s self-concept: “exit,” “pass,” and “voice.” The first two strategies represent attempts to validate the self. Both involve rejecting or distancing oneself from the devalued group to improve identity; both presume that social mobility exists. Exit involves simply leaving the group. This response is possible only within flexible social systems that permit individual mobility (social mobility and race). Although individuals cannot usually shed affiliations such as race or gender, they can openly discard other affiliations, such as “Buick owner” or “public school advocate.” If dissatisfied with an automobile, one trades it in for another; if unhappy with the public school system, one may exit and move one’s children into a private school. Passing, a more private response, occurs when individuals with unfavorable group memberships are not recognized as belonging to that group. A Jewish person may be mistaken for a Gentile, for example, or a Black person with a fair complexion may be mistaken for a White person. Typically, in such cases, the objective features that link the individual to the devalued group are absent or unnoticeable.

Voice, the final strategy for identity improvement, is a collective response: Group members act together to alter the group’s image and elevate its social value. Also called the “social change” approach, it is common in rigid social systems in which individual movement away from the disparaged group is impossible. It also occurs when psychological forces such as cultural and personal values bind the individual to the group. Members of such physically identifiable groups as women, African Americans, or Asians might adopt the social change strategy, for example, as might such cultural or religious group members as Irish Catholics or Orthodox Jews.

Voice is a complex response. Simply recognizing that social mobility is blocked for members of one’s own group is insufficient to prompt social change activity. Two additional perceptions of the overall social structure are important: its stability and its legitimacy. Stability is concerned with how fixed or secure the social hierarchy seems. Theoretically, no group is completely secure in its relative superiority; even groups that historically have been considered superior must work to maintain their favored position. If members of a denigrated group believe that alternatives to the current social hierarchy are possible, they are encouraged to reassess their own value. Legitimacy, in contrast, involves the bases for a group’s negative distinctiveness. If a group believes that its social inferiority is attributable to illegitimate causes such as discrimination in hiring practices or educational opportunities, group members will be more likely to challenge their inferior position.

Voice challenges to negative distinctiveness take two general forms: social creativity and direct competition. Social creativity involves altering or redefining the elements of comparison. However, the group’s social positions and resources need not be altered. In one approach, a group may simply limit the groups with which it compares itself, focusing on similar groups. A group of factory workers may choose to compare themselves with warehouse workers or postal employees rather than with a group of advertising executives. This approach increases the chances that the comparison outcome will be favorable to one’s own group. The group might also identify a new area of comparison, such as bilingual fluency, to enhance group distinctiveness.

Finally, the group might recast some of its denigrated attributes so that its value is reassessed. A new appreciation for group history and culture often emerges from this process. The civil rights movement, an important force for social change in the 1950s, caused such a recasting to occur. In the context of that movement, the label “Negro” was replaced by “Black,” which was recast by African Americans to symbolize group pride. Under the slogan “Black is beautiful,” the natural look became more valued than the traditional Euro-American model. African Americans were less likely to lighten or straighten their hair or use makeup to make their skin appear lighter.

Direct competition, in contrast, involves altering the group’s social position. It is often an institutional response; consequently, it encourages competition among groups. Displaced groups target institutions and policies, demanding resources in an effort to empower the group politically and economically. In the 1960s, for example, Black students demonstrated for curricular changes at colleges and universities. They demanded greater relevance in existing courses and the development of Black studies programs (ethnic studies) to highlight the group’s social and political contributions. In the 1970s, the women’s movement demanded economic and political changes, including equal pay for equal work and greater individual rights for women, such as abortion rights and institutionalized child care.

In-Group Bias

Social identity theory has been used to explain several intergroup processes. Among these are the phenomenon known as in-group bias (observed in laboratory experiments) and the actions of some subordinate groups to challenge their relative inferiority through collective (voice) approaches. The response of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s to negative perceptions of their group illustrates the latter process.

In-group bias is the tendency to favor one’s own group over other groups. In laboratory experiments, young subjects have been put in groups according to simple and fairly arbitrary criteria, such as the type of artwork they preferred. The goal was to establish a “minimal group situation”: an artificial social order in which subjects could be easily differentiated but which was free of any already existing conflicts. Once categorized, subjects were asked to perform one of several tasks, such as distributing money, assigning points, evaluating the different groups, or interpreting group members’ behavior. In all the tasks, subjects repeatedly showed a preference for their own groups. They gave to in-group members significantly more points and money than they gave to out-group members despite a lack of previous interaction among the subjects. When describing in-group members, they attributed altruistic behavior to the persons’ innate virtuous and admirable qualities rather than to outside causes. When describing out-group members, however, they reversed the pattern, attributing altruistic behavior to situational factors and hostile behavior to personal character. Thus, even without any history of competition, ideological differences, or hostility over scarce resources, subjects consistently demonstrate a preference for their in-group.

Social identity theory predicts this pattern. The powerful need to achieve a positive self-image motivates a person to establish the value of their group memberships. Since groups strongly contribute to an individual’s self-image, the individual works to enhance the group’s image. Group successes are, by extension, the individual’s successes. Daily life offers many examples of group allegiance, ranging from identification with one’s country to support of one’s hometown baseball team. Experiments in social identity suggest that ethnocentrism and racism, the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group, serve important psychological needs.

Working for Change

Social identity theory also explains why some subordinate groups challenge their relative inferiority through rebellion or social change while others do not. The theory predicts that individuals who are objectively bound to negatively distinct groups by gender or skin color, for example, will have fewer options for self-enhancement. Because they are driven by the powerful need to obtain a worthy self-image, however, they are unlikely to engage in self-hatred by accepting the denigrated image imposed on them by others. Instead, they will engage in some form of voice, the collective approach to image improvement.

Black Self-Image

Psychologists studying social identity do not directly explore the historical background of a group’s negative self-image. Rather, they perform laboratory experiments and field studies designed to determine individuals’ actual perceptions of groups, how individuals identify groups, and whether they see them as having a positive or negative image. Social psychologists also attempt to measure the changes that occur in group self-image over time; they can then infer that social or political movements have affected that image. Studies involving African American children for whom the essential identifying element is a physical one, race, provide an example.

In the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated school desegregation, social scientists presented evidence that educational segregation produced feelings of inferiority in Black children. Support was drawn in part from a 1947 study by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in which they compared the preferences of Black and White children between the ages of three and seven for dolls with either dark or fair skin tones. Approximately 60 percent of the Black children said that the fair-skinned doll was the “nicer” doll, the “nicer color” doll, or the doll they “preferred to play with.” The dark-skinned doll, by contrast, “looked bad.” Based on a combination of this negative self-image, or internalized racism, and the fact that African Americans are objectively bound to their group by their race, social identity theory would predict collective action for social change.

The civil rights movement embodied that collective, or voice, activity, and it offered African Americans a new context within which to evaluate Black identity. Results from studies performed in the 1970s suggest that, indeed, there was a significant rise in African American self-esteem during that period. A replication of the Clarks’ study by other researchers showed a clear preference for the dark-skinned doll among Black children. Later analyses of comparable doll studies showed that such preferences for one’s own group were most common among young subjects from areas with large Black populations and active Black pride movements.

A positive self-image may also emerge when social and cultural themes and historical events are reinterpreted within a group. A group’s cultural image may be emphasized; its music, art, and language then become valued. For example, in the twentieth century, Black music—work songs and spirituals—which once had been the music of the oppressed (history of African American music), evolved into a music that communicated ethnic identity in a new way. Blues and jazz became a focus of group pride; jazz, in particular, became renowned worldwide. The acceptance of jazz as a valuable art form by people of many races and nationalities illustrates another frequent outcome of activity for generating a positive self-concept: It often initiates a response from the larger society that improves the group’s relative position in that society.

Highlighting the role of social identity in educational outcomes, one study investigated the historical and modern-day alienation that many Black Americans experience in science fields compared to their White counterparts. Researchers evaluated the roles of racial social identity and ingroup evaluation as mechanisms influencing this disparity. They found that stronger identification with one's racial group and positive evaluations of the ingroup were associated with varying levels of science literacy. For Black Americans, a robust racial identity coupled with positive ingroup perceptions correlated with lower science literacy, but in White Americans, these factors were linked to higher science literacy.


Bibliography

Back, Les, and John Solomos. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2022.

Hughes, Michael, et al. "Racial Identity and Well-Being among African Americans." Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 1, 2015, pp. 25–48.

Lipsky, Suzanne. Internalized Racism. Rational Island, 1987.

Madeson, Melissa. "Social Identity Theory: I, You, Us & We. Why Groups Matter." Positive Psychology, 1 Apr. 2024, positivepsychology.com/social-identity-theory. Accessed 3 Apr. 2026.

Makarovs, Kirils, and Nick Allum. “Social Identity and Racial Disparities in Science Literacy.” Public Understanding of Science, vol. 32, no. 3, 2023, pp. 373–88, doi:10.1177/09636625221141378. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

McLeod, Saul. "Social Identity Theory in Psychology." Simply Psychology, 5 Oct. 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Tajfel, Henri. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Academic, 1978.

Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge UP, 1981.

Turner, John C. Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory. Blackwell, 1987.

Full Article

SIGNIFICANCE: Social identity theory examines the relationship between group membership and self-esteem. It has provided insights into intergroup conflict, ethnocentrism, cultural affirmation, and self-hatred, predicting both individual and group responses to an unfavorable self-concept.

Social identity theory maintains that all individuals are motivated to achieve and maintain a positive self-concept. A person’s self-concept derives from two principal sources: personal identity and social identity. Personal identity includes one’s individual traits, achievements, and qualities. Social identity includes the group affiliations that are recognized as being part of the self, such as one’s image of oneself as a Protestant, a blue-collar worker, or a conservative. Some individuals emphasize the personal aspects in their quest for a favorable self-image, while others emphasize their social identities. Social identity theory focuses on the latter. It attempts to explain when and how individuals transform their group affiliations to secure a favorable self-concept.

Psychologist Henri Tajfel introduced social identity theory in 1978. The theory maintains that a person’s social identity emerges from the natural process of social categorization. People categorize or classify themselves and others by many criteria, including occupation, religious affiliation, political orientation, ethnicity, economic class, and gender. An individual automatically identifies with some categories and rejects others. This creates a distinction between “in-groups,” with which one identifies, and “out-groups,” with which one does not identify. A person who identifies themselves as a Democrat, for example, would consider other Democrats members of the in-group and would view Republicans as members of the out-group. Individuals inevitably compare their groups with other groups; the goal of the comparisons is to establish the superiority of one’s own group, or the group’s “positive distinctiveness,” on some level, such as affluence, cultural heritage, or spirituality. If the comparison shows that the individual’s group memberships are positive and valuable, the social identities become an important part of the self. If, however, one’s group appears inferior, one’s self-image acquires “negative distinctiveness.” The individual is then motivated to acquire a more satisfactory self-concept.

Enhancing the Self-Concept

Tajfel and John Turner proposed three strategies that can be used to enhance one’s self-concept: “exit,” “pass,” and “voice.” The first two strategies represent attempts to validate the self. Both involve rejecting or distancing oneself from the devalued group to improve identity; both presume that social mobility exists. Exit involves simply leaving the group. This response is possible only within flexible social systems that permit individual mobility (social mobility and race). Although individuals cannot usually shed affiliations such as race or gender, they can openly discard other affiliations, such as “Buick owner” or “public school advocate.” If dissatisfied with an automobile, one trades it in for another; if unhappy with the public school system, one may exit and move one’s children into a private school. Passing, a more private response, occurs when individuals with unfavorable group memberships are not recognized as belonging to that group. A Jewish person may be mistaken for a Gentile, for example, or a Black person with a fair complexion may be mistaken for a White person. Typically, in such cases, the objective features that link the individual to the devalued group are absent or unnoticeable.

Voice, the final strategy for identity improvement, is a collective response: Group members act together to alter the group’s image and elevate its social value. Also called the “social change” approach, it is common in rigid social systems in which individual movement away from the disparaged group is impossible. It also occurs when psychological forces such as cultural and personal values bind the individual to the group. Members of such physically identifiable groups as women, African Americans, or Asians might adopt the social change strategy, for example, as might such cultural or religious group members as Irish Catholics or Orthodox Jews.

Voice is a complex response. Simply recognizing that social mobility is blocked for members of one’s own group is insufficient to prompt social change activity. Two additional perceptions of the overall social structure are important: its stability and its legitimacy. Stability is concerned with how fixed or secure the social hierarchy seems. Theoretically, no group is completely secure in its relative superiority; even groups that historically have been considered superior must work to maintain their favored position. If members of a denigrated group believe that alternatives to the current social hierarchy are possible, they are encouraged to reassess their own value. Legitimacy, in contrast, involves the bases for a group’s negative distinctiveness. If a group believes that its social inferiority is attributable to illegitimate causes such as discrimination in hiring practices or educational opportunities, group members will be more likely to challenge their inferior position.

Voice challenges to negative distinctiveness take two general forms: social creativity and direct competition. Social creativity involves altering or redefining the elements of comparison. However, the group’s social positions and resources need not be altered. In one approach, a group may simply limit the groups with which it compares itself, focusing on similar groups. A group of factory workers may choose to compare themselves with warehouse workers or postal employees rather than with a group of advertising executives. This approach increases the chances that the comparison outcome will be favorable to one’s own group. The group might also identify a new area of comparison, such as bilingual fluency, to enhance group distinctiveness.

Finally, the group might recast some of its denigrated attributes so that its value is reassessed. A new appreciation for group history and culture often emerges from this process. The civil rights movement, an important force for social change in the 1950s, caused such a recasting to occur. In the context of that movement, the label “Negro” was replaced by “Black,” which was recast by African Americans to symbolize group pride. Under the slogan “Black is beautiful,” the natural look became more valued than the traditional Euro-American model. African Americans were less likely to lighten or straighten their hair or use makeup to make their skin appear lighter.

Direct competition, in contrast, involves altering the group’s social position. It is often an institutional response; consequently, it encourages competition among groups. Displaced groups target institutions and policies, demanding resources in an effort to empower the group politically and economically. In the 1960s, for example, Black students demonstrated for curricular changes at colleges and universities. They demanded greater relevance in existing courses and the development of Black studies programs (ethnic studies) to highlight the group’s social and political contributions. In the 1970s, the women’s movement demanded economic and political changes, including equal pay for equal work and greater individual rights for women, such as abortion rights and institutionalized child care.

In-Group Bias

Social identity theory has been used to explain several intergroup processes. Among these are the phenomenon known as in-group bias (observed in laboratory experiments) and the actions of some subordinate groups to challenge their relative inferiority through collective (voice) approaches. The response of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s to negative perceptions of their group illustrates the latter process.

In-group bias is the tendency to favor one’s own group over other groups. In laboratory experiments, young subjects have been put in groups according to simple and fairly arbitrary criteria, such as the type of artwork they preferred. The goal was to establish a “minimal group situation”: an artificial social order in which subjects could be easily differentiated but which was free of any already existing conflicts. Once categorized, subjects were asked to perform one of several tasks, such as distributing money, assigning points, evaluating the different groups, or interpreting group members’ behavior. In all the tasks, subjects repeatedly showed a preference for their own groups. They gave to in-group members significantly more points and money than they gave to out-group members despite a lack of previous interaction among the subjects. When describing in-group members, they attributed altruistic behavior to the persons’ innate virtuous and admirable qualities rather than to outside causes. When describing out-group members, however, they reversed the pattern, attributing altruistic behavior to situational factors and hostile behavior to personal character. Thus, even without any history of competition, ideological differences, or hostility over scarce resources, subjects consistently demonstrate a preference for their in-group.

Social identity theory predicts this pattern. The powerful need to achieve a positive self-image motivates a person to establish the value of their group memberships. Since groups strongly contribute to an individual’s self-image, the individual works to enhance the group’s image. Group successes are, by extension, the individual’s successes. Daily life offers many examples of group allegiance, ranging from identification with one’s country to support of one’s hometown baseball team. Experiments in social identity suggest that ethnocentrism and racism, the belief in the superiority of one’s own ethnic group, serve important psychological needs.

Working for Change

Social identity theory also explains why some subordinate groups challenge their relative inferiority through rebellion or social change while others do not. The theory predicts that individuals who are objectively bound to negatively distinct groups by gender or skin color, for example, will have fewer options for self-enhancement. Because they are driven by the powerful need to obtain a worthy self-image, however, they are unlikely to engage in self-hatred by accepting the denigrated image imposed on them by others. Instead, they will engage in some form of voice, the collective approach to image improvement.

Black Self-Image

Psychologists studying social identity do not directly explore the historical background of a group’s negative self-image. Rather, they perform laboratory experiments and field studies designed to determine individuals’ actual perceptions of groups, how individuals identify groups, and whether they see them as having a positive or negative image. Social psychologists also attempt to measure the changes that occur in group self-image over time; they can then infer that social or political movements have affected that image. Studies involving African American children for whom the essential identifying element is a physical one, race, provide an example.

In the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, which mandated school desegregation, social scientists presented evidence that educational segregation produced feelings of inferiority in Black children. Support was drawn in part from a 1947 study by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in which they compared the preferences of Black and White children between the ages of three and seven for dolls with either dark or fair skin tones. Approximately 60 percent of the Black children said that the fair-skinned doll was the “nicer” doll, the “nicer color” doll, or the doll they “preferred to play with.” The dark-skinned doll, by contrast, “looked bad.” Based on a combination of this negative self-image, or internalized racism, and the fact that African Americans are objectively bound to their group by their race, social identity theory would predict collective action for social change.

The civil rights movement embodied that collective, or voice, activity, and it offered African Americans a new context within which to evaluate Black identity. Results from studies performed in the 1970s suggest that, indeed, there was a significant rise in African American self-esteem during that period. A replication of the Clarks’ study by other researchers showed a clear preference for the dark-skinned doll among Black children. Later analyses of comparable doll studies showed that such preferences for one’s own group were most common among young subjects from areas with large Black populations and active Black pride movements.

A positive self-image may also emerge when social and cultural themes and historical events are reinterpreted within a group. A group’s cultural image may be emphasized; its music, art, and language then become valued. For example, in the twentieth century, Black music—work songs and spirituals—which once had been the music of the oppressed (history of African American music), evolved into a music that communicated ethnic identity in a new way. Blues and jazz became a focus of group pride; jazz, in particular, became renowned worldwide. The acceptance of jazz as a valuable art form by people of many races and nationalities illustrates another frequent outcome of activity for generating a positive self-concept: It often initiates a response from the larger society that improves the group’s relative position in that society.

Highlighting the role of social identity in educational outcomes, one study investigated the historical and modern-day alienation that many Black Americans experience in science fields compared to their White counterparts. Researchers evaluated the roles of racial social identity and ingroup evaluation as mechanisms influencing this disparity. They found that stronger identification with one's racial group and positive evaluations of the ingroup were associated with varying levels of science literacy. For Black Americans, a robust racial identity coupled with positive ingroup perceptions correlated with lower science literacy, but in White Americans, these factors were linked to higher science literacy.


Bibliography

Back, Les, and John Solomos. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2022.

Hughes, Michael, et al. "Racial Identity and Well-Being among African Americans." Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 78, no. 1, 2015, pp. 25–48.

Lipsky, Suzanne. Internalized Racism. Rational Island, 1987.

Madeson, Melissa. "Social Identity Theory: I, You, Us & We. Why Groups Matter." Positive Psychology, 1 Apr. 2024, positivepsychology.com/social-identity-theory. Accessed 3 Apr. 2026.

Makarovs, Kirils, and Nick Allum. “Social Identity and Racial Disparities in Science Literacy.” Public Understanding of Science, vol. 32, no. 3, 2023, pp. 373–88, doi:10.1177/09636625221141378. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

McLeod, Saul. "Social Identity Theory in Psychology." Simply Psychology, 5 Oct. 2023, www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html. Accessed 6 Mar. 2025.

Tajfel, Henri. Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations. Academic, 1978.

Tajfel, Henri. Human Groups and Social Categories: Studies in Social Psychology. Cambridge UP, 1981.

Turner, John C. Rediscovering the Social Group: Self-Categorization Theory. Blackwell, 1987.

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