The Social identity and Self-categorization theory

Abstract

In social psychology a returning to its sociological roots can be observed in the years from 1960 till 1980. Whereas the psychologically oriented social psychology was concerned with the intraindividual processes, the sociologically oriented social psychology rediscovered on the other side the phenomena which have arised, maintained and changed in and due to the social interactions. In this field, the social constructionism and the theory of social representations are not the only influential theories – social identity theory and self-categorization theory are important as well. The paper presents and evaluates the last two theories.

Keywords

• social psychology
• social identity theory
• self-categorization theory