The Social Identity Approach

Social Influence – The Social Cure

In this course, Dr Mhairi Bowe (Nottingham Trent University) explores the social identity approach to health, also known as the ‘social cure’. In the first lecture, we think about the social identity approach in psychology more generally and how it relates to health and wellbeing. In the second lecture, we look at some early research in this area which led to the development of the social cure theory in the early 2000s. In the third lecture, we focus on more recent approaches to the social cure theory. Next, we think about how it can be applied practically to improve health outcomes in clinical and community settings. In the fifth module, we consider so-called ‘social curses’, instances where group identification can have a negative health impact on individual group members, e.g., due to stigmatisation. In the sixth and final lecture, we review the content from across the course.

The Social Identity Approach

In this lecture, we think about the social identity approach and how it relates to health and wellbeing, focusing in particular on: (i) the origins of Social Identity Theory (SIT) in the work of psychologist Henri Tajfel; (ii) how SIT seeks to understand social behaviour by recognise the psychology of groups; (iii) how SIT can be used to investigate the relationship between social contact and improved health outcomes, contrasting this more recent psychological approach with earlier, more limited sociological approaches.