Good answers demonstrated:

• Great knowledge of the theory in many cases
• Some good use of terminology
• Some good theme by theme contextualisation

Some people needed to improve in the following ways:

• Many people wrote sentences that were true of SIT but did not link to the extract and therefore did not score a point
• There was some confusion over the three key processes and people sometimes used social categorisation and social identification wrongly
• Some people did not write about enough themes (4 marker need 4 themes)
• Some people didn’t pick up on the group members of Donate not Hate (donaters) as being ingroup against the people opposed to helping refugees (the haters) as the two groups that were prejudiced against each other.

Model answer

Tajfels’ theory would say that as soon as people click the button to join the Donate not Hate facebook group they are going through social categorisation as they will now identify with this group and see other members as part of their ingroup.

This leads to a sense of belonging in the members of the Donate not Hate and they will start changing their beliefs, values and attitudes about refugees even further in line with the group norms, e.g. turning up at events and making a donation; Tajfel calls this social identification.

Members of the page may perceive people who leave negative comments on their page as outgroup members (haters not donaters) and they may show social comparison by believing they are morally superior to the haters and show discrimination against them by retaliating with aggressive comments.

‘Donate not Hate’ members may experience an increase in self-esteem as a consequence of coming together with other members at campaign events where they feel part of a worthy group united by their desire to help the refugees.

Indicative content

• Mere existence of two groups leads to conflict: the fact that there is a group called Donate or hate creates an ingroup between members and anyone who is opposed to their mission is outgroup and this is enough to bring about conflict.
• Social categorisation: hater or donater; ingroup outgroup, pro or anti refugees
• Social identification; internalising values of the group, e.g. that you need to make donations in order to be a true group member.
• Social comparison; seeing own group as morally superior and assuming all who are anti refugee are stupid etc.
• Self-esteem and need to belong: looking at when self-esteem is increased and how

There are other themes linked to SIT that you could have looked at e.g. quest for positive distinctiveness, group serving bias etc. and as long as they were explicitly linked to the extract they could gain credit.