Identity, Social Identity, Comparison, and Status: Four Theories with a Common Core

We examine four sociobehavioral theories – identity theory, social identity theory, comparison theory, and status theory – and we find that all four share a common core of three basic elements: personal quantitative characteristics, personal qualitative characteristics, and primordial outcomes. Though all four theories retain substantial areas outside the common core, nonetheless the existence of the common core suggests new perspectives and new research directions. These include an augmented conceptualization of self and identity, a new recognition that comparison processes and status processes may be in competition with each other, the possibility of a new theoretical form, and a new research strategy combining ingredients drawn from the four separate theories. The new research strategy expands the possibilities for all four theories, considerably enlarging their scope of application and their predictive capacity. To illustrate the new research strategy, we analyze the three-way contest between orientation to self, to subgroup, and to group in a two-subgroup society, deriving many new testable predictions, for example, that the ablest individuals in a society will not make good leaders as their first loyalty is to self.