Social Identity and Social Comparison

Abstract

Social comparison is a pervasive and fundamental feature of group life. People compare themselves with fellow group members, they compare themselves with people in other groups, and they compare their own group with other groups. From these comparisons emerge group norms, group structure, and intergroup relations, which in turn provide the framework for group-based social comparisons. Any theory of the social group therefore would be a strange theory indeed if it did not deal with social comparison processes. In this chapter, I discuss social identity theory; a theory of the social group that originated in Europe in the very early 1970s, and that now has a significant and still burgeoning profile in contemporary social psychology.