I understand social categorization theory is a key area in social psychology, which is not my field. I have been studying Tajfel's influential research conducted mostly in the 1970s. I have found that his experiments use 13-15 year old boys. Can anyone help me understand why he chose this sample? Thanks!
I am inclined to think that participants in experiments were readily available from pupil- and student-populations. Perhaps pupils were preferred because the students available were already spoiled by psychology courses or participation in other psychological studies. Further, Tajfel used the experimental method. He created different conditions and observed then whether participants in different conditions reacted differently. So the focus was on the effect of particular conditions, not on the difference -- or absence of difference -- between groups or populations. If the manipulation of conditions works well out with pupils, then the experimenter knows that it works. He does not know yet if it would work also with adults, but he can presume that it would. He or other researchers will check this later on, and that later research is possibly not be published in renowned publications because the first experimental studies with pupils formed the breakthrough.
Indeed, social categorization theory is an important area in social psychology, which explores how individuals categorize and perceive others on the basis of characteristics such as race, gender, and age.
Henri Tajfel may have used adolescents in his experiments because he thought that adolescents were especially susceptible to the processes of social categorization. It is well known that teenagers are at a vital stage in the creation of social identity and seek to belong to specific social groups ( possibly why many of their behaviors are sensation-seeking oriented).
Tajfel wanted to explore how adolescents categorized others based on social characteristics and how this categorization affected their perception and behavior toward others.
He used adolescents for this purpose because he believed they were an adequate sample for his exploration. For adolescents were both mature enough to understand social categorization tasks and young enough not to have any preconceived ideas about particular social categories.
In short, Tajfel chose adolescents as a sample in his experiments because they were particularly sensitive to social categorization processes and, consequently, they were a suitable sample for his research.
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