People's behaviour in groups is fascinating and frequently disturbing. As
soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy
other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a
leader to worship and fight other groups.
But think about the types of groups you belong to, and you'll realise they
differ dramatically. Some groups are more like soldiers in the same unit or
friends who have known each other from childhood. Long-standing, tight-knit,
protecting each other. Perhaps it's not surprising people in these groups
radically change their behaviour, preferring members of their own group over
others in many ways.
Other groups, though, are much looser. Supporters of a large sports club,
for example, or work colleagues only together on a project for a few months or
even a group of people in an art gallery appreciating a painting.
It seems impossible that people stood together for only 30 seconds to look
at a painting can be said to form a group in any measurable way.
They believed it was possible for a group, along with its attendant
prejudices, to form at the drop of a hat. In fact they thought a group could
form even when there was no face-to-face contact between members, none of the
people knew each other and their 'group' behaviour had no practical
consequences. In other words they had absolutely nothing to gain (or lose) from
this barely existent group.
Forming a 'minimal group'
Tajfel and colleagues came up with a neat solution for testing their idea.
Participants, who were 14 and 15 year-old boys, were brought into the lab and
shown slides of paintings by Klee and Kandinsky. They were told their
preferences for the paintings would determine which of two groups they would
join.
Of course, this was a lie designed to set up the idea of 'us' and 'them' in
their minds. The experimenters wanted two groups of boys with not the faintest
idea who was also in their own group or what the grouping meant or what they
had to lose or gain.
After this setup, the boys were taken to a cubicle, one at a time. Each was
then asked to distribute virtual money to the other members of both groups. The
only information they had about who they were giving it to was a code number
for each boy and that boy's group membership.
There were a series of rules for the distribution of the money that were
designed to tease out who the boys favoured: their own group or the other
group. The rules were changed slightly in different trials so that it was
possible to test a number of theories. Did the boys distribute the money:
- Fairly?
- To obtain maximum joint profit?
- For maximum ingroup (own group) profit?
- For maximum difference between groups?
- Using favouritism? This involves a combination of maximum ingroup profit and maximum difference?
Startling findings
From the way the virtual money was distributed, the boys did indeed
demonstrate the classic behavioural markers of group membership: they favoured
their own group over the other. And this pattern developed consistently over
many, many trials and has subsequently been replicated in other experiments in
which groups were, if you can believe it, even more minimal.
The boys had no idea who was in their group 'with them' or
who was in the other group,but the most puzzling aspect of this experiment is
that the boys had nothing whatsoever to gain from favouring their own group -
there didn't seem to be anything riding on their decisions.
Out in the real world there's a good reason to favour your own group -
normally it is also advantageous to yourself. You protect yourself by
protecting others like you.
Social identity theory
What Tajfel argued, though, was that there was something riding on
the decisions the boys made, but it was something very subtle, yet incredibly
profound.
Tajfel argued that people build their own identities from their group
memberships. For example, think of each of the groups you belong to: say at
work, or within your family. Part of who you are is probably defined by these
groups. Putting it the other way around: the nature of your group memberships
define your identity.
As our group membership forms our identity, it is only natural for us to
want to be part of groups that are both high status and have a positive image.
Crucially though, high status groups only have that high status when compared
to other groups. In other words: knowing your group is superior requires having
a worse group to look down upon.
Seen in the light of social identity theory, then, the boys in the
experiment do have a reason to be selfish about the allocation of the virtual
cash. It is all about boosting their own identities through making their own
group look better.
Criticisms
No experiment can, or should, be automatically taken at face value.
Questions have to be asked about whether it is really telling us what the
authors claim. There are two criticisms often levelled at this experiment and
its interpretation:
- The participant's behaviour can be explained by simple economic self-interest. But: in another experiment only symbols were used rather than 'virtual' money and the results were the same.
- The participants were responding to what they thought the experimenters wanted (psychologists call this 'demand characteristics'). But: Tajfel argues it is unclear to the participants what the experimenters wanted. Recall that the rules for distributing money frequently changed. Also, the participants were encouraged to think that choosing whose paintings they liked (the 'first' experiment) was unrelated to the allocation of virtual money (the 'second' experiment).
Despite these criticisms, Tajfel and colleagues' findings have stood the
test of time. The experiment, or something like it, has been repeated many
times with different variations producing much the same results.
Centrality of group membership
Social identity theory states that our identities are formed through the
groups to which we belong. As a result we are motivated to improve the image
and status of our own group in comparison with others.
Tajfel and colleagues' experiment shows that group membership is so
important to us that we join the most ephemeral of groups with only the
slightest prompting. We will then go out of our way to make our own group look
better compared to others.
The simple fact of how important group membership is to us, and how easily
we join groups, often without realising it, is both a subtle and profound
observation about human nature.
Uploaded by
Georgina Papaioannou
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