What´s Social Identity Theory Or Stereotyping?

The Social Identity Theory addresses phenomena such as prejudice, discrimination, intergroup conflict and stereotyping in terms of personality or interpersonal interactions. Tajfel and Turner (1979) suggested that the differentiation of two groups was enough for the emergence of prejudice. Stereotyping is seen as unfair generalisations about members of a group. It is viewed as problematic and resistent to change. Stereotypes are cognitive representations of how members of a group are similar to one another and different from members of other groups (Vescio & Waver, 2013). Both Social Identity Theory and Stereotyping aim at understanding what lead s to biased behaviours such as prejudice. Prejudice is defined as "the holding of derogatory social attitudes or cognitive beliefs, the expression of negative affect, ot the display of hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards members of a group on account of their membership of that group'' (Brown, 1995). It can be expressed in various ways such as abuse, assault, discrimination. Age, culture, race and gender are some of the cases of prejudice.
Social Identity Theory suggests that three cognitive processes are involved in becoming
Social Identity Theory suggests that people have a range of group and individual identities, which vary according to the social situation. Tajfel (1972) defines social identity as "the individual's knowleddge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of this group membership''. People strive for positive social identity and therefore they create a possitive meaning of their group membership as a way to increase their own self-esteem. The need of positive social identity may lead to negative discrimination towards the outgroup.This is a prerequisite for the emergence of prejudice, intergroup conflict and negative