Social Groups

Question 1

Human Sociality Benefits

Answer 1

• cooperation to accomplish tasks single person couldn’t do
• assuming different roles, developing/exercising specialized skillz
• shared culture
  d i v e r s i t y

+ income tripled, lifespan increased 30%, child mortality reduced 2/3, food production increased 1/3
+ evolution of tools
+ comparative advantage - sexual division of labor (to increase quality of life together)

Question 2

Social Network Structure

Answer 2

• # social ties
• likelihood 2 person’s friends are in turn friends
• tendency of popular ppl to befriend other popular ppl
• increased likelihood of outbound tie to be reciprocated w/inbound tie from same person
• tendency of similar ppl to form ties

+ cooperators cluster together - prevent free-loaders from ruining social fabric of a group

Question 3

Social Categories

Answer 3

ubiquitous, inter-group social conflict:

1. race - SA
2. religion - Ireland
3. Social class/privilege - Rwanda
4. Language - Quebec
5. Nationality - N America
6. Sports - USC vs. UCLA etc. etc.

Question 4

Social Grouping Mechanisms

Answer 4

1. Familiarity
2. Categories marked in culture
3. Coalition tracker

Question 5

Familiarity

Answer 5

“contact hypothesis”/”mere exposure” - works for faces, words, etc.

infants & adults prefer those who are more similar (whether remember seeing face or not; infants looking longer at same race)

Question 6

Categories marked in culture

Answer 6

• teends: overestimators vs. underestimators - randomly divided… more willing to give $ to those in in-group ..
• infants: yellow vs. blue - random … “like” ingroup more
  + predisposed to organize people into ingroup outgroup

Question 7

Coalition tracker

Answer 7

• Race: genes fail to sort individuals by race, little genetic diversity in humans (compared w/other similar species)
• implicit racism exists:
  ex: linking positive/negative words to good/bad/white/black - whites show 80% preference for whites
  ex: memory tasks - who said what statement:
  more confusions within races than across races, more confusions within gender than across gender, more confusions within age than across age (gender, age, race encoded)… race is NOT automatically encoded !, accent is however - good cue to group membership.
• younger children choose same language not same race (european-american), older children choose same race not same language (european-american), younger african-american choose same race not same language (minority group membership alliance)