The social identity approach to sport and exercise: Key principles and hypotheses

ICSIS2 bears testimony to the fact that interest in the social identity approach to sport and exercise has burgeoned in recent years. Building on contributions to ICSIS1 (notably Reicher, 2017) and a systematic review of this body of work, this presentation seeks organize the distinctive contribution of social identity theorizing to this domain around research that explores five key themes (the 5Ps) and five core hypotheses: H1, that participation in sport and exercise is grounded in social identification with relevant groups; H2, that sporting and exercise performance is shaped by social identification and the norms, values, affordances and goals associated with salient social identities; H3, that psychological and physical health are enhanced by identification with groups that have health-enhancing features; H4, that people’s engagement with, and partisan orientation to, the different groups that are encountered in sport and exercise contexts is structured by relevant social identities and levels of social identification (e.g., as followers of a particular sport or fans of a particular team); H5, that the examination of social identity dynamics in sporting contexts provides a basis for understanding and engaging with their inherently political nature. Two further overarching principles should also condition our understanding of these hypotheses. P1, that social identities and social identification — and hence the sport and exercise-related behaviours they give rise to — are heavily structured by both (a) social context and (b) identity-based social influence; P2, that these processes give rise to emergent forms of behaviour that not only make sport inherently unpredictable but also make it both transformational and captivating.

Jaar van publicatie:2019