CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 3,401Social and Intergroup PsychologyCultural Differences and ValuesSocial Representations and Identity

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 58 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Who is this "We"? Levels of collective identity and self representations.

Brewer, Marilynn B., Gardner, Wendi·1996·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
DOI 10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Cross-cultural perspectives have brought renewed interest in the social aspects of the self and the extent to which individuals define themselves in terms of their relationships to others and to social groups. This article provides a conceptual review of research and theory of the social self, arguing that the personal, relational, and collective levels of self-definition represent distinct forms of selfrepresentation with different origins, sources of self-worth, and social motivations. A set of 3 experiments illustrates haw priming of the interpersonal or collective we can alter spontaneous judgments of similarity and self-descriptions. Until recently, social psychological theories of the self focused on the individuated self-concept—the person's sense of unique identity differentiated from others. Cross-cultural perspectives, however, have brought a renewed interest in the social aspects of the self and the extent to which individuals define themselves in terms of their relationships to others and to social groups (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai, & Lucca, 1988). Central to this new perspective is the idea that connectedness and belonging are not merely affiliations or alliances between the self and others but entail fundamental differences in the way the self is construed (Brewer, 1991; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Singelis, 1994; Trafimow, Triandis, & Goto, 1991; Triandis, 1989; Turner, Oakes, Haslam, & McGarty, 1994). Some of these theories of the social self focus on cross-cultural differences in whether the self is typically construed as individuated or interpersonal. However, all recognize that these different self-construals may also coexist within the same individual, available to be activated at different times or in different contexts. Furthermore, in several theories, achieving an extended sense of self has the status of a fundamental human motivation (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Brewer, 1991). In other words, individuals seek to define themselves in terms of their immersion in relationships with others and with larger collectives and derive much of their self-evaluation from such social identities (Breckler & Greenwald, 1986; Greenwald & Breckler, 1985). The motivational properties of collective identities are systematically documented in Baumeister and Leary's (1995) comprehensive review of the evidence in support of a fundamental need to belong as an innate feature of human nature. All of the theories mentioned above draw some kind of distinction between the individuated or personal self (those aspects of the self-concept that differentiate the self from all others) and a relational or social self (those aspects of the self-concept that

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83

Cites

58 of 58 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Show all 60 references

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Items 101–200 of 1,002

Related

See all

Metadata

Authors
Brewer, M. B., & Gardner, W.
Affiliations
The Ohio State University (US)
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
1996-07
Volume
71
Issue
1
Pages
83-93
ISSN
  • 0022-3514 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-1315
DOI
10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.83
OpenAlex
W2015152577
Cited by
3,401
References
60
Citations by year
2026: 143 · 2025: 139 · 2024: 123 · 2023: 164 · 2022: 154 · 2021: 176 · 2020: 251 · 2019: 195 · 2018: 166 · 2017: 155 · 2016: 158 · 2015: 156 · 2014: 168 · 2013: 147 · 2012: 180
FWCI
55.08
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Cultural Differences and Values
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Social Representations and Identity
Keywords
collective identity, social self, self-construal, extended self, need to belong, self-representation, social identity, self-concept, similarity judgments, self-description, self-worth, social motivation, self-construal priming

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review