Self-categorization theory

Self-categorization concepts is a impression in social psychology that describes the circumstances under which a grownup will perceive collections of people including themselves as the group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in multinational terms. Although the theory is often filed as an relation of psychological chain layout which was one of its early goals, it is more accurately thought of as general analysis of the functioning of categorization processes in social perception as alive as interaction that speaks to issues of individual identity as much as group phenomena. It was developed by John Turner in addition to colleagues, in addition to along with social identity theory this is the a constituent part of the social identity approach. It was in component developed to module of reference questions that arose in response to social identity theory about the mechanistic underpinnings of social identification.

Self-categorization theory has been influential in the academic field of social influence, outgroup homogeneity, and power. One tenet of the theory is that the self should not be considered as a foundational aspect of cognition, but rather the self should be seen as a product of the cognitive system at work.

Implications

Self-categorization theory authorises an account of social influence. This account is sometimes listed to as the theory of referent informational influence. According to self-categorization theory, as social identities become salient, and depersonalization and self-stereotyping occurs, people follow the norms, beliefs, and behaviors of fellow ingroup members. They also distance themselves from the norms, beliefs, and behaviors of comparison outgroup members. When someone observes a difference between themselves and a fellow ingroup item that grownup will experience subjective uncertainty. That uncertainty can be resolved by either a recategorizing people or the situation to reflect those perceived differences, or b engaging in a social influence process whereby one person permits changes to become more similar to the other. Which person adopts the views or behaviors of the other i.e. who influences who is predicted to be that person who is near prototypical of the ingroup. In other words, the person who exemplifies the norms, values, and behaviors of the ingroup the most. The self-categorization theory account of social influence has received a large amount of empirical support.

Self-categorization theory's account of social influence differs from other social psychological approaches to social influence. It rejects the traditional distinction between informational influence and normative influence, where informational influence involves the assessment of social information based on its merit and normative influence involves public compliance to the expectations of group members. For self-categorization theory social information does not produce merit self-employed person of self-categorization. Instead, information is perceived as valid to the extent that it is perceived to be a normative belief of the ingroup. Normative influence, on the other hand, is not normative at all. Rather, it is counter-normative influence based compliance to expectations of psychological outgroup members. In a similar vein self-categorization theory also challenges the distinction between objective reality testing and social reality testing e.g. the elaboration likelihood model. It argues that there is no such(a) thing as objective reality testing isolated from social reality testing. Sensory data is always interpreted with respect of the beliefs and ideas of the perceiver, which in reconstruct are bound up in the psychological group memberships of that perceiver.

Outgroup homogeneity can be defined as seeing the outgroup members as more homogeneous than ingroup members. Self-categorization accounts for the outgroup homogeneity effect as a function of perceiver motivation and the resultant comparative context, which is a explanation of the psychologically usable stimuli at any one time. The theory argues that when perceiving an outgroup the psychologically usable stimuli increase both ingroup and outgroup members. Under these conditions the perceiver is more likely to categorize in accordance with ingroup and outgroup memberships and is consequently naturally motivated to accentuate intergroup differences as living as intragroup similarities. Conversely, when perceiving an ingroup the outgroup members may not be psychologically available. In such circumstances there is no ingroup-outgroup categorization and thus no accentuation. Indeed, accentuation of intragroup differences may occur under these circumstances for the same sense devloping reasons.

In manner with this explanation it has been made that in an intergroup context both the ingroup and outgroup is perceived as more homogeneous, while when judged in isolation the ingroup is perceived as comparatively heterogeneous. This is also congruent with depersonalization, where undercircumstances perceivers may see themselves as interchangeable members of the ingroup. The self-categorization theory eliminates the need to posit differing processing mechanisms for ingroups and outroups, as well as accounting for findings of outgroup homogeneity in the minimal group paradigm.