I am thus proposing something simple: the sense of having a given social identity arises from having to deal with important identity contingencies, usually threatening or restrictive contingencies like negative stereotypes about your group, group segregations of one sort or another, discrimination and prejudice, and so on, all because you have a given characteristic. What raises a characteristic we have to a social identity we have are the contingencies that go with the characteristic, most often, threatening contingencies.
