Individuality and the Group by Postmes, Tom; Jetten, Jolanda;

Short description:

This book brings together an international selection of prominent researchers at the forefront of this development. They reflect on the issue of individuality in the group and on how thinking about social identity has changed. Together, these chapters chart a key development in the field: how social identity perspectives inform understanding of cohesion, unity and collective action, but also how they help us understand individuality, agency, autonomy, disagreement, and diversity within groups.

Long description:

Social identity research has transformed psychology and the social sciences. Developed around intergroup relations, perspectives on social identity have now been applied fruitfully to a diverse array of topics and domains, including health, organizations and management, culture, politics and group dynamics. In many of these new areas, the focus has been on groups, but also very much on the autonomous individual. This has been an exciting development, and has prompted a rethinking of the relationship between personal identity and social identity - the issue of individuality in the group.

This book brings together an international selection of prominent researchers at the forefront of this development. They reflect on this issue of individuality in the group, and on how thinking about social identity has changed. Together, these chapters chart a key development in the field: how social identity perspectives inform understanding of cohesion, unity and collective action, but also how they help us understand individuality, agency, autonomy, disagreement, and diversity within groups.

This text is valuable to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students studying social psychology where intergroup relations and group processes are a central component. Given its wider reach, however, it will also be of interest to those in cognate disciplines where social identity perspectives have application potential.

"For researchers in social psychology, and particularly those familiar with SIT and related theories, this book will make for congenial and straightforward reading. For someone outside the field, some of the terminology might take some getting used to, but I would not hesitate to recommend the book to anyone interested in the interplay of individual and social forces in settings ranging from work life to national and international politics. The text is friendly in the sense that terms are defined and theory is placed in larger social and historical context throughout. Also, the book in its entirety is fewer than 300 pages, and most chapters are between 15 and 25 pages in length, so each "bite" of theory and research, so to speak, is easily digestible. All of the chapters are well written, and each contributes an important part to the whole."

Table of Contents:

Introduction - Jolanda Jetten and Tom Postmes
The Puzzle of Inidividuality and the Group
PART ONE: EXPRESSING AND EXPERIENCING INDIVIDUALITY IN THE GROUP
Reconceptualizing Personality - John C Turner et al
Producing Individuality by Defining the Personal Self
Acting Like an Individual versus Feeling Like an Individual - Deborah Prentice
Using Collective Identities for Assimilation and Differentiation - Cynthia L Pickett and Geoffry J Leonardelli
Ingroup Critics and Their Influence on Groups - Matthew J Hornsey
PART TWO: SHAPING INDIVIDUALITY THROUGH CULTURE AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
Group Status and Individual Differentiation - Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi
"I Did It My Way" - Jolanda Jetten and Tom Postmes
Collective Expressions of Individualism
Culture, Social Identity and the Individual - Michael J Halloran and Emiko S Kashima
Interobjectivity - Fathali M Moghaddam
The Collective Roots of Individual Consciousness and Social Identity
PART THREE: THE INDIVIDUAL-GROUP DYNAMIC
The Individual Within the Group - Russell Spears et al
Respect!
Psychological Need Satisfaction through Social Roles - B Ann Bettencourt et al
The Dynamics of Personal and Social Identity Formation - Tom Postmes et al
On the Agency of Individuals and Groups - Stephen Reichel and S Alexander Haslam
Lessons from the BBC Prison Study
Reconciling Indiviuality and the Group - Tom Postmes and Jolanda Jetten