Overview
This lecture explores ingroup favoritism—our tendency to favor people from our own groups over others—and examines its causes, outcomes, and personality/cultural influences.
Causes and Nature of Ingroup Favoritism
- Ingroup favoritism is an evolutionarily functional tendency to prefer people like ourselves and distrust outgroups.
- Social categorization leads to dividing people into ingroups (us) and outgroups (them), shaping perceptions and behaviors.
- Even arbitrary and meaningless group divisions produce ingroup favoritism, as shown in Tajfel’s minimal group studies.
- Ingroup favoritism arises from self-concern; positive feelings about our groups enhance self-esteem (social identity).
Outcomes and Manifestations of Ingroup Favoritism
- Ingroup favoritism appears early in childhood and increases up to age six.
- People rate ingroup members more positively and remember their successes over failures.
- Negative or undesirable actions by ingroup members are often blamed on individuals, not the group as a whole.
- Outgroup members’ negative behaviors are attributed to their group, while positive behaviors are dismissed as exceptions.
- The group-serving bias (ultimate attribution error) reinforces ingroup positivity and outgroup negativity.
Limits and Exceptions to Ingroup Favoritism
- Ingroup favoritism is reduced when the ingroup has low status or is clearly inferior in important ways.
- The black sheep effect occurs when deviant ingroup members are judged more harshly than similar outgroup members.
Personality and Cultural Influences
- People who highly value group membership (high collective self-esteem) display more ingroup favoritism.
- Authoritarian individuals prefer simplicity, traditional values, and show more ingroup favoritism.
- Social dominance orientation (SDO) describes a preference for group-based inequalities and predicts greater favoritism.
- People with higher humanism and desire to control prejudice exhibit less ingroup favoritism.
- Collectivist cultures, such as Chinese, show more group-based stereotyping than individualistic cultures, such as the USA.
Key Terms & Definitions
- Ingroup Favoritism — Tendency to respond more positively to people from our own group than to outsiders.
- Group-serving Bias — Attributing positive traits to the ingroup and negative traits to the outgroup.
- Social Identity — Positive self-esteem derived from group memberships.
- Black Sheep Effect — Strong devaluation of ingroup members who threaten the group’s image.
- Authoritarianism — Preference for simplicity, traditional values, and conventional group distinctions.
- Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) — Acceptance of inequality among different social groups.
Action Items / Next Steps
- Complete one of Harvard’s Implicit Association Tests (IAT) and write a reflection on your results.
- Describe a time when your social group displayed increased group identity (e.g., black sheep effect) and the outcome.