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Unlock This CourseHave you ever wondered why people are more likely to help someone wearing their school uniform than a stranger from another school? Social Identity Theory explains this fascinating aspect of human behaviour. It suggests that we see ourselves as members of different groups and this membership strongly influences who we choose to help.
Prosocial behaviour refers to actions that benefit others, like helping, sharing, or volunteering. But here's the interesting part - we don't help everyone equally. Our willingness to help often depends on whether we see someone as part of our 'in-group' (people like us) or 'out-group' (people different from us).
Key Definitions:
When we identify strongly with a group, we tend to favour members of that group over outsiders. This isn't necessarily about being mean to others - it's about feeling a special connection to people who share our identity. Think about how you might feel more comfortable asking for help from someone wearing your school badge compared to a stranger.
Mark Levine and his colleagues conducted one of the most famous studies demonstrating how Social Identity Theory affects helping behaviour. They wanted to test whether making group membership obvious would influence who people choose to help in emergency situations.
The researchers recruited 45 male Manchester United football fans for what they thought was a study about fan attitudes. The participants were then put into three different conditions that would test their helping behaviour towards strangers.
Participants completed questionnaires about being Manchester United fans, making their team identity very obvious and important to them at that moment.
Participants completed questionnaires about being football fans in general, making their specific team identity less important.
Participants completed questionnaires unrelated to football, so their team identity wasn't activated at all.
After completing the questionnaires, participants had to walk to another building. On the way, they witnessed a staged emergency: a jogger (who was actually a confederate - someone working with the researchers) appeared to fall and injure his ankle, crying out in pain.
The crucial manipulation was what the injured jogger was wearing:
This was a field experiment using a 3x3 factorial design. The researchers measured helping behaviour by observing whether participants stopped to help the injured jogger and how quickly they responded. This gave them objective, measurable data about prosocial behaviour in a realistic setting.
The results strongly supported Social Identity Theory's predictions about helping behaviour:
When participants had just been thinking about being Manchester United fans:
When participants thought about being football fans in general:
When participants hadn't been thinking about football at all:
The study shows that our group identities act like mental switches. When a particular identity is 'switched on' (made salient), it dramatically affects who we're willing to help. The Manchester United fans were much more helpful to fellow supporters when their team identity was activated, but showed little preference when it wasn't.
These findings perfectly demonstrate the key principles of Social Identity Theory:
When the participants' Manchester United identity was made salient, they automatically categorised the injured jogger as either 'one of us' (in-group) or 'one of them' (out-group) based on his shirt. This categorisation happened instantly and influenced their helping behaviour.
Interestingly, when participants thought about being 'football fans' rather than specifically 'Manchester United fans', their helping behaviour changed. Now both Manchester United and Liverpool fans were seen as part of the broader in-group of 'football supporters', so both received more help than the person in plain clothes.
This research has important implications for understanding helping behaviour in society. It suggests that emphasising shared identities (like being from the same city, country, or even planet) might increase helping behaviour between different groups. Conversely, highlighting differences between groups might reduce it.
Levine et al.'s study helps us understand many aspects of helping behaviour in modern society:
The research suggests that promoting broader identities (like being 'global citizens' or 'humans') might increase helping behaviour across traditional group boundaries. This has implications for international aid, environmental cooperation and social cohesion.
The study also helps explain phenomena like:
Modern researchers have built on Levine et al.'s work to explore helping behaviour in digital environments, cross-cultural contexts and with different types of group identities. The basic principle - that group membership influences helping behaviour - remains consistently supported across different studies and situations.