Ingroup Favoritism and Prejudice Flashcards
What did Henri Tajfel and his colleagues find about Ingroups?
dividing people into arbitrary groups produces ingroup favoritism
Explain Henri Tajfel’s study on high school students:
high school students came to his laboratory for a study supposedly concerning “artistic tastes.”
shown a series of paintings by two contemporary artists, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky
Students were divided into two groups (X and Y group)
Students told to allocate points to other boys
they gave more points to other members of their own group in relationship to boys in the other group.
What is important about Henri Tajfel’s study on ingroup favoritism?
most striking part of Tajfel’s results is that ingroup favoritism was found to occur on the basis of such arbitrary and unimportant groupings.
When do people start favoriting their ingroups? How do children show this?
Up to around 6 (so learn it all before)
Young children show greater liking for peers of their own sex and race and typically play with same-sex others after the age of three.
And there is a norm that we should favor our ingroups: people like people who express ingroup favoritism better than those who are more egalitarian
Explain how people talk differently about their ingroups? (positive vs negative situation)
they describe the ingroup and its members as having broad positive traits (“We are generous and friendly”)
BUT describe negative ingroup behaviors in terms of the specific behaviors of single group members (“Our group member, Bill, hit someone”)
Explain the “group serving bias”?
also make trait attributions in ways that benefit their ingroups, just as they make trait attributions that benefit themselves.
Positive behaviour (ingroup)= stable internal characteristic of the group as a whole
Negative behaviour (outgroup)= stable negative group characteristics
Positive (outgroup) Negative (Ingroup)= temporary situational variables or by behaviors of specific individuals and are less likely to be attributed to the group.
What causes in group favoritism?
1) natural part of social categorization; we categorize into ingroups and outgroups because it helps us simplify and structure our environment
2) We like people who are similar to ourselves, and we perceive other ingroup members as similar to us. (we like ppl like us)
MOST IMPORTANT:
3) self-enhancement. We want to feel good about ourselves, and seeing our ingroups positively helps us do so
What helps provide us with feelings of social idenitity?
the positive self-esteem that we get from our group memberships.
When we can identify ourselves as a member of a meaningful social group (even if it is a relatively trivial one), we can feel better about ourselves.
When are we likely to show in group favoritism?
when we are threatened or otherwise worried about our self-concept
When do people express higher self esteem?
higher self-esteem after they have been given the opportunity to derogate outgroups, suggesting that ingroup favoritism does make us feel good
How do people react when their ingroup is threatened?
Furthermore, when individuals feel that the value of their ingroup is being threatened, they respond as if they are trying to regain their own self-worth—by expressing more positive attitudes toward ingroups and more negative attitudes toward outgroups
When can we feel good about our group membership when our results are not good?
groups of female college students perform a creativity task and then gave them feedback indicating that although they themselves had performed very poorly, another woman in their group had performed very well.
rather than being saddened by the upward comparison with the other woman, participants used the successful performance of the other woman to feel good about themselves, as women
When does ingroup favoritism not occur? (Inferior)
when the members of the ingroup are clearly inferior to other groups on an important dimension
-Ex. players on a baseball team that has not won a single game all season are unlikely to be able to feel very good about themselves as a team and are pretty much forced to concede that the outgroups are better,
- Members of low status groups show less favoritism then high status groups
When does ingroup favoritism not occur? (embarrassment)
when a member of one’s own group behaves in a way that threatens the positive image of the ingroup
A student who behaves in a way unbecoming to university students, or a teammate who does not seem to value the importance of the team, is disparaged by the other group members, often more than the same behavior from an outgroup member would be
CALLED: BLACK SHEEP EFFECT
Who is more likely to use in group favoritism?
because they are particularly likely to rely on their group memberships to create a positive social identity.
How can differences in group identification be measured?
self-report measures such as the Collective Self-Esteem Scale
The scale assesses the extent to which the individual values his or her memberships in groups in public and private ways, as well as the extent to which he or she gains social identity from those groups.
People who score higher on the scale show more ingroup favoritism in comparison with those who score lower on it
What is Authoritarianism (trait)?
personality dimension that characterizes people who prefer things to be simple rather than complex and who tend to hold traditional and conventional values.
What do authoritarians believe about in groups?
in-group-favoring in part because they have a need to self-enhance and in part because they prefer simplicity and thus find it easy to think simply: “We are all good and they are all less good.”
What is Social dominance orientation (SDO) ?
a personality variable that refers to the tendency to see and to accept inequality among different groups
Score high: believe that there are and should be status differences among social groups, and they do not see these as wrong
- “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups,”
Score low: believe that all groups are relatively equal in status and tend to disagree with these statements.
What do ppl who score high on SDO believe about in-groups?
show greater ingroup favoritism.
Do collectivistic cultures have MORE importance on social groups?
Supporting the hypothesis, they found that Chinese participants made stronger stereotypical trait inferences than Americans did on the basis of a target’s membership in a fictitious group
