Situated Identities and Social Influence

Situated identity theory postulates a process for establishing the definition of a situation and its normative structure. The normative structure is hypothesized to predict precisely the distribution of anticipated responses. A simulation study of a well-known social influence experiment illustrates the paradigm for investigating these ideas, and the results are supportive. The generality and power of situated identity theory encourage an interface between the sociological ideas of symbolic interactionists and the psychological tradition of experimentation in the