A social identity theory of leadership is described that views leadership as a group process generated by social categorization and prototype-based depersonalization processes associated with social identity. Group Over the past 25 years social psychology has placed relatively little emphasis on the study of leadership. This is probably associated with the well-documented decline during the 1960s and 1970s of interest in small group research, the associated ascendency of social cognition, the European emphasis on large scale intergroup relations, and the "outsourcing" of small group and leadership research to organizational and management departments (for historical overviews, see

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Two studies provided support for the proposal that the role of norms in attitude-behavior relations can be usefully reconceptualized from the perspective of social identity/self-categorization theory. The first study revealed that the perceived norms of a behaviorally relevant reference group influenced intentions to engage in regular exercise, but only for subjects who identified strongly with the group, whereas the effect of perceived behavioral control (a personal factor) was strongest for low identifiers. Similarly, Study 2 revealed that the effect of group norms on females' intentions to engage in sun-protective behavior was evident only for high identifiers and that the effects of one of the personal variables (attitude) was stronger for low than for high identifiers. Additional results revealed that the perceived group norm predicted subjects' attitude, as did the perceived consequences of performing the behavior. The latter result was evident only for low identifiers.