E X P E R I M E N T S I N T O I N T E R G R O U P D I S C R I M I N AT I O N
What is Prejudice?
Prejudice is a fixed attitude,usually Negative
Towards someone on the basis of their
What is Discrimination?
The behavioural expression of Prejudice.
What Causes Prejudice and
Discrimination?
This is a question which has baffled greater
minds than ours over the centuries.
Some of the most extreme and well known
examples of Prejudice and Discrimination include the racial discrimination commonly seen in the USA and the religious
discrimination found in Northern Ireland.
However, Prejudice and Discrimination exist
in all societies to a greater or lesser degree and many people have been victims of it.
Psychological Explanations of Prejudice and Discrimination?
The psychological theories include
explanations at individual and group level. The individual explantion focuses on
personality and suggests that individuals are prejudiced because they have a particular
personality type known as the authoritarian personality.
Definitions
In-group a group that you consider yourself to be a member of
Groups
The group explanation suggests that the
existence of groups is what causes prejudice and discrimination. We are all members of
some groups but not others and we naturally favour our in-group against any out-group
Realistic Group Conflict Theory
In 1961 Sherif et al. demonstrated how competition
between groups could develop into prejudice. They studied a group of boys attending a summer camp.
The boys were divided into two groups and were staying in
different huts. In the first stage of the study the groups were working separately, but in the second stage, the
researchers introduced an element of competition between them. Very quickly the boys developed a strong team spirit that rapidly developed into hostility towards the other
group.
As time went on the boys developed an increasingly
negative attitude towards the other group, which presented itself in both prejudiced attitudes and
The Realistic Group Conflict Theory proposes
that the cause of prejudice and discrimination is the existence of different groups who are in
Tajfels Social Identity Theory
In Contrast to Sherif’s theory, Tajfel proposed that
the mere existence of different groups is enough to create in-group favouritism and out-group
prejudice.
The theory suggest that when we become a
member of a group it changes our perceptions of ourselves and we begin to identify with other
members of that group and see ourselves as similar to them. In the same way we begin to see members of other groups as different to us. These
Tajfels Social Identity Theory
The Theory also proposes that our social
identity is tied in with our group membership and that the position the group holds in
society determines our self esteem, or how we feel about ourselves.
This leads us into making group comparisons
Study
In the first experiment the boys were told
that the experimenters were interested in visual judgements.
Forty clusters of varying numbers of dots
were flashed onto a screen and the boys were asked to estimate and record how many dots there were in each cluster. They were then told that they had either over or
underestimated the number of dots. They were then asked to take part in another experiment and told that for convenience
they would be placed in groups according to whether they had over or underestimated. In fact they were just split down the middle
The Study
Tajfel actually carried out two laboratory
experiments.
The participants were 64 boys aged between
14 and 15 from a Bristol school. They came to his laboratory in groups of eight with all of
the boys in each group coming from the same class in the same school
Study
The boys were then asked to complete a task
that involved giving rewards and penalties in the form of money to other boys.
They would not know the identity of the boys
that they were rewarding or penalising but they would know the group they were in.
It was stressed that at no time they would be
awarding money to themselves.
The boys were placed alone in a cubicle and
The Different types Of Matrices
The participants had to respond to three
different types of matrices offering one of the following choices:
1. In-group choices- where top and bottom rows
were both labelled as giving money to members of their own group
2. Out-group choices- where top and bottom rows
were both labelled as awarding money to members of the other group
3. Inter-group choices- where one row was labelled
Possible responses
The boys could have opted for three different
strategies:
1. Maximum joint profit – choosing the box with the
highest total amount in each time so that, as a whole group, they got the most money out of the experimenters.
2. Maximum fairness – choosing the box with near
equal amounts in top and bottom rows so that each boy received the same amount.
3. Inter-group discrimination – choosing the box that
gave the most money to a member of his own
Matrix 1
-19 -16 -13 -10 -7 -4 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Results
In both the in-group and the out-group
choices, the participants tended to opt for maximum fairness. However, in the group choices, the boys showed clear inter-group discrimination in that they gave
significantly more money to members of their own group than to members of the other
group.
These results were consistent for all eight
The Second Experiment
The second experiment was very similar to
the first. 48 new boys were used as subjects and all the subjects knew each other well.
The experiment differed in two ways.
The boys were shown slides of paintings by
Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, which were shown without the painter’s signature and
were asked to express their preferences.
Half of the subjects were assigned at random
The other major difference was in the type of
matrices used. In this experiment matrices were employed which allowed the experimenters to
investigate three variables. The three variables were:
maximum joint profit - where boys could give the
largest reward to members of both groups;
largest possible reward to in-group - where the
boys could choose the largest reward for the member of their own group regardless of the reward to the boy from the other group;
maximum difference - where boys could choose the
largest possible difference in reward between
Matrix
7 8 9 1
0 11 12 13 14 15 15 17 18 19
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25
Boy 1
Boy 2
Maximum joint profit and giving the largest reward to the in-group would both be achieved by choosing the last pair in the row, giving 19 to a member of your own group, and 25 to a member of the other group. However, to maximise
your own rewards while also maximising the difference, you might well choose one of the left boxes and give 7 to a
Results/Findings
The experiments carried out by Tajfel clearly
demonstrated that inter-group discrimination is easy to trigger off. Tajfel demonstrates that the
very act of categorisation into groups is enough to produce conflict and discrimination.
In making their intergroup choices a large majority
In contrast the in-group and out-group
choices were closely distributed around the
point of fairness.