de la Sablonnière, R. (2017). Toward a Psychology of Social Change: A Typology of Social Change. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
The identity attributed to social change mainly refers to a unidirectional and autonomously controlled process associated with group change, where the conceptualization of social change is within human control limits. When researchers equate social change with collective action, uncontrollable social transformations like natural disasters and socio-political reforms over which groups or individuals exert no control (de la Sablonnière, 2017). From a psychological perception, understanding social change increment, inertia, and stability and how they relate to dramatic social change is significant.
Alice, B.. M. V. (2020). Re-thinking the Conditions for Social Change and Innovation, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 33:1, 1-3. DOI: 10.1080/13511610.2020.1713455
Alice (2020) associates social change with the substantial modifications in the social structure over time. Through conditions that favor social change, like urbanization, industrialization, and digitization, empirical analysis of social change has several entry points that can either be macro or micromanaged. Therefore, social change identity factors in the differences in the social order, including how agency and structure correlate with innovation processes that inherently exploit the unmet social needs established in social relations.
Hornung, J., Bandelow, N. C., & Vogeler, C. S. (2019). Social Identities in the Policy Process. Policy Sciences, 52, 2, 211-231.
The concept behind social identity primarily relies on personal behaviors substantially influenced by group identification or intergroup relations. Hornung et al. (2019) show the existing theoretical perspectives are suitable to answer questions associated with policy process dynamics responsible for conditions that favor individual identification among policy concerned groups. Moreover, the authors argue that the concept of and the general types associated with changes in social identity have a bearing on pertinent organizational identities, sectoral identities, local identities, and demographic identities.
Kalin, M., & Sambanis, N. (2018). How to Think About Social Identity. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 1, 239-257.
When researchers seek to understand the meaning of identity in a social group, they end up clarifying that social identities impact how individual behavior is affected. Therefore, from this perspective, social change identity is the alterations in the networks that arise between people who frequently choose to interact with others on account of similarities (Kalin and Sambanis, 2018). Moreover, people can avoid the interactions governing social identity between people as long as differences exist. The mechanisms attributed to social identities inspire relative durability in understanding and behavior of particular identities.
Charness, G., Chen, Y., & Chen, Y. (2020). Social Identity, Group Behavior, and Teams. Annual Review of Economics, 12, 691-713.
Charness et al. (2020) show that social identity refers to an individual’s self-sense, deprived of a perceived social group membership. Therefore, when people feel they belong to a group, they have a sense of identity. Thus, changes in social identity are the modifications that influence how people follow a specific phenomenon like race and ethnicity to affect their self-sense. Three main components are attributed to social identity and how they impact human relations between individuals and groups. These components are categorization, comparison, and identification.
The three themes that emerge from the researched definitions are self-sense modification, network alterations, and the relationship between agency, structure, and innovativeness in terms of social identity factors. From a personal level, the theme that has the most significant personal significance is self-sense modification. The theme has been selected based on the understanding group identity is influenced by racial and ethnic conflicts among people resulting in human capital formations, political campaigns, and worse, discrimination (Charness et al., 2020). Moreover, through Charness et al. (2020), the significance of the theme is underpinned by the three components categorization, comparison, and identification. Categorization influences the theme by emphasizing my understanding that how people put themselves together is critical in determining their self-images (Charness et al., 2020). People can then classify themselves from the comparison, and a favorable bias emerges towards other groups; lastly, identification is responsible for how people associate themselves with specific groups.
From these emergent themes, the one with the most significant societal influence is social identity factors’ structure, agency, and innovativeness. The reason for selecting this theme as the most critical social significance lies in the understanding that social change has several entry points for social change to occur. Among the entry points are social innovations responsible for addressing unmet social needs (Alice, 2020). The micro and macro-level structures include inclusion, welfare reforms, and economic and intelligent growth.
Universal Theory of Evolution
The universal theory of evolution shows that the stages of development within every society are not the same. Therefore, when taken as a whole, no definite line of change is associated with man’s culture. Humanity has evolved from small groups to large, and in more general terms, the progress has been from simple to compound nature (Sperber, 2018). The theory best reflects my character since it explains that it is not expected that I should show similar behaviors to others based on my upbringing. My ideas are to create an environment where everybody is treated equally; therefore, accepting people for who they are is significant in establishing a diverse community since our differences make us who we are.
References
Alice, B.. M. V. (2020). Re-thinking the conditions for social change and innovation, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 33:1, 1-3. DOI: 10.1080/13511610.2020.1713455
Charness, G., Chen, Y., & Chen, Y. (2020). Social identity, group behavior, and teams. Annual Review of Economics, 12, 691-713.
De la Sablonnière, R. (2017). Toward a psychology of social change: A typology of social change. Frontiers in Psychology, 8.
Hornung, J., Bandelow, N. C., & Vogeler, C. S. (2019). Social identities in the policy process. Policy Sciences, 52, 2, 211-231.
Kalin, M., & Sambanis, N. (2018). How to think about social identity. Annual Review of Political Science, 21, 1, 239-257.
Sperber, D. M. H. (2018). Enigma of reason: A new theory of human understanding. PENGUIN Books.