Intergroup Behavior Flashcards
Discontinuity Effect
Intergroup behavior is much more competitive than inter-individual behavior
Individuals are more likely to cooperate while two groups are more likely to be competitive.
This is often represented by the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game.
Prisoner’s Dilemma Game
The XY Game with the co-operative result vs the self-interest results.
About 95% of the time, X was chosen by individuals because both would benefit, but you need to have a degree of trust because if not, then one might win but the other loses. X is the most efficient to earn points. However in groups, usually 50% of the time Y was chosen b/c they wanna maximize/win.
Reasons for intergroup competition
Schemas of fear and greed, social support for greed, diffusion of responsibility, deindividuation, reciprocity effects, ingroup-out group bias, and social identity theory
Reduction of intergroup competition
Simple contact effects, robber’s cave study: higher level goals, jigsaw classroom, positive intergroup examples
Info about schemas of fear and greed
Kids learn that its okay to be competitive if youu are in a group, fear, and greed are closely tied due to the indirect measures of attitude in the schema.
Norms are developed around 1st-2nd grade age to be competitive
Prisoner’s Dilemma Game Alternative
Adds the choice Z, which guarantees getting 2 points. Choice Z is when you feel the other group will screw you over. Individuals still chose X 95% of the time, but groups pick X 50% of the time, but z 25% and Y 25%.
The choices are Z=fear, Y=greed.
Info about social support for greed
Someone in the room will float and convince the group to act on greed.
In an experiment, a confederate was placed in a group, randomly assigned the individual to be greedy, other times the person would suggest being cooperative, other times the confederate spoke out of fear, and finally the neutral. It was found that the voice of the confederate had a Hugh impact on the group, would typically go up 65-70%
Deindividuation
Behavior can’t be tied to identity, don’t know who is taking the shots, spokesperson usually apologizes. Like the strangers who talked to each other in dark vs light rom, dark room has people open a lot more. Or on Halloween, when kids take more than one candy.
Reciprocity Effect
Convinces one group to do this, the next time they’ll return the favor.
If one group tries to cheat the other group, the other group will then try to do so as well, which can then escalate. If there is a sacrificial lamb, it usually restores balance.
Basically think of tit-for-tat.
Ingroup-outgroup biz
Notion that people tend to have schemas about their own group being different than other groups, their groups is more deserving/talented ad associate negative characteristics to other groups.
Acts as justification to try to cheat the other group because if you cheat, you get extra point that you deserve.
Social Identity Theory
Part of self-esteem/identity comes from groups we belong to - group membership. Therefore, we want our own group to benefit more than other groups.
Minimal group paradigm
Even if you randomly assign people into groups, nothing actually ties you together, people will till do things to favor their own group. Groups are so important to us that even if there’s no connections, we still want to benefit our groups, which explain why we do so much for the groups that actually mean one thing to us.
Simple Contact effects
Used to reduce intergroup competition as just having interactions with the other groups makes you realize some similarities.
However, this may not be enough, so you really have to play up the groups being equal as opposed to one being more deserving.
Robber’s Cave Study
octal psychologist bought a under camp called Robber’s Cave and got 10 years old boys, from a medium sized city an recruited kids similar-ish to them. They did team ports and ramped up their competitiveness, but would then try to reduce it through simple contact and it didn’t really change that much.
Instead, higher level goal helped , like making them come together and solve a problem like help a stopped water truck.
Jigsaw Classroom
Break kids down into smaller groups of 5 and they need to have some knowledge. Each kid is given a sub-topic they need to address and have to do well on each topic But since each sub-topic is given t the kid, they need to inform the others in the group and receive info about the other stuff from the other kids. And become interdependent on each other.
- Tends to reduce ingroup-outgroup bias (like boys v girls, religious difference, stereotypes, etc).
