Social Identity, System Justification, and Social Dominance: Commentary on Reicher, Jost et al., and Sidanius et al.

By Mark Rubin, Miles Hewstone. 2004

181 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The articles by Reicher (2004), Jost, Banaji, and Nosek (2004), and Sidanius, Pratto, van Laar, and Levin (2004) discuss the strengths and weaknesses of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), system justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994), and social dominance theory (Sidanius, 1993). The latter two theories grew out of a critique of social identity theory, but this critique relates more to deficiencies in social identity research than to deficiencies in the theory itself. More balanced and comprehensive social identity research is required in order to allow a fair assessment of the theory’s limitations. In addition, Reicher (2004) and Huddy (2004) are correct that only social identity theory offers the potential for explaining social change and social stability.

Subfields: Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3bfc38bf5feece96f8db425342e71dcf66a87cbf

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Citations in the corpus

The person-based nature of prejudice: Individual difference predictors of intergroup negativity (2015, background): “…“personality theories have difficulty explaining how the same person can show markedly different degrees of discrimination in different situations” (Rubin & Hewstone, 2004, p. 837), theories emphasising contextual factors to the neglect of person-based factors similarly have difficulty…”
A Decade of System Justification Theory: Accumulated Evidence of Conscious and Unconscious Bolstering of the Status Quo (2004, background): “…several others, including Sidanius (1993) and even a few social identity theorists (Hewstone & Jaspars, 1984; Hewstone & Ward, 1985; Hinkle & Brown, 1990), some of whom now argue that social identity theory has no problem handling outgroup favoritism (see Brown, 2000a; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004).”
Multicultural recognition and ethnic minority rights: A social identity perspective (2006, background): “These processes should not be ignored, and the need to take them into account is increasingly being emphasised by social psychologists (e.g., Deaux & Martin, 2003; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; Reicher, 2004).”
Person-Organization Congruence and the Maintenance of Group-Based Social Hierarchy: A Social Dominance Perspective (2005, background): “…to competing and related theoretical perspectives is beyond the scope of this paper, these questions are comprehensively discussed elsewhere (see Huddy, 2004; Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Banaji, 2004; Reicher, 2004; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004; and Sidanius, Pratto, van Laar, & Levin, 2004).”
A quarter century of system justification theory: Questions, answers, criticisms, and societal applications (2018, background): “Fifteen years ago, Rubin and Hewstone (2004) compared the plight of those who are disadvantaged in society to a losing football team that must ‘admit that they lost the game and that the other teamwon’ and argued that ‘this response is simply the passive reflection of the current status quo, as…”