Social Categorization in Intergroup Contexts: Three Kinds of Self-Categorization (original) (raw)

2015, Social and Personality Psychology Compass

In reviewing self-categorization theory and the literature upon which it is based, we conclude that individuals' attempts to form social categories could lead to three kinds of self-categorization. We label them intergroup categorization, ingroup categorization, and outgroup categorization. We review literature supporting these three types and argue that they can help to explain and organize the existing evidence. Moreover, we conclude that distinguishing these three kinds of selfcategorization lead to novel predictions regarding social identity, social cognition, and groups. We offer some of those predictions by discussing their potential causes (building from optimal distinctiveness and security seeking literatures) and implications (on topics including prototype complexity, self-stereotyping, stereotype formation, intergroup behavior, dual identity, conformity, and the psychological implications of perceiving uncategorized collections of people). This paper offers a platform from which to build theoretical and empirical advances in social identity, social cognition, and intergroup relations. Because of the centrality of self in social perception, social categorization involves most fundamentally a distinction between the group containing the self, the ingroup, and other groups, the outgroupsbetween the "we's" and the "they's". (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010) We couldn't agree more, or so we thought until recently. Building on Sumner's (1906) classic distinction between ingroups and outgroups, Dovidio and Gaertner (2010) highlighted what we consider to be two well-founded assumptions about social categorization: (i) intergroup contexts entail an ingroup and outgroup(s), with the self on one side of that divide (ingroup); and (ii) ingroups and outgroups are both social categories. And yet, in revisiting the literature on categorization theory, self-categorization theory, and the literature on social cognition and intergroup relations that those theories have helped generate, we have observed that in intergroup contexts, ingroup-outgroup categorization is only one of three possible kinds of self-categorizations. The other two possible kinds are what we call "one-group categorizations", where only one group, the ingroup or the outgroup, is perceived to be a social category. Moreover, we argue that all three selfcategorizations have meaningful consequences for social cognition, and intragroup and intergroup dynamics, but only one of these could be truly construed as differentiating ingroup categories from outgroup categories.