Social identity theory - a foundation to build upon, not undermine

Schiffmann and Wicklund (1992) argue that social identity theory (SIT) excludes psychological variables and `is superfluous as an account of systematic social-psychological phenomena' (p. 29). They also claim that the theory is dependent upon experiments which confound categorization and similarity effects, and which are susceptible to alternative explanations in terms of demand characteristics. They conclude that even an improved version of SIT would be `little more than an imitation of existing theories, and should therefore be rejected in favour of them (p. 46). The present paper argues that SIT is not vulnerable to Schiffmann and Wicklund's criticisms, and that their conclusion is, at best, premature