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Mean Girls Social Identity Theory

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Introduction People want to feel accepted and connected to other people. Even though everyone’s social lives look different, most people fear isolation and search for their social identity. The Social Identity Theory unpacks the process of gaining one’s social identity and explains the competitive trends between social groups. This paper will first give an in-depth summary of SIT that will be later applied to a movie example that connects directly to the theory. Lastly, I will share my interpretations of the movie and the Social Identity Theory through the lens of my application process.
Summary of Social Identity Theory The Social Identity Theory is formed around people’s association with their social groups. A social group is defined as …show more content…
The movie begins on, main character, Cady Heron’s first day in public school after spending the last twelve years of her life being homeschooled by her parents in Africa. She gets off to a rough start as the new white kid from Africa that has no experience in schools, but things began to look up when she met two kids at lunch. Their names were Janis Ian and Damian Leigh, two outsiders that took Cady under their wing. She found her little clique; they were corky and weird, but she fit right in. Their lunch consisted of Janis and Damian giving Cady the run down on all the cliques and their description became particularly detailed when they expressed their hatred for “The Plastics.” They explained them as the mean, stuck up girls who ran the school, and explained that Queen Bee, Regina George was the worst. The Plastics ran the school in their matching outfits and lingo, and very rarely looked in the direction of anyone who seemed to be lesser than them. The remainder of the movie revolves around Cady’s new friends’ plan to get the inside scoop of The Plastics by having Cady “pretend” to become one. This movie serves as a good example of the Social Identity Theory because it shows the process of gaining ingroup membership, the use strategy of intergroup differentiation, and the display of ingroup commitment. The first connection from Mean Girls to SIT is Janis and Damian’s display of favoritism to their own group. When they were pointing out all the different cliques to Cady at lunch, they made it clear that they were glad that they weren’t a part of any other. They even had their strong bias against a particular group; The Plastics. This further explains how categorization to one group makes people discriminate against others. The next example comes from The Plastic’s invitation for Cady’s membership in

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