Freedom: From All Sides Seminar - Garriy Shteynberg
Rethinking the Group
The social identity perspective is one of the most successful theories in social psychology and across the social sciences. Its fundamental tenet is one of social categorization—the psychological partitioning of the social world into social groups, or categories. As is well known to most academics and the wider public, if a person identifies with a given social group, there are deemed an ingroup. People outside of that given social group are regarded as members of an outgroup. The psychological and behavioral consequences of such social categorization are profound, as the activation of an ingroup category shifts one’s attitudes, feelings, beliefs, and behaviors to match those of that ingroup.
Despite the logical coherence and explanatory power of the social identity perspective, we argue that it has a significant blind spot rooted in its reliance on social categorization as the only means by which to represent the self as a member of a social group. Whereas defining the self via specific ingroup categories lends the theory its cognitive rigor, it also obscures other avenues to human sociality. We argue that beyond representing themselves as social objects, humans represent themselves as social agents. We start by first describing the nature of a social agent, and how it differs from a social category. We then proceed to discuss why the social agent vs. social category distinction is both logically coherent, and helpful to understanding human sociality. We apply our analytic frame to issues of social coordination, social dignity, social dominance, and social consciousness.
Dial-In Information
Friday, November 20, 2020 at 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Virtual Event- Event Type
- Topic
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- Department
- Philosophy
- Contact Name
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Donna Bodenheier
- Contact Email
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865/974-3255
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