PSYC20009 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Tajfel, Ingroups And Outgroups
14 Jun 2018
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Lecture 4 - Monday 14 August 2017
PSYC20009 - PERSONALITY & SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
LECTURE 4
INTERGROUP CONFLICT
TODAY
•1. Definitions
•2. Basic psychological mechanisms
•Social categorization, self-categorization
•Consequences
•SIT
•3. Escalating factors
•4. Resolving conflict
1. DEFINITIONS
•(2) Ingroup: a group of which you are a member
•Outgroup: a group of which you are not a member
•Australians vs. non-Australians
•Males vs. females
•Intergroup bias (ingroup favoritism): preference for ingroups over outgroups
•Prejudice: negative evaluation/attitude of an (out)group (i.e. negative attitude)
•Discrimination: behavioral manifestation of prejudice
•Attitudes can be negative or positive. Any evaluation is an attitude regardless of - or +.
2. BASIC PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESSES
•(4) Categorization: the placement of some object into a class of similar things
•Social categorization: the placement of individuals into a class of similar individuals, often based
on features such as gender, ethnicity, nationality...
•Primitives: age, gender, race (?); dimensions along which we cannot help but categorise
people; we do so automatically.
•Why?
•Informative (we can make inferences about a novel object based on its similarity to other
objects), effort minimizing (in terms of getting to know the person), communicative
CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL CATEGORISATION
•(5) Functional, but...
•Consequences of social categorization
•Stereotyping:
•Stereotype: expectancies about a social group (probable behaviors, traits, features) (cf.
prejudice)
•Stereotyping: process of viewing an individual in light of a stereotype
•Social categorization can automatically activate information consistent with the ST
•Thus, individuals are viewed as stereotypical group members
•If a stereotype is overly negative, we can end up judging individuals negatively due to these
stereotypes.
STEREOTYPES
•(6) Stereotypes bias judgments about individuals, and can change the way that ambiguous
behavior is interpreted.
→ Duncan (1976)
•Participants witness an ambiguous shove (aggressive vs playful)
•ST of group to which shover belonged influenced interpretation
•African American pushes white: 75% say it’s violent (6% playful)
•White pushes African American: 17% say it’s violent (42% playful)
Lecture 4 - Monday 14 August 2017
PSYC20009 - PERSONALITY & SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
•The Duncan study is an old but compelling one. In this study, participants are exposed to an
incidental interaction between two people (confederates) in which one person shoves or pushes
another in a very ambiguous way, so that interpretation is open between aggressive and playful.
Depending on the skin colour of the confederates, the participants’ subsequent judgments
changed. The stereotype of the group to which the pusher belonged determined the judgement of
the shove as aggressive or playful.
SELF-CATEGORISATION THEORY
•(7) Categorize ourselves as group members
•Such self-categorization leads to depersonalization, assimilation to ingroup norms, and self-
stereotyping
•This dual process of self and social categorization leads to “us vs. them” thinking
•“Me and you” becomes “us vs. them”
MINIMAL CONDITIONS OF US vs THEM THINKING
•(8) Us vs. them categorization happens under minimal conditions
•And it has marked consequences
•Tajfel et al (1971)
•Schoolchildren
•Klee or Kandinsky
•Point allocation task
•Intergroup discrimination
•Mere categorization (based on minimal group conditions) elicited ingroup favoritism
•Shows kids 6 pairs and asks which they prefer. Then tells them ‘you are a Klee person’ or a
Kandinsky people. However these names didn’t actually reflect their choices. No link with their
preferences. So this is a minimal group situation; people are told they belong to the group but are
simply told and are asked to engage in a task with the other group in which they are asked to
allocate points to people in both the in and out groups. So we see a preference for allocating
points to people in their ingroups. The main takeaway here is that merely categorising people and
labelling them can elicit ingroup favoritism. This shows that under minimal conditions we get in
group bias/favoritism.
SOCIAL IDENTITY THEORY
•(9) Why does this happen?
•People prefer to have a positive self-concept
•Positive self-esteem
•Our selves are composed of personal and group-related identities
•Personal identity (attributes of you as an individual) and social identity (those parts of the
self-concept derived from our knowledge and feelings about our ingroups)
•We are motivated to increase the positivity of our own groups relative to outgroups
•Thus, intergroup bias
•We like to think positively about ourselves. There is me as an individual an also me as an
Australian, as a female, as a student blah blah.
CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL AND SELF
CATEGORISATION
•(10) Structural consequences
•Explanatory consequences
•Evaluative consequences (prejudice)
•Consequences associated with these psychological
processes can ramp up into proper conflict in certain
circumstances. How we perceive the social structure of
groups.
Document Summary
Stereotypes: (6) stereotypes bias judgments about individuals, and can change the way that ambiguous behavior is interpreted. Duncan (1976: participants witness an ambiguous shove (aggressive vs playful, st of group to which shover belonged influenced interpretation, african american pushes white: 75% say it"s violent (6% playful, white pushes african american: 17% say it"s violent (42% playful) Psyc20009 - personality & social psychology: the duncan study is an old but compelling one. In this study, participants are exposed to an incidental interaction between two people (confederates) in which one person shoves or pushes another in a very ambiguous way, so that interpretation is open between aggressive and playful. Depending on the skin colour of the confederates, the participants" subsequent judgments changed. The stereotype of the group to which the pusher belonged determined the judgement of the shove as aggressive or playful.
