Prejudice: Ingroups and Outgroups

Prejudice is a baseless and usually negative attitude toward members of a group. Common features of prejudice include negative feelings, stereotyped beliefs, and a tendency to discriminate against members of the group. The word is often used to refer to preconceived, usually unfavorable, judgments toward people based on their gender, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, or other personal characteristics. In psychology, "prejudice" refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their group membership. It is also important to remember that prejudice is a belief and not a behavior. Although prejudice may lead to discrimination, the two are separate concepts.

Negative prejudice is rarely seen in response to one's own group, or ingroup. This is thought to be because individuals tend to have more knowledge about members of their own group, so they do not have to rely on heuristics to make judgments about them. Heuristics are simple guidelines that people use to make decisions, come to judgements, and solve problems, typically when facing incomplete information. Heuristics are along the same lines as rules of thumb, stereotypes, educated guesses, intuitive judgements, and profiling. While these internal guidelines tend to work well, they can sometimes lead to systematic errors in judgement or cognitive biases. Therefore, when evaluating members from other groups, or outgroups, individuals may have access to limited information and refer to predetermined ideas to make predictions about behavior.

Motivations Underlying Prejudice

Ingroup Favoritism

Researchers have found that ingroup favoritism, or preference for members of the group one belongs to, can occur even when the group had no prior social meaning. Experiments have shown that when participants were assigned to groups based on something as trivial as a coin toss, those participants exhibited ingroup favoritism, giving preferential treatment to members of their own group.

Outgroup Homogeneity

The outgroup homogeneity effect is the perception that members of an outgroup are more similar than members of the ingroup. This can range from physical to mental characteristics. This kind of prejudice can be seen in times of war or conflict, when each group dehumanizes their enemy.

Prejudice and propaganda

Elements of prejudice can often be seen in propaganda. This image emphasizes the individuality of the ingroup (America) and the homogeneity of the outgroup (Slavik communists), demonstrating the principle of outgroup homogeneity.

Another example of this phenomenon was noted in a study in which researchers asked 90 sorority members to judge the degree of within-group similarity for their own group and two other groups. It was found that every participant judged their own sorority members to be significantly more dissimilar than the members of the other groups.

The Justification-Suppression Model

The justification-suppression model of prejudice explains that people face a conflict between the desire to express prejudice and the desire to maintain a positive self-concept. This conflict causes people to search for justification for disliking an outgroup and to use that justification to avoid negative self-concept when they express their disdain.

Realistic Conflict Theory

The realistic conflict theory (RCT) states that competition between limited resources leads to increased negative prejudices and discrimination. Research has shown this to be the case, even when the resource in question is insignificant—such as a cheap plastic trinket. However, research has shown that the hostilities created in this situation can be lessened once groups are forced to cooperate to achieve a common goal.

The Robbers Cave experiment by Muzafer Sherif is one of the most widely known demonstrations of RCT. In this study, researchers posed as camp personnel, observing 22 eleven- and twelve-year-old boys who had never previously met and had similar backgrounds. First, the boys were divided into two groups upon arrival, based on similarities. Then, the groups were entered in competition with one another in various camp games for prizes, which caused both groups to develop negative attitudes and behaviors towards the outgroup. In the final stage, tensions between the groups were reduced through teamwork-driven tasks that required intergroup cooperation.

Social Dominance Theory

This theory states that society can be viewed as a series of group-based hierarchies. When in competition for scarce resources, such as housing or employment, dominant groups create prejudiced "legitimizing myths" to provide moral and intellectual justification for their dominant position over other groups. This helps to validate their claim over the limited resources.

Reducing Prejudice

Research indicates that most prejudicial attitudes and biases are culturally learned and not innate, meaning these beliefs can also be unlearned. In a meta-analysis of 515 studies on prejudice, three important mediating factors were found to reduce prejudice. All factors rely on intergroup contact, or the intermingling of two groups. This contact (1) enhances knowledge about the outgroup, (2) reduces anxiety about intergroup contact, and (3) increases empathy and perspective taking.