Abstract: Social identity salience means the possibility of certain social identity activated in special situation and such activation's influence on individual's cognition and behavior. Research on self moves from self-reference effect to group-reference effect and social identity plays a key part in group-reference effect. The paper makes a comparative analysis of the meaning, the experimental paradigm, the psychological mechanism and influential factors between self-reference effect and group-reference effect, and probes into the particular influence of social identity on group-reference effect. Future research will conduct from the experimental materials and paradigm, test selection, the dependent variables and explanation of psychological mechanism to enrich and further the new research topic.