Abstract

Chapter 6 Social Identity and Intergroup Differentiation Processes Ad van Knippenberg University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen Naomi Ellemers University of Groningen, Groningen INTRODUCTION Since the early seventies, European social psychology has witnessed an increased interest in the study of intergroup relations. Much of this research was in- spired by the ideas of the late Henri Tajfel, specifically by the social identity theory developed by Tajfel and coworkers (Tajfel, 1972, 1978a,b; Tajfel and Turner, 1979) and by subsequent elaborations of this theoretical framework (e.g. Turner, 1982). As Doise (1988) suggests, it is probably too early to make an inventory of the richness of Tajfel’s contribution to social psychology because it is ‘. . . still not finished and it is continuing to develop itself in the further writings of his earlier co-workers’ (p. 100). It may indeed be argued that contemporary so- cial psychologists are not in the position to give a balanced assessment of the value of Tajfel’s theory because they are still too much immersed in the process of testing, elaborating and applying it. Recent reviews of the theoretical and empirical developments tend to concentrate on selected thematic and theoreti- cal issues and generally entail reformulations, modifications and extensions