Applying the Social identity approach in clinical and health domains: Key principles and insights

Over the course of the last five decades, social identity theorizing has emerged as a major framework for understanding group processes and the psychology of group life (e.g., see Reicher, Spears, & Haslam, 2010; Turner, 1999). At its core, work in this tradition serves to explain how social behaviour is structured not merely by people�s sense of themselves as individuals (as �I� and �me�) but also, and often more importantly, by their sense of themselves as members of social groups (as �us� and �we�). This observation reflects a core insight of the social identity approach � namely that humans� psychological make-up is largely a product of the fact that we live, and have evolved to live, in social groups. As a result, groups are not simply external features of the world that provide a backdrop for our behaviour. Rather, they structure our psychology through their capacity to be internalized as part of our sense of self. More particularly, they provide us with a sense of social identity: the �knowledge that [we] belong to certain social groups together with some emotional nd value significance to [us] of this group membership� (Tajfel, 1972, p. 292).