Tajfel

Question 1

Why was Tajfel lucky to study in France

Answer 1

rest of his family died in the Hollocuast back home

Question 2

What was Tajfel in WWII

Answer 2

French soldier & Prisoner-of-war

Question 3

Who did Tajfel work for

Answer 3

OSE & UN Refugee Organisation

Question 4

What led Tajfel to be interested in the plight of refugees

Answer 4

His experiences in war

Question 5

What was Tajfel interested in?

Answer 5

the way people act and are treated is often determined by group membership

Question 6

Recognised the self is not just personal but also

Answer 6

social

Question 7

What were the minimal conditions

Answer 7

• Categorisation into two distinct groups
• Real decisions about the distribution of rewards or penalties
– Distribution is NOT based on scarce resource
• No advantage for the individual making a distribution choice
• No knowledge of identity of ingroup/outgroup members
• No face-to-face interaction
• No advantage of belonging to a particular group
• No logical reason for holding a negative attitude against the outgroup
– No normative/consensual discrimination

Question 8

Who were the participants

Answer 8

64 boys, aged 14-15 years, from a comprehensive school in a suburb of Bristol

Question 9

What was a matrice?

Answer 9

a booklet of matrices and told that their task was to assign rewards to anonymous members of each group

Question 10

What was the value of each point

Answer 10

0.1 of a penny

Question 11

What strategy did the boys adopt

Answer 11

a compromise between fairness and maximum differentiation in favour of the ingroup

Question 12

What was more important: relative or absolute group gain

Answer 12

• Relative group gain more important than absolute group gain and maximum overall gain, i.e. doing better than them is more important than doing well per se

Question 13

What is a sufficient condition to create intergroup discrimination

Answer 13

social categorisation

Question 14

What is negative interdependence

Answer 14

• Competition over scarce resources

Question 15

What are some explanations for Tajfel’s findings

Answer 15

Generic (competitive) norm
Meaning
Positive Distinctiveness
self-esteem hypothesis

Question 16

When do things contribute

Answer 16

if it adds to positive distinctiveness

Question 17

When is the effect eliminated

Answer 17

when participants role-play

Question 18

How are there demand charcteristics

Answer 18

• As there are two teams, they can infer that they need to do something alongside the teams

Question 19

What is the role of similarity

Answer 19

• Participants work on the assumption that they are more similar to ingroup members than outgroup members (e.g., similar dot estimation/art preference)
• Similarity – Attraction Principle

Question 20

What is the role of interdependence

Answer 20

• No direct self-interest (no self-reward option)

* BUT: Perhaps participants expect other ingroup members to act in terms of ingroup favouritism

Question 21

What was the main finding

Answer 21

Participants would rather give less money to an ingroup member than risking a situation in which an outgroup member receives more money

Question 22

What was Tajfel fundamentally opposed to

Answer 22

– Reductionism
– Individualism
– A-contextualism