NOTE-1309: Being one of us: we-identities and self-categorization theory

Contribution

It finds a class of cases that self-categorization theory claims and fits badly: the “we” of close relationships. It argues that depersonalization, the theory’s “basic process underlying group phenomena”, is not necessary for a we-identity. It thereby limits the use phenomenologists have made of the theory as an account of the “we” in general. It adds a four-condition definition of we-identity and an externalist sketch of close-relationship identity.

Key insight

To be “one of us” with a spouse or an old friend is not to see each other as interchangeable. Relationships “cannot survive substitution of their participants” (Kolodny 2003, p. 148). The bond grows by each becoming tuned to the other’s particularities and so less replaceable, which is the reverse of depersonalization. If the “we” can be built either way, a theory of one way is not a theory of the “we”.

Assumptions

• We-identity defined by four conditions (§2):
  • (i) membership in a social group, broadly “an entity constituted by and only by people” (Epstein 2019);
  • (ii) awareness, at least at times;
  • (iii) endorsement;
  • (iv) variable affective salience.
• Close relationship defined normatively (§4): robust (participants not substitutable), non-instrumental, reciprocal concern, with emotional vulnerability, open-endedness and common knowledge. Not necessarily dyadic. Fn. 16: non-antagonistic cases only.
• SCT is read as committed to depersonalization being general. León cites Turner et al. (1987, p. 50; 1994, pp. 455, 460) and the claim that group size is no theoretical restriction (1987, p. 103, fn. 12).

Key results

• The theory, as quoted (§3). Page numbers are Turner et al. 1987’s.

  • SCT asks “how individuals are able to act as a group at all” (p. 42).
  • Social identity is “those aspects of an individual’s self-concept based upon their social group or category memberships together with their emotional, evaluative and other psychological correlates” (p. 29).
  • Self-representations are “‘switched on’” (p. 44), with “an inverse relationship between the salience of the personal and social levels” (p. 49), a “psychological discontinuity” (p. 66, fn. 7).
  • Depersonalization is a “change from the personal to the social level of identity” (pp. 51, 204); Turner et al. keep the word “in lack of a better alternative” (p. 204, fn. 9).
  • “Five individuals in a room have just as much become a group … if they are behaving in terms of a large-scale category membership they share … as if in terms of an emergent group whose norms and defining features are unique to that specific collection of five people (a friendship group …)” (p. 103, fn. 12).

• León prefers a continuum to levels (§3). Following Huddy (2001), personal and social identity are entangled, so it is better to treat them as two ends of an “identity continuum” (Oakes 2002; Turner et al. 1994, p. 456).

• Phenomenology’s uptake (§3). Zahavi (2019) and Salice & Henriksen (2015) take the “we” to require downplaying interpersonal differences, “social uniformity”, and link depersonalization to Husserl’s “self-alienation”. Walther’s (1923) “public person” and Heidegger’s “the One” are earlier versions of the same idea.

• The argument (§4).

  1. SCT claims to cover groups of any size, friendship groups included.
  2. Close relationships yield we-identities.
  3. Their members grasp each other as non-substitutable and complementary.
  4. Depersonalization is perceiving oneself and others as interchangeable exemplars.
  5. So close-relationship we-identities do not arise by depersonalization, and depersonalization is not necessary for a we-identity.

  León grants that close others share features, may act under an ad hoc group prototype (Peter facing down a stranger at a picnic), and often form relationships against a background of shared social identity. The relationship-science evidence cited is couple resilience: “the more individuated or differentiated the ‘I’ is, the more flexible and adaptive the ‘we’ will be” (Skerrett & Fergus 2015, p. 25).

• The SCT reply and its cost (§4). SCT can put close relationships under personal identity (Hogg 2001, p. 133). That is coherent within SCT, but then SCT is not an account of the “we” in general, which is what phenomenologists used it for.

• The positive sketch (§5).

  • Husserl’s Zweieinigkeit: “two human beings who build a life unity, not two lives next to each other”.
  • Integrationist extended-mind criteria: individualizing, reciprocal, enduring, reliable coupling (Heersmink 2015; Sterelny 2010), applied agent to agent (Skorburg 2017).
  • Transactive memory in couples (Wegner et al. 1991).
  • Grief as a “partial loss of self” (Fuchs 2018; Ratcliffe 2023).
  • Socially extended identities need heterogeneity: “if individuals who constitute a socially extended system were to level down the differences between them, the system would most likely collapse” (§6).

Claims

id	claim	strength	support
C1	A we-identity can be characterized by membership, occasional awareness, endorsement and variable affective salience	definitional; argued	§2
C2	SCT takes depersonalization to underlie all group phenomena, groups of any size included	strong as exegesis: quoted from Turner et al. 1987, pp. 50, 103 and 1994, pp. 455, 460	§4, fn. 12
C3	The we-identities of close relationships arise through mutual individualization, not depersonalization, so depersonalization is not necessary for a we-identity	moderate: a conceptual argument from the definition of close relationships, with supporting relationship research (couple resilience) cited, not analysed	§4
C4	Close-relationship we-identities are better modelled as socially extended personhood	weak: a sketch, by analogy to extended-mind criteria and transactive memory	§5

Concepts

• we-identity: an aspect of a subject’s self-conception held as a group member, at times salient, endorsed and cared about (§2).
• close personal relationship: robust, non-instrumental, reciprocal, emotionally vulnerable, open-ended concern, as common knowledge (§4).
• personalized we-identity: a we-identity arising from mutual individualization rather than depersonalization (§5).
• individualization / entrenchment: mutual fine-tuning of two agents to each other’s particularities, making each less substitutable (§5, after Sterelny 2010).

Connections

• Skorich (NOTE-1295). He cites this paper for the point that close relationships are groups without interchangeable members, and draws a different moral: groups are perceived from collective intentionality. León would extend the boundaries of persons instead. Both agree that SCT’s equivalence-class account misses some groups.

• Turner et al. 1994 (NOTE-1284). León uses its continuum talk (p. 456) to soften “levels”. Fn. 11 notes that the 1994 paper says the perceiver appraises self “in relation to others, not from the perspective of others” (p. 460). That sits badly with the Husserlian “self-alienation” the phenomenologists pair with depersonalization.

• THEORY-126. von Scheve and Ismer’s We-mode collective emotion rests on collective intentionality and group membership. León’s grief analysis implies a “we” whose emotions are not depersonalized; the record has not related the two.

• Personal identity. León sets aside identity as re-identification (§2) for the vernacular sense (Schechtman 1996). The record’s personhood theories (THEORY-650 and others) concern the former.

• Filed 2026-10-29, unread. The works this paper turns on are now held: Zahavi’s account of group identification by self-alienation (LIT-1758); Salice and Miyazono on group identification and collective intentionality (LIT-1686); Aron et al. on including the other in the self (LIT-1706); and Brewer and Gardner’s relational self (LIT-1757). The owner’s thesis that there is no selfless action (CLAIM-491) draws on the same question from the other side.

Bearing on the record

• Source of THEORY-1115 (Proposed): a we-identity can arise by mutual individualization, without depersonalization.
• THEORY-1114. This does not contradict the context-dependence claim. It limits the scope of depersonalization as the route to group self-perception. Noted on that THEORY.
• social-ontology and self. The first reading in the record that joins the social-identity literature to phenomenology of the “we”.
• No ML instruction.

Limitations

• No data. The relationship research is cited, not analysed, and the case for C3 is conceptual.
• The dispute may be verbal. SCT can assign close relationships to personal identity (Hogg 2001), and León concedes this is coherent within SCT. The disagreement is then over whether SCT was ever a theory of the “we” in general. León shows phenomenologists used it as one; he shows less clearly that Turner et al. claimed it, beyond the group-size passage.
• Non-antagonistic relationships only (fn. 16).
• The extended-mind sketch inherits that debate’s contested criteria.

Open questions

• Does a measured we-ness in couples correlate with, or against, self-stereotyping as a couple? A study measuring both in the same dyads would test whether personalization and depersonalization are opposite routes or can co-occur.