臺灣海峽兩岸統獨問題的難解可以說導因於臺灣地區人民複雜多元的群體認同。 歷史上臺灣曾為華夏大中國的邊緣地帶，曾是荷蘭與日本的殖民地，五十年來更以「中華民 國」的稱號，維持一個獨立自主的政治實體。生活在臺灣的人民是中國人還是臺灣人？本文 以社會認同理論為參照點，依據臺灣移民歷史與政治性的群際歷史事件分析臺灣民眾的族群 認同的演變與臺灣意識的產生歷程。在實徵研究方面，分成兩個部份：第一部份根據訪談及 文獻分析編成政黨意識型態問卷，施以較大樣本的調查，比較兩大政黨支持者所具有的不同 意識型態與不同的族群定義；第二部份以實驗操弄來驗證內團體偏私現象。結果發現，新的 族群分類方法正在取代原有的省籍分類；一種抽象的族群定義：「臺灣人是臺灣人」與「臺 灣人是中國人」的二分法，將臺灣地區的人民劃分為兩個新族群，而這兩個新族群恰與兩大 政黨的意識型態相符。然而，以本省人與外省人為分類依據的省籍情結並未消失，它只是轉 化成上述的兩種抽象定義。簡而言之，省籍背景加上個人對中國文化的喜好程度，決定了一 個人的政黨認同取向。而一個政黨意識型態較強的人，在對公共政策的態度上，常不知不覺 的偏袒已團體。本研究提示，唯有將臺灣意識或中國意識均視為一種文化意識，而非族群意 識，臺灣地區人民才可能將族群認同與政黨認同分開，並發展出理性的政黨認同與更高層次 的整體認同。

　　　　　This paper adopts social identity theory to address the question of how and why people living in Taiwan consider himself or herself as Chinese or Taiwanese. The developmental process of Taiwanese ideology is made explicit through analysis of the immigration history and intergroup political conflict in Taiwan. Two empirical studies were then conducted. In the first study, respondents filled out measures of ethnic identity, political party support, political ideology, traditional Chinese values, and explicit attitude towards Chinese culture. A comparison was made of respondents supporting the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) and the KMT (Kuomintang). Results imply that a new abstract categorization of ethnic identity ("Taiwanese and Taiwanese" and "Taiwanese are Chinese") based on political ideology will substitute for the traditional categorization of ethnic identity based on the time period in which a person or his ancestors came to Taiwan from mainland China. When adding the classification category of mother tongue (Taiwanese or Mandarin), we found that DPP supporters whose mother tongue is Taiwanese strongly agreed that "Taiwanese and Taiwanese", and KMT supporters whose mother tongue is Mandarin clearly agreed that "Taiwanese are Chinese", but DPP supporters with Mandarin as their mother tongue and KMT supporters with Taiwanese as their mother tongue had more ambiguous ethnic identities. This result implies an adding/subtracting effect of mother tongue that roughly corresponds to the traditional categorization of ethnic identity. In the second study, a speaker was designated as either a KMT or DPP member. Subjects were asked to evaluate the quality of the speaker's communication as an index of ingroup favoritism. More ingroup favoritism was shown in those subjects with DPP political ideology than those with KMT political ideology.