Social identity in sport: A scoping review of the performance hypothesis

Abstract

First paragraph: Individuals' behaviors within sport contexts are shaped by the complex interaction between individual, social, environmental, and contextual factors (Haslam et al., 2020). Unlike previous theories that focus on the individual, social identity theory (Tajfel et al., 1979) has provided an understanding of the role that group belonging and identification can have upon an individual’s own sense of the self. Social identity refers to “that part of an individual's self-concept which derives from his/her knowledge of his/her membership of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1981, p. 255). For example, one’s social identity as a soccer player is formed by an internalized sense that one is part of a community of other soccer players and provides the basis for individuals to see each other with a sense of us and we (Haslam et al., 2012). Since its original conception over 40 years ago, researchers have sought to determine how social identity works across different fields, such as social, organizational, and health psychology (Haslam et al., 2020). Within the sport psychology literature, social identity theory has seen a rapid rise in interest from researchers in recent years. When searching on Web of Science using the terms “social ident* and sport”, 80% of studies were published after 2010, demonstrating the rapid growth in recent attention given to social identity by sport researchers.