Social Identity Theory and the Crisis of Confidence in Social Psychology: A Commentary, and Some Research on Uncertainty Reduction

The role played by social identity theory in responding to the crisis of confidence in social psychology is described. It is a theory that addresses group processes and intergroup relations by separating and articulating different levels of explanation. Social categorization depersonalizes perception, cognition, affect and conduct in terms of relevant ingroup or outgroup prototypes, and social categorization of self, in conjunction with beliefs about the nature of intergroup relations, is responsible for specific manifestations of group behavior. Social identity theory continues to develop. In this article we focus on the motivational role of subjective uncertainty reduction in social identification – a model is outlined (Hogg & Mullin, 1999), and data from a 2 × 2 minimal group experiment in which categorization and uncertainty were orthogonally manipulated ( N = 151) are presented. As predicted, categorization produced discrimination, elevated identification, and reduced uncertainty, but only, or more markedly, under conditions where subjective uncertainty was relatively high.