Social Identity Theory: Your Group Rules, Others Drool

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

**Josh Clark** (0:11)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too. And we're just a super cool in-group, looking down on your out-group here on Stuff You Should Know.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:23)
Did you hear that thunder? Can you hear that?

**Josh Clark** (0:25)
No, it was a little too delicate, the sound was.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:31)
Yeah, it just started raining, and it's thundering pretty good, so maybe people can hear that. It might add a little mood.

**Josh Clark** (0:36)
That's nice. Because yeah, I think we could use a little mood on this one. This is a very rigid look at what I think is a very interesting social psychology theory.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:49)
Oh yeah?

**Josh Clark** (0:49)
That's, yeah. Do you not find it very interesting?

**Chuck Bryant** (0:53)
I didn't find this one super interesting. This, you know, like a lot of social psychology, this one I filed under like, yeah, I guess you're, you know, you're observing something that happens. That's about where it ended for me.

**Josh Clark** (1:07)
I get it. I get it.
To me, yeah. I mean, I sense what you're talking about. Like there's just something.
I feel like we're talking people out of listening to this episode right now. No, no, no, no. Well, we'll just clue everybody in, and you can make up your own mind how you feel about this, guys. Well, what we're talking about is social identity theory, which you probably gleaned from the title. And in nutshell, social identity theory basically says that we get a sense of self and belonging, and well, we help develop our identity from the groups we belong to. And that is very different from the idea that we just develop as individuals through normal developmental psychology. In fact, the guys who came up with social identity theory basically say, it's the group that's the thing, not the individual. Like, that's where we really develop most of our identity, is from interacting with other people. Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:03)
You know, I think, I don't think anyone will be talked in or out of liking, or thinking this is interesting, because I think it'll be whether or not you're into social psychology generally as a whole or not.
I bet. Because for a lot of social psychology, for me, I'm like, sort of like I was saying, because like a lot of this stuff to me is like, well, yeah, duh. But like, what's the point?

**Josh Clark** (2:27)
Sure.
Well, here's the point. This is the point as far as I can tell. Like the point, the part I just said is definitely duh.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:35)
Yeah.

**Josh Clark** (2:36)
But the reason they came up with social identity theory is to explain stuff that heretofore, and still some people are like, I don't know about social identity theory, although it's the dominant framework for explaining this stuff.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:48)
Yeah.

**Josh Clark** (2:49)
Explaining things that are tough to explain, like why do normal people become fascists, get swept up in fascist movements? Yeah. Why do sports fans get in fights with sports fans from rival teams? Alcohol. Like these things, sure. I mean, yeah, you can't really deny that.
But they don't quite make sense when you step back and look at things. And so social identity theory says, all of this can be explained with this theory. And I think that's where it gets interesting for me, especially the idea that this is so ingrained in our evolutionary history that we basically can't do anything about it. Like, even being aware of this can only help to such a degree. Like, you're still innately attracted to being a member of a group.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:41)
Yeah. I think that's my deal. And I promise I'm not going to say, duh, like 100 times.
Because I do think some of the social psychology stuff is fairly interesting. I'm just more of a person who's like sort of a what, like where does that get us in the end? You know what I mean?

**Josh Clark** (3:58)
Yes. I totally get that. We should also give our caveat because we make fun of social psychology and the studies involved so frequently, it would be pretty rich to just be like, yeah, this is super cool and proven.
A lot of the studies, just like any other social psychology field or sub-discipline is there are like 30 people who are grad students or undergrad students that were getting extra credit. That's what the study found, or that's what the study used. And then whatever they found, that's now just universally applied to everybody. Yeah. And in a lot of cases, that's just not correct. But this one is so, like you said, duh, that it seems like, yes, this is very true.