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Personal Identity And Social Identity Essay

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Personal Identity And Social Identity Essay
Theoretical background

Personal identity, Social identity and Social categorization

Following early psychologists study, such as Freud’s three-level model of self-structure( ), ego psychology(Harmann, 1958), and self psychology (Kohut, 1907), Erik Erikson(1950;1968) developed the concept and theory of personal identity by linking individual biological changes and the sociocultural environment, thereby rejecting both absolutism of psychosexual development and the omnipotence of socialization(Janos L,2014). The identity concept adopted by cognitive social psychology focuses on self-knowledge and conceptual reflection, and in social science, personal identity is ofen opposed to social identity.

Social identity is defined as the totality of …show more content…
They believed that hostile behaviour was not caused by individual attitudes but by group dynamics. Studies showed that discrimination appears in intergroup comparison even if there is only a minimal difference between the two groups and group boundaries are only based on the minimal difference. This minimal group paradigm shows that mere categorization is sufficient to elicit intergroup discrimination. Social identity theory (Tajfel,1981; Turner,1996; Turner et al., 1987) was basically based on this paradigm, and offered a psychological model. “in situations involving group membership, interpersonal behavior is replaced by intergroup behavior, that is, one’s behavior results not from one’s personal identity but from one’s social identity, therefore intergroup behavior is to be explained based not on group members’ individual attributes but on their social identity ”(Janos L,
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