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This study investigated the proposition that adolescence involves significant shifts in social identity as a function of changes in social context and cognitive style. Using an experimental design, we primed either peer or gender identity with a sample of 380 early‐ (12–13 years), mid‐ (15–16 years), and late‐adolescents (18–20 years) and then measured the effect of the prime on self‐stereotyping and ingroup favouritism. The findings showed significant differences in social identity across adolescent groups, in that social identity effects were relatively strong in early‐ and late‐adolescents, particularly when peer group identity rather than gender identity was salient. While these effects were consistent with the experience of change in educational social context, differences in cognitive style were only weakly related to ingroup favouritism. The implications of the findings for theory and future research on social identity during adolescence are discussed.

In this article, the authors report an investigation of the relationship between terror management and social identity processes by testing for the effects of social identity salience on worldview validation. Two studies, with distinct populations, were conducted to test the hypothesis that mortality salience would lead to worldview validation of values related to a salient social identity. In Study 1, reasonable support for this hypothesis was found with bicultural Aboriginal Australian participants (N = 97). It was found that thoughts of death led participants to validate ingroup and reject outgroup values depending on the social identity that had been made salient. In Study 2, when their student and Australian identities were primed, respectively, Anglo-Australian students (N = 119) validated values related to those identities, exclusively. The implications of the findings for identity-based worldview validation are discussed.

This paper reports an investigation of the impact of shared values and identities on Australian attitudes towards Indigenous reconciliation across two studies. In Study 1, University students were assigned to one of two conditions in which they completed a questionnaire that measured their value priorities and reconciliation attitudes; either as an individual or as an Australian. As expected, the value of egalitarianism was the strongest predictor of reconciliation attitudes, especially under the Australian condition. In Study 2, participants from the general community were assigned into conditions that manipulated identity (personal vs. Australian) and views of how Indigenous Australians have been treated by Europeans in the past (favourable vs. unfavourable). Under these conditions, participants were asked to report their level of collective guilt and reconciliation views. The results showed that collective guilt was stronger under the unfavourable than the favourable history condition but only when personal identity was salient. The findings also showed some support for the proposition that reconciliation views would be most positive under the unfavourable history condition when Australian identity was salient. The implications of the findings for advancing the progress of indigenous reconciliation in Australia are discussed.

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