Researchers are now moving beyond both of these positions, which stress the importance of ethnic groups in a social structure but explaining it in different ways, towards the discovery of general features and specific functional characteristics of ethnicity. In confronting ethnic phenomena from a social-psychological perspective they treat ethnic identity as a specific conceptual model through which a group and its members understand the role of ethnicity, whereas ethnicity relates to the structural relationships between ethnic groups. The advantage of a psychological approach to identity is that it opens up the intimate ties and relationships between the individual and society to investigation. However, a study of the different elements and aspects of identity should be supplemented by the consideration of a wider spectrum of social phenomena and factors which sociology provides. These levels do not exist in isolation one from another but they influence each other and overlap.
Individuals differ in the extent to which they behave in terms of group memberships.
The social psychological interpretation of ethnic identity more often than not distinguishes it from other approaches to social identity especially on the group level. This position does work as an explanatory model in some instances, but tends to ignore facts which contradicting its propositions. It ignores cases where subordinate minorities may develop a negative self-concept together with positive attitudes towards the dominant group. But their transformation into ethnic self-esteem reveals a syndrome of theoretical and methodological problems that signalised the need for a deeper treatment of the identity concept. The mosaic description of the different approaches shows us that there is no general theory of ethnic identity in the social sciences and each theorising scheme emphasises and takes into consideration only some aspects of the problem.