[MUSIC] The social identity of an individual is linked to her knowledge of her membership in certain social groups. Until the resulting emotional and evaluative consequences of that membership. According to Tajfel and Turner, social identification impacts the choice of activities that are congruent with this identity. In group cooperation, and cohesion, and internalization of group values and believes. Social identities help us in part to answer the fundamental question, who am I? To the extent that an individual identifies with a social category. This will influence this persons attitudes and behaviors according to the stereotypical qualities of the category. According to social interactionism, this identification gives us a shared meaning concerning who we are, which is reflected through our interactions with others. And generally simplifies and makes possible our interactions with our social environment. For example, when a far east Asian person associates being Asian with conciliatory, non-conflictual traits, they tend to adopt these qualities as standards for their own behaviors. In doing so, they receive confirmatory feedback from both in group and out group others, which allows them to have a meaningful interaction. In addition, diversity categories are more often than not directly correlated with power and prestige order, according to status characteristics theory. For example, studies have confirmed that men have higher power and prestige than women, particularly in task oriented mixed sex teams. That is the exact condition we find in the workplace. Similarly, ethnicity and race have been found to have a power and prestige order in different societies. Simon and Halstead demonstrated that people are more likely to locate themselves along socially positive aspects, in terms of collective categories. What this means is that in general, since dominant social groups, for example, men in leadership, or heterosexuals, have more positive aspects in comparison to minorities. For example, women in leadership, or gay men. Those of dominant social groups are more likely to attain a positive social identity. Judith Howard considers that this is a challenge for members of stigmatized, negatively valued groups. Who may disassociate themselves to evaluate the distinguishing dimensions of in groups as less negative to rate the in group as more favorable or other dimensions. Or to compete directly with the out group to produce changes in the status of the groups. In line with this, in considering racial and ethnic identity Fordham and Ogbu provide an understanding of academic under-performance among African-American students in the US. As a desire on their part to maintain their racial identity. A solidarity with the African-American culture. So good students will intentionally perform badly academically, in order to assert their in group identity. In this context, high achieving African-American students may experience an internal identity conflict, an ambivalence, and end up taking on a raceless persona. This raceless persona is not without psychological cost for the high achieving student. Leading to negative evaluations of the in-group or identification with non-racial elements of the out-group. Similarly members of the GLBT community talk about the difficulties they encounter in the workplace and the impact on their coming out or not. In work environments that are hostile to the GLBT community, gay individuals, for example, have difficulty attaining a positive social identity. As a consequence, they may disguise their sexual orientation by creating a fictitious wife and children with whom they spend fictitious holidays, in order to fit in. And not be stigmatized or passed over for promotions. However, these efforts have an overall negative psychological impact due to the internal inconsistencies that this creates, as well as the cognitive effort that this requires to maintain real and fictitious experiences and existence. These identity phenomenon can also be extended to other social categories such as women. Social identity is a key element in our response to the question, who am I? At the same time, diversity categories are laden with a positive identity for dominant social groups and negative identity for minority groups. Which can be explained by the in-group, out-group bias and the power advantage of dominant social groups. Social identity is a key element in response to the question, who am I? For diversity, it is associated with power issues. And members of minority social groups experience negative psychological consequences of their social identity. In the workplace, this becomes a long term cost for the firm.
