In-group and out-group

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Multiple layers of in-groups and out-groups in an American football stadium: People in this stadium form an in-group of American football fans and professionals vs. those who are not fans of the sport. Fans in attendance at the stadium vs. people spectating the match via external means, e.g. television/radio coverage. Fans and professionals affiliated with one team vs. those affiliated with the opposing team. Professionals on the field (players, officials, coaches, mascots and cheerleaders) vs. the paying customers in the stands who are denied access to the facility's secure nucleus except by invitation from a high-status individual. Ranks of the wealthy ownership and their senior executive staff, with access to private box suites vs. high-priced talent. Technical staff involved in facilities maintenance and operations vs. sporting staff (referees, timekeepers, statisticians and in-game adjudicators). Media with organizational endorsement and affiliation who enjoy special player access to one team vs. non-affiliated media. 091507-USCNeb-MemorialStadium.jpg
Multiple layers of in-groups and out-groups in an American football stadium:
  • People in this stadium form an in-group of American football fans and professionals vs. those who are not fans of the sport.
  • Fans in attendance at the stadium vs. people spectating the match via external means, e.g. television/radio coverage.
  • Fans and professionals affiliated with one team vs. those affiliated with the opposing team.
  • Professionals on the field (players, officials, coaches, mascots and cheerleaders) vs. the paying customers in the stands who are denied access to the facility's secure nucleus except by invitation from a high-status individual.
  • Ranks of the wealthy ownership and their senior executive staff, with access to private box suites vs. high-priced talent.
  • Technical staff involved in facilities maintenance and operations vs. sporting staff (referees, timekeepers, statisticians and in-game adjudicators).
  • Media with organizational endorsement and affiliation who enjoy special player access to one team vs. non-affiliated media.

In social psychology and sociology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example identify with their peer group, family, community, sports team, political party, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nation. It has been found that the psychological membership of social groups and categories is associated with a wide variety of phenomena.

Contents

The terminology was made popular by Henri Tajfel and colleagues beginning in the 1970s during his work in formulating social identity theory. The significance of in-group and out-group categorization was identified using a method called the minimal group paradigm. Tajfel and colleagues found that people can form self-preferencing in-groups within a matter of minutes and that such groups can form even on the basis of completely arbitrary and invented discriminatory characteristics, such as preferences for certain paintings. [1] [2] [3] [4]

In neurology, there is an established literature [5] about the innate propensity of the human brain to divide the world into us and them valence categories, where the exact membership of the in-group and out-group are socially contingent (hence vulnerable to the instruments of propaganda), and the intensity exists along a spectrum from mild to complete dehumanization of the "othered" group (such as through pseudospeciation).

Associated phenomena

The psychological categorization of people into in-group and out-group members is associated with a variety of phenomena. The following examples have all received a great deal of academic attention.

In-group favoritism

This refers to the fact that under certain conditions, people will prefer and have affinity for one's in-group over the out-group, or anyone viewed as outside the in-group. This can be expressed in one's evaluation of others, linking, allocation of resources, and many other ways. [6] How we perceive the actions of others are also affected by in-group favoritism. People may perceive the same action very differently depending on whether the action was executed by a member of the same group or a member of a different group. [7] In fact, people tend to evaluate actions of their own group or team members much more favorably than those of outgroup members. [7] An illustrative example of the way this phenomenon takes place can be demonstrated just by arbitrarily assigning a person to a distinct and objectively meaningless novel group; this alone is sufficient to create intergroup biases in which members of the perceiver's own group are preferentially favored. [8] This phenomenon was demonstrated in an empirical study conducted by Molenberghs and colleagues in 2013. [7] In the study, participants were arbitrarily divided into two teams where they watched videos of individuals of competing teams and individuals from their own team perform hand actions. Participants were then asked to judge the speed of the hand movements. [7] On average participants judged members of their own teams to be faster, although the hand movements were the exact same speed across the board. Similarly, Hastorf and Cantril conducted a pioneering study in 1954, where students of both Princeton and Dartmouth viewed a contentious football game between their two teams. [9] Although they had watched the same motion picture of the game, their versions of what transpired were so starkly different it appeared as though they had watched two totally different games. [9]

Neural mechanisms of in-group favoritism and out-group bias

Some may wonder why in-group favoritism takes place, even in arbitrarily assigned groups where group members have nothing in common other than the group to which they were assigned. Research points to unconscious decision-making processes that takes place at the neurological level, where in-group favoritism and out-group bias occurs very early in perception. This process can begin by simply viewing a person's face. [10] Research indicates that individuals are faster and more accurate at recognizing faces of ingroup vs. outgroup members. [11] For example, researchers in a cross-race recognition study recorded blood oxygenation level-dependent signal (BOLD) activity from black and white participants while they viewed and attempted to remember pictures of unfamiliar black faces, white faces and objects. [12] They found that participants in this study exhibited greater activity in the fusiform face area (FFA), an area of the fusiform gyrus located in the inferior temporal cortex of the brain linked to object and face recognition, when viewing same race faces compared to other race faces. [12] Lower activity in the FFA reflects a failure to encode outgroup members at the individual level rather than the categorical level, which comes at the expense of encoding individuating information. [13] [14] [15] This suggests out-group or unfamiliar faces may not be "faces" with the same intensity as in-group faces. [16] Prior research has also shown that the devaluation and dehumanization of outgroup members is exacerbated when the initial encoding and configural processing of an outgroup face is impeded. [17] So not only does this initial encoding process dehumanize outgroup members, it also contributes to a homogeneity effect, whereby outgroup members are perceived as more similar to each other than ingroup members. [18]

Group homogeneity

Categorization of people into social groups increases the perception that group members are similar to one another. An outcome of this is the out-group homogeneity effect. This refers to the perception of members of an out-group as being homogenous, while members of one's in-group are perceived as being diverse, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse". [19] [20] This is especially likely to occur in regard to negative characteristics. Under certain conditions, in-group members can be perceived as being similar to one another in regard to positive characteristics. This effect is called in-group homogeneity. [21]

Out-group derogation

Discrimination between in-groups and out-groups is a matter of favoritism towards an in-group and the absence of equivalent favoritism towards an out-group. [22] Out-group derogation is the phenomenon in which an out-group is perceived as being threatening to the members of an in-group. [23] This phenomenon often accompanies in-group favoritism, as it requires one to have an affinity towards their in-group. Some research suggests that out-group derogation occurs when an out-group is perceived as blocking or hindering the goals of an in-group. It has also been argued that out-group derogation is a natural consequence of the categorization process. [24]

Social influence

People have been shown to be differentially influenced by in-group members. That is, under conditions where group categorization is psychologically salient, people will shift their beliefs in line with in-group social norms.

Group polarization

This generally refers to the tendency of groups to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members, although polarization toward the most central beliefs has also been observed. It has been shown that this effect is related to a psychologically salient in-group and outgroup categorization.

Postulated role in human evolution

In evolutionary psychology, in-group favoritism is seen as an evolved mechanism selected for the advantages of coalition affiliation. [25] It has been argued that characteristics such as gender and ethnicity are inflexible or even essential features of such systems. [26] [27] However, there is evidence that elements of favoritism are flexible in that they can be erased by changes in social categorization. [28] One study in the field of behavioural genetics suggests that biological mechanisms may exist which favor a coexistence of both flexible and essentialist systems. [29]

See also

Related Research Articles

The out-group homogeneity effect is the perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse". Perceivers tend to have impressions about the diversity or variability of group members around those central tendencies or typical attributes of those group members. Thus, outgroup stereotypicality judgments are overestimated, supporting the view that out-group stereotypes are overgeneralizations. The term "outgroup homogeneity effect", "outgroup homogeneity bias" or "relative outgroup homogeneity" have been explicitly contrasted with "outgroup homogeneity" in general, the latter referring to perceived outgroup variability unrelated to perceptions of the ingroup.

In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.

The minimal group paradigm is a method employed in social psychology. Although it may be used for a variety of purposes, it is best known as a method for investigating the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. Experiments using this approach have revealed that even arbitrary distinctions between groups, such as preferences for certain paintings, or the color of their shirts, can trigger a tendency to favor one's own group at the expense of others, even when it means sacrificing in-group gain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Tajfel</span> Polish-born British psychologist (1919–1982)

Henri Tajfel was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.

Social identity is the portion of an individual's self-concept derived from perceived membership in a relevant social group.

Optimal distinctiveness is a social psychological theory seeking to understand ingroup–outgroup differences. It asserts that individuals desire to attain an optimal balance of inclusion and distinctiveness within and between social groups and situations. These two motives are in constant opposition with each other; when there is too much of one motive, the other must increase in order to counterbalance it and vice versa. The theory of optimal distinctiveness was first proposed by Dr. Marilynn B. Brewer in 1991 and extensively reviewed in 2010 by Drs. Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Cynthia L. Pickett, and Marilynn Brewer.

Self-categorization theory is a theory in social psychology that describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms. Although the theory is often introduced as an explanation of psychological group formation, it is more accurately thought of as general analysis of the functioning of categorization processes in social perception and interaction that speaks to issues of individual identity as much as group phenomena. It was developed by John Turner and colleagues, and along with social identity theory it is a constituent part of the social identity approach. It was in part developed to address questions that arose in response to social identity theory about the mechanistic underpinnings of social identification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotype</span> Generalized but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are often overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information. A stereotype does not necessarily need to be a negative assumption. They may be positive, neutral, or negative.

The ultimate attribution error is a type of attribution error which describes how attributions of outgroup behavior are more negative than ingroup behavior. As a cognitive bias, the error results in negative outgroup behavior being more likely to be attributed to factors internal and specific to the actor, such as personality, and the attribution of negative ingroup behavior to external factors such as luck or circumstance. The bias reinforces negative stereotypes and prejudice about the outgroup and favouritism of the ingroup through positive stereotypes. The theory also extends to the bias that positive acts performed by ingroup members are more likely a result of their personality.

In social psychology, collective narcissism is the tendency to exaggerate the positive image and importance of a group to which one belongs. The group may be defined by ideology, race, political beliefs/stance, religion, sexual orientation, social class, language, nationality, employment status, education level, cultural values, or any other ingroup. While the classic definition of narcissism focuses on the individual, collective narcissism extends this concept to similar excessively high opinions of a person's social group, and suggests that a group can function as a narcissistic entity.

An implicit bias or implicit stereotype is the pre-reflective attribution of particular qualities by an individual to a member of some social out group. Recent studies have determined that "implicit bias" towards those of the opposite gender may be even more influential than racial implicit bias.

Intergroup anxiety is the social phenomenon identified by Walter and Cookie Stephan in 1985 that describes the ambiguous feelings of discomfort or anxiety when interacting with members of other groups. Such emotions also constitute intergroup anxiety when one is merely anticipating interaction with members of an outgroup. Expectations that interactions with foreign members of outgroups will result in an aversive experience is believed to be the cause of intergroup anxiety, with an affected individual being anxious or unsure about a number of issues. Methods of reducing intergroup anxiety and stress including facilitating positive intergroup contact.

Accentuation effect occurs when something is placed into a category. The differences between the categories are then exaggerated, and differences within the categories themselves are minimised. Memory of anything that can be categorized is subject to an accentuation effect in which the memory is distorted toward typical examples.

Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.

In social psychology, a metastereotype is a stereotype that members of one group have about the way in which they are stereotypically viewed by members of another group. In other words, it is a stereotype about a stereotype. They have been shown to have adverse effects on individuals that hold them, including on their levels of anxiety in interracial conversations. Meta-stereotypes held by African Americans regarding the stereotypes White Americans have about them have been found to be largely both negative and accurate. People portray meta-stereotypes of their ingroup more positively when talking to a member of an outgroup than to a fellow member of their ingroup.

Diversity ideology refers to individual beliefs regarding the nature of intergroup relations and how to improve them in culturally diverse societies. A large amount of scientific literature in social psychology studies diversity ideologies as prejudice reduction strategies, most commonly in the context of racial groups and interracial interactions. In research studies on the effects of diversity ideology, social psychologists have either examined endorsement of a diversity ideology as individual difference or used situational priming designs to activate the mindset of a particular diversity ideology. It is consistently shown that diversity ideologies influence how individuals perceive, judge and treat cultural outgroup members. Different diversity ideologies are associated with distinct effects on intergroup relations, such as stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup equality, and intergroup interactions from the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. Beyond intergroup consequences, diversity ideology also has implications on individual outcomes, such as whether people are open to cultural fusion and foreign ideas, which in turn predict creativity.

In social psychology, social projection is the psychological process through which an individual expects behaviors or attitudes of others to be similar to their own. Social projection occurs between individuals as well as across ingroup and outgroup contexts in a variety of domains. Research has shown that aspects of social categorization affect the extent to which social projection occurs. Cognitive and motivational approaches have been used to understand the psychological underpinnings of social projection as a phenomenon. Cognitive approaches emphasize social projection as a heuristic, while motivational approaches contextualize social projection as a means to feel connected to others. In contemporary research on social projection, researchers work to further distinguish between the effects of social projection and self-stereotyping on the individual’s perception of others.

An empathy gap, sometimes referred to as an empathy bias, is a breakdown or reduction in empathy where it might otherwise be expected to occur. Empathy gaps may occur due to a failure in the process of empathizing or as a consequence of stable personality characteristics, and may reflect either a lack of ability or motivation to empathize.

Outgroup favoritism is a social psychological construct intended to capture why some socially disadvantaged groups will express favorable attitudes toward social, cultural, or ethnic groups other than their own. Considered by many psychologists as part of a variety of system-justifying motives, outgroup favoritism has been widely researched as a potential explanation for why groups—particularly those disadvantaged by the normative social hierarchy—are motivated to support, maintain, and preserve the status quo. Specifically, outgroup favoritism provides a contrast to the idea of ingroup favoritism, which proposes that individuals exhibit a preference for members of their own group over members of the outgroup.

Social identity threat is a theory in social psychology derived from social identity theory to explain the different types of threats that arise from group identity being threatened as opposed to personal identity. This theory distinguishes between four distinct types of social identity threats: categorization threat, distinctiveness threat, threats to the value of social identity, and acceptance threat. Each type is associated with particular social contexts that make the threats more or less likely to occur. This theory emphasizes how the level of commitment with the social identity shapes the nature of the threat experienced.

References

  1. ↑ See "Kandinsky versus Klee experiment", Tajfel et al. (1971) in Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination.
  2. ↑ Taijfel, H. (1970). "Experiments in intergroup discrimination" (PDF). Scientific American. 223 (5): 96–102. Bibcode:1970SciAm.223e..96T. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1170-96. JSTOR   24927662. PMID   5482577. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-12-06.
  3. ↑ Tajfel, Henri; Billig, M. G.; Bundy, R. P.; Flament, Claude (1971). "Social categorization and intergroup behaviour". European Journal of Social Psychology. 1 (2): 149–178. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420010202.
  4. ↑ Tajfel, H. (1974). "Social identity and intergroup behaviour". Social Science Information. 13 (2): 65–93. doi:10.1177/053901847401300204. S2CID   143666442.
  5. ↑ Sapolsky, Robert (2017). Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Penguin. pp. 38–39, 84–93, 116–117, 387–493, 570–632. ISBN   978-1-59420-507-1.
  6. ↑ Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., Akert, R. D. & Sommers, S. R. (2015). Social psychology (9th, illustrated, revised ed.). London: Pearson Education. ISBN   978-0-13393654-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. 1 2 3 4 Molenberghs, Pascal; Halász, Veronika; Mattingley, Jason B.; Vanman, Eric J.; Cunnington, Ross (2013). "Seeing is believing: Neural mechanisms of action–perception are biased by team membership". Human Brain Mapping. 34 (9): 2055–2068. doi:10.1002/hbm.22044. ISSN   1097-0193. PMC   6870530 . PMID   22290781.
  8. ↑ Tajfel, Henri; Billig, M. G.; Bundy, R. P.; Flament, Claude (1971). "Social categorization and intergroup behaviour". European Journal of Social Psychology. 1 (2): 149–178. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420010202. ISSN   1099-0992.
  9. 1 2 Hastorf, Albert H.; Cantril, Hadley (1954). "They saw a game; a case study". The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. 49 (1): 129–134. doi:10.1037/h0057880. ISSN   0096-851X. PMID   13128974.
  10. ↑ Senholzi, Keith B.; Kubota, Jennifer T. (2016), "The Neural Mechanisms of Prejudice Intervention", Neuroimaging Personality, Social Cognition, and Character, Elsevier, pp. 337–354, doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-800935-2.00018-x, ISBN   978-0-12-800935-2 , retrieved 2020-12-07
  11. ↑ Corenblum, B.; Meissner, Christian A. (March 2006). "Recognition of faces of ingroup and outgroup children and adults". Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 93 (3): 187–206. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2005.09.001. PMID   16243349.
  12. 1 2 Golby, Alexandra J.; Gabrieli, John D. E.; Chiao, Joan Y.; Eberhardt, Jennifer L. (August 2001). "Differential responses in the fusiform region to same-race and other-race faces". Nature Neuroscience. 4 (8): 845–850. doi:10.1038/90565. ISSN   1097-6256. PMID   11477432. S2CID   16699355.
  13. ↑ Young, Steven G.; Hugenberg, Kurt (2011-05-31). "Individuation Motivation and Face Experience Can Operate Jointly to Produce the Own-Race Bias". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 3 (1): 80–87. doi:10.1177/1948550611409759. ISSN   1948-5506. S2CID   145427030.
  14. ↑ Sangrigoli, Sandy; de Schonen, Scania (October 2004). "Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 45 (7): 1219–1227. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00319.x. ISSN   0021-9630. PMID   15335342.
  15. ↑ Ostrom, Thomas M.; Carpenter, Sandra L.; Sedikides, Constantine; Li, Fan (1993). "Differential processing of in-group and out-group information". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 64 (1): 21–34. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.1.21. ISSN   1939-1315.
  16. ↑ Brosch, Tobias; Bar-David, Eyal; Phelps, Elizabeth A. (2013-01-08). "Implicit Race Bias Decreases the Similarity of Neural Representations of Black and White Faces". Psychological Science. 24 (2): 160–166. doi:10.1177/0956797612451465. ISSN   0956-7976. PMC   3864653 . PMID   23300228.
  17. ↑ Krosch, Amy R.; Amodio, David M. (November 2019). "Scarcity disrupts the neural encoding of Black faces: A socioperceptual pathway to discrimination". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 117 (5): 859–875. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000168 . ISSN   1939-1315. PMID   31233317.
  18. ↑ Kubota, Jennifer T; Banaji, Mahzarin R; Phelps, Elizabeth A (July 2012). "The neuroscience of race". Nature Neuroscience. 15 (7): 940–948. doi:10.1038/nn.3136. ISSN   1097-6256. PMC   3864590 . PMID   22735516.
  19. ↑ Leyens, Jacques-Philippe; Yzerbyt, Vincent; Schadron, Georges (1994). Stereotypes and Social Cognition. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications. pp. 104–107. ISBN   978-0-80398583-4.
  20. ↑ Quattrone, George A.; Jones, Edward E. (1980). "The perception of variability within in-groups and out-groups: Implications for the law of small numbers". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . 38 (1): 141–152. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.38.1.141. ISSN   0022-3514.
  21. ↑ Jackson, Lynne M. (2011). The Psychology of Prejudice: From Attitudes to Social Action. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. pp. 110–112. ISBN   978-1-43380920-0.
  22. ↑ Brewer, Marilynn B. (Fall 1999). "The Psychology of Prejudice: In-group Love and Out-group Hate?". Journal of Social Issues . 55 (3): 429–444. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00126.
  23. ↑ Hewstone, Miles; Rubin, Mark; Willis, Hazel (February 2002). "Intergroup Bias". Annual Review of Psychology . 53: 575–604. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.53.100901.135109. PMID   11752497. S2CID   11830211.
  24. ↑ Zhong, Chen-Bo; Phillips, Katherine W.; Leonardelli, Geoffrey J.; Galinsky, Adam D. (2008). "Negational categorization and intergroup behavior". Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin . 34 (6): 793–806. doi:10.1177/0146167208315457. PMID   18391025. S2CID   14610644.
  25. ↑ L. Cosmides; J. Tooby; R. Kurzban (April 1, 2003). "Perceptions of race". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7 (4): 173–179. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00057-3. PMID   12691766. S2CID   11343153.
  26. ↑ L. A. Hirschfeld (1996). Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mit Press. ISBN   978-0-26208247-1.
  27. ↑ F. J. Gil-White (August–October 2001). "Are Ethnic Groups Biological "Species" to the Human Brain? Essentialism in Our Cognition of Some Social Categories". Current Anthropology . 42 (4). University of Chicago Press: 515–553. doi:10.1086/321802. JSTOR   10.1086/321802. S2CID   53592867.
  28. ↑ R. Kurzban; J. Tooby; L. Cosmides (December 18, 2001). "Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America . 98 (26): 15387–15392. Bibcode:2001PNAS...9815387K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.251541498 . PMC   65039 . PMID   11742078.
  29. ↑ G. J. Lewis; T. C. Bates (November 2010). "Genetic Evidence for Multiple Biological Mechanisms Underlying In-Group Favoritism". Psychological Science . 21 (11): 1623–1628. doi:10.1177/0956797610387439. PMID   20974715. S2CID   27351021.
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