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I've been reading a few articles and papers about individuals identifying with groups and their behaviors and attitudes, however I haven't yet found an answer to one of the questions that I was trying to learn about.

What does a strong identity association with a group (or multiple groups) indicate about the person as an individual (preferably from a social or IO psychology perspective), if anything?

I was looking to learn about were to see if a strong identity association with groups could possible be indicative of their ability to function well on other teams or if they are more suited to particular roles on a team (management, coordination activities as opposed to other team functions) as opposed to someone who tended to not have strong identity associations with groups. I'm also interested in their development as a person, especially with regards to relationships (friendship, romantic, at the workplace, out of the workplace).

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If anyone has any keywords that might be relevant as well, please feel free to share. I'd be more than willing to continue my own research, but I'm running out of things to search for in various databases and search engines that might bring up what I'm looking for. – Thomas Owens Apr 2 '12 at 0:22
I think this question is confusing, because a tempting answer would be "if a person strongly identifies with group A, then they are more likely to have typical traits of people from group A". However, that is not what you want to ask. A potential solution is to ask the flip question: "What can be said about individuals who do not have strong group associations?" I feel that this might make your question more clear (at least to me) and the answer to it might still be enlightening/of interest to you. – Artem Kaznatcheev Apr 29 '12 at 6:52
@ArtemKaznatcheev I'm not interested in a particular group A, though. I'm thinking more of a more generic situation and if a strong level of identification with any arbitrary group can be used to determine characteristics or traits that can be applied to a second arbitrary group of size n >= 2. – Thomas Owens Apr 29 '12 at 16:18
Yeah, after reading your question, I gathered you were not interested in a specific group. I am just suggesting that some people might not get that at first (I didn't get it until a careful reading of the question, for instance). Also, phrasing the converse might give you more search terms, but you probably tried those already. – Artem Kaznatcheev Apr 29 '12 at 16:19
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@ArtemKaznatcheev I'll try to rephrase, after I do some searching for the idea you described. Perhaps I can come across some more ideas to help refine my question, if I don't come across the answer. It'll be a day or two, but hopefully I can come up with some kind of improvement or more information on my own. – Thomas Owens Apr 29 '12 at 16:24
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