Tajfel Flashcards
1
Q
What of his experiences in the war interested him?
A
- plight of refugees and minority groups, issues of prejudice
- interested in way people act and are treated is determined by group membership over individuality, recognized that the self isn’t just personal, it’s also social
2
Q
What is the minimal group paradigm?
A
- looks at breaking it down to the basics and then adding variables to see the point the conflict would arise
- design of a study that can be varied and built on
3
Q
What is the rationale of the study?
A
- minimum conditions
- negative interdependence
4
Q
What is the Tajfel (Flament) Matrix?
A
- choose the column that shows the value of coins you wish to give to an ingroup member and outgroup member
- number of different strategies could be used: giving equal amounts, going for most difference, column that gave most points regardless of to whom
5
Q
What are the minimal conditions for intergroup discrimination?
A
- categorisation into 2 distinct groups
- real decisions about the distribution of rewards/penalties (no realistic group conflict)
- 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 particular group
- no logical reason for holding a negative attitude against the outgroup
6
Q
Who were the participants?
A
- 64 boys (aged 14/15)
- from comprehensive school in suburb of Bristol
7
Q
What was the procedure and the 2 phases?
A
- phase 1: categorisation based on arbitrary criterion, participants taken to separate cubicles and told their group (random assignment to groups)
- phase 2: tajfel matrices, given booklet of matrices and told their task was to assign rewards to anonymous members of each group, value of each point was 0.1 of a penny
8
Q
What were the results?
A
- boys adopt strategy that’s a compromise between the fairness and maximum differentiation in favour of the ingroup
- relative group gain is more important than absolute group gain and maximum overall gain (doing better than them is more important than doing well in general
9
Q
What were the conclusions?
A
- social categorisation is a sufficient condition to create intergroup discrimination/ingroup favouritism
- competition over scarce resources isn’t necessary (but sufficient)
10
Q
What is the initial explanation for competitive generic norm?
A
- evidence points to a fairness norm rather than competitive generic norm, children are taught to share
- follow-up studies showed role-playing leads to fairness but less ingroup favouritism among groups with less competitive values
- when participants categorised themselves as members of a group this gave their behaviour a distinct meaning
- positive distinctiveness: differentiating ingroup from relevant comparison group on valued dimensions
- social identity theory (social categorisation, social identification, social comparison)
11
Q
What is the self-esteem hypothesis?
A
- feel good about self due to positive identification, characteristics and connotations you associate with due to being part of that group
- positive distinctiveness creates positive social identity which reflects positively on the individual, thus creating collective self-esteem
- follow-up studies found that not all tests of the self-esteem hypothesis found evidence that maximum differentiation leads to higher self-esteem but not when it’s measured on the group level
12
Q
What are the methodological issues?
A
- demand characteristics: effects still persist in follow-ups even when they don’t want to please the experimenter, if told what to expect the effect is amplified
- role of similarity: participants work on assumption that they’re more similar to ingroup members and that similarity leads to attraction. follow-up studies found that social categorisation produces stronger ingroup favouritism than similarity and stronger ingroup favouritism when the outgroup is more similar
- role of interdependence/reciprocity: no direct self-interest, participants may expect other ingroup members to act in terms of ingroup favouritism to benefit everyone. follow-up studies found effect is stronger when participants assume interdependence however bounded rationality only works with ingroup
- maximum rather than minimum conditions: trivial categorisation is only information to create meaningful task, only 1 outgroup, distribution of money is only meaningful way to achieve differentiation
13
Q
What is the theoretical debate?
A
- economic models of human rationality: not about individual self-interest, personal economic gain, or maximum overall gain (would rather give less to ingroup then give more to outgroup)
- Tajfel believed prejudice and other intergroup phenomena were grounded in social relations and realities, don’t believe it’s an automatic product of cognitive bias
14
Q
What is the empirical impact?
A
-effects have been reproduced in field settings
15
Q
What is the social context?
A
-Tajfel was fundamentally opposed to reductionism, individualism and a-contextualism however much of his empirical work has been used to promote these approaches to social psychology
