![]() ![]() ![]() 9,16 Although there were a number of problems plaguing the experiment, including a harsh environment that may have made the boys more anxious and aggressive than they would have been otherwise, 10 Sherif’s study is often seen as a demonstration of how group identity can become the foundation for conflict.Īnother troubling finding is that in-group bias, and the prejudice that goes along with it, shows up in humans from a very early age. The two teams showed increasing hostility towards each other, which eventually escalated into violence (leading some to call the experiment a “real-life Lord of the Flies”). The teams were separated, and only interacted when they were competing in various activities. In this experiment, 22 eleven-year-old boys were brought to a mock summer camp and divided into two teams, the Eagles and the Rattlers. Another famous study illustrating in-group bias is the Robbers Cave study, conducted by Muzafer Sherif. 3 Experiments that follow this same basic outline, known as the minimal group paradigm (MGP), have been repeated time and time again, demonstrating that the favoritism people show for their own group doesn’t need to founded in anything particularly meaningful.īut in-group bias goes beyond kindness to our in-group it can also spill over into harm towards our out-group. The results showed that people gave more money to members of their in-group regardless of why that group had been formed in the first place: people were more generous to their in-groups, even when they had been assigned by a coin toss. Would people be more generous to their group members even when they were told that the groups had been decided randomly? Or would this effect only appear when participants were told that the groups were based on painting preference so that people felt that they had something in common with their group mates? This study was designed so that the researchers could tease apart the possible causes of in-group bias. The other participants were listed by code number, so their identities were concealed however, the code number indicated which of the two groups they had been assigned to. (As a control, other participants weren’t told anything about being in a group, and were merely assigned a code number.)Īfter this, each participant went into a cubicle, where they were told they could award real money to other participants by marking it down in a booklet. At this point, some of the participants were told that they’d been assigned to a specific group based on their choices of painting, while others were told they were assigned to a group by a random coin toss. In a 1973 experiment, participants started out by looking at pairs of paintings and marking down which one they preferred. One classic study illustrating the power of this bias comes from the psychologists Michael Billig and Henri Tajfel. However, over the years, research on in-group bias has shown that group membership affects our perception on a very basic level-even if people have been sorted into groups based on totally meaningless criteria. Most of us feel confident that we (unlike others) are free from bias and prejudice, and that the way we see and treat other people must be warranted. We all like to think that we are fair, reasonable people.
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