People vary in how much their multiple group memberships overlap cognitively

Evidence

Social identity complexity refers to the perceived interrelationships among individuals’ multiple social group memberships, that is, their multiple in-groups. Hence, it defines individuals’ more or less complex cognitive representations of their multiple social identities (Roccas & Brewer, 2002). Individuals may thus perceive their multiple in-groups as either largely overlapping or not overlapping. In the case of overlapping in-groups, only individuals who share membership on the sum of these identities are regarded as fellow in-group members, while people who share none, or only a few, of these identities are regarded as out-group members. Alternatively, individuals may be aware of the potential nonoverlap between categories, and thus acknowledge that others do not always share in-group membership on all of these self-descriptive categories, that is, that not all their multiple in-groups overlap (Brewer & Pierce, 2005; Roccas & Brewer, 2002). Although the former case reflects relatively lower and the latter case relatively higher social identity complexity, one should think of social identity complexity as being continuous, with variations in complexity ranging from low to high. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 526

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines social identity complexity as the perceived overlap among one’s multiple in-groups.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 526