Balanced Identity Theory 1 formalizes a set of relationships between group attitude, group identification, and self-esteem. While these relationships have been demonstrated for familiar and highly ...salient social categories, questions remain regarding the generality of the balance phenomenon and its causal versus descriptive status. Supporting the generality and rapidity of cognitive balance, four studies demonstrate that the central predictions of balance are supported even for previously unfamiliar "minimal" social groups to which participants have just been randomly assigned. Further, supporting a causal as opposed to merely descriptive interpretation, manipulating any one component of the balance model (group attitude, group identification, or self-esteem) affects at least one of the related components. Interestingly, the broader pattern of cognitive balance was preserved across such manipulations only when the manipulation strengthens as opposes to weakens the manipulated construct. Taken together, these findings indicate that Balanced Identity Theory has promise as a general theory of intergroup attitudes, and that it may be able to shed light on prior inconsistencies concerning the relationship between self-esteem and intergroup bias.
From early in development, humans show a strong preference for members of their own groups, even in so-called minimal (i.e., arbitrary and unfamiliar) groups, leading to tremendous negative ...consequences such as outgroup discrimination and derogation. A better understanding of the underlying processes driving humans' group mindedness is an important first step toward fighting discrimination and inequality on a bigger level. Based on the assumption that minimal group allocation elicits the anticipation of future within-group cooperation, which in turn elicits ingroup preference, we investigate whether changing participants' anticipation from within-group cooperation to between-group cooperation reduces their ingroup bias. In the present set of five studies (overall N = 465) we test this claim in two different populations (children and adults), in two different countries (United States and Germany), and in two kinds of groups (minimal and social group based on gender). Results confirm that changing participants' anticipation of who they will cooperate with from ingroup to outgroup members significantly reduces their ingroup bias in minimal groups, though not for gender, a noncoalitional group. In summary, these experiments provide robust evidence for the hypothesis that children and adults encode minimal group membership as a marker for future collaboration. They show that experimentally manipulating this expectation can eliminate their minimal ingroup bias. This study sheds light on the underlying cognitive processes in intergroup behavior throughout development and opens up new avenues for research on reducing ingroup bias and discrimination.
Mere Membership Dunham, Yarrow
Trends in cognitive sciences,
September 2018, 2018-09-00, 20180901, Letnik:
22, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Human social groups are central to social organization and pervasively impact interpersonal interactions. Although immensely varied, all social groups can be considered specific instantiations of a ...common and abstract ingroup–outgroup structure. How much of the power of human social groups stems from learned variation versus abstract commonality? I review evidence demonstrating that from early in development a wide range of intergroup phenomena, most prominently many ingroup biases, follow solely from simple membership in an abstract social collective. Such effects cannot be attributed to rich social learning, and thus (i) constrain theories seeking to explain or intervene on ingroup bias, and (ii) provide reason to think that our species is powerfully predisposed towards ingroup favoritism from early in development.
A wide range of ingroup biases emerge spontaneously following assignment to previously unfamiliar and otherwise meaningless ‘minimal’ social groups. Because they emerge in the absence of richer forms of social learning, these findings challenge explanations for ingroup bias that appeal to the role of environmental messages.
Ingroup bias in the minimal groups setting extends far beyond mere preferences in favor of the ingroup, and affects many aspects of learning and memory. Because this emerges early in development, it constitutes a powerful learning gradient favoring the further entrenchment of ingroup bias.
Continued advances will require the careful classification of ingroup biases that emerge solely as the result of group membership versus those that depend on additional forms of environmental input. The minimal groups paradigm can be used to perform this sorting, because effects that emerge in that setting by definition do not require additional learning.
What cognitive and affective processes underlie the all‐too‐human tendency toward group‐based affiliation and exclusion? Using a paradigm in which children are randomly assigned to previously ...unfamiliar and meaningless “minimal” social groups, we investigate the developmental origins of the tendency to prefer and positively evaluate the actions of social ingroup members. Using a procedure derived from evaluative priming as well as children's verbal descriptions of intergroup encounters, we show that 6‐year olds but not 3‐year olds manifest robust ingroup preference. These results suggest that the mechanisms underlying the wide range of human social group affiliations undergoes a striking increase in generality between ages 3 and 6, perhaps driven by a shift from an individual‐level to a group‐level or “sociocentric” orientation.
Human flourishing depends on individuals paying costs to contribute to the common good, but such arrangements are vulnerable to free riding, in which individuals benefit from others’ contributions ...without paying costs themselves. Systems of tracking and sanctioning free riders can stabilize cooperation, but the origin of such tendencies is not well understood. Here, we provide evidence that children as young as 4 years old negatively evaluate and sanction free riders. Across six studies, we showed that these tendencies are robust, large in magnitude, tuned to intentional rather than unintentional noncontribution, and generally consistent across third- and first-party cases. Further, these effects cannot be accounted for by factors that frequently co-occur with free riding, such as nonconforming behaviors or the costs that free riding imposes on the group. Our findings demonstrate that from early in life, children both hold and enforce a normative expectation that individuals are intrinsically obligated to contribute to the common good.
Experimentally created “minimal” social groups are frequently used as a means to investigate core components of intergroup cognition in children and adults. Yet, it is unclear how the effects of such ...arbitrary group memberships compare to those of salient real-world group memberships (gender and race) when they are directly pitted against each other in the same studies. Across three studies, we investigate these comparisons in 4–7-year-olds. Study 1 (N = 48) establishes the minimal group paradigm, finding that children develop ingroup preferences as well as other forms of group-based reasoning (e.g., moral obligations) following random assignment to a minimal group. Study 2 (N = 96) and Study 3 (N = 48) directly compare this minimal group to a real-world social group (gender or race) in a cross-categorization paradigm, in which targets are participants' ingroups in terms of the minimal group and outgroups in terms of a real-world social group, or vice versa. The relative strength of the minimal group varies, but in general it either has a similar effect or a stronger effect as compared to race and in some cases even gender. Our results support the contention that an abstract tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them” is a central force in early intergroup cognition.
•Effects of lab-created “minimal” groups are compared to gender and race.•Four- to 7-year-olds are tested using a cross-categorization paradigm.•Minimal groups largely have a similar or stronger effect than race.•Gender is stronger than minimal groups on preferences and generalizations.•The results advance the understanding of the magnitude of minimal group bias.
Racism and intergroup discrimination are pervasive problems in human societies. Whereas several studies have shown that children show bias in the context of many kinds of groups, much less is known ...about how and when general psychological tendencies and contextual factors contribute to the manifestation of intergroup bias across development, and whether individual differences play a role. In the present study, we pursue these questions by investigating and comparing the developmental trajectories of intergroup bias in 5- to 10-year-old (mostly) White children (n = 100). We assessed children's liking and preferences towards 4 racial groups (White, East Asian, Black, and Middle Eastern) and towards 2 gender groups (male and female) in a within-subject design. We found that the young children in our sample showed a significant racial and gender ingroup bias, speaking to an early and strong manifestation of intergroup bias on the basic ingroup-outgroup distinction. This bias decreased with age. At the same time, we found considerable differences between the different types of outgroups from early on. Furthermore, there were remarkable differences between the developmental trajectories of gender and racial intergroup bias, highlighting the role of both social and contextual influences. Finally, our results did not reveal consistent evidence for the influence of individual differences on children's intergroup bias.
•We investigated the developmental trajectories of gender and racial bias towards multiple groups.•Strength of bias differs between the 3 racial groups in younger children.•Racial bias decreases with age.•Gender bias is stronger than racial bias and remains high across age groups.
The principle of direct reciprocity, or paying back specific individuals, is assumed to be a critical component of everyday social exchange and a key mechanism for the evolution of cooperation. Young ...children know the norm of reciprocity, but it is unclear whether they follow the norm for both positive and negative direct reciprocity or whether reciprocity is initially generalized. Across five experiments (N = 330), we showed that children between 4 and 8 years of age engaged in negative direct reciprocity but generalized positive reciprocity, despite recalling benefactors. Children did not endorse the norm of positive direct reciprocity as applying to them until about 7 years of age (Study 4), but a short social-norm training enhanced this behavior in younger children (Study 5). Results suggest that negative direct reciprocity develops early, whereas positive reciprocity becomes targeted to other specific individuals only as children learn and adopt social norms.
Identity fusion represents a strongly-held personal identity that significantly overlaps with that of a group, and is the current best explanation as to why individuals become empowered to act with ...extreme self-sacrifice for a group of non-kin. This is widely seen and documented, yet how identity fusion is promoted by evolution is not well-understood, being seemingly counter to the selfish pursuit of survival. In this paper we extend agent-based modelling to explore how and why identity fusion can establish itself in an unrelated population with no previous shared experiences. Using indirect reciprocity to provide a framework for agent interaction, we enable agents to express their identity fusion towards a group, and observe the effects of potential behaviours that are incentivised by a heightened fusion level. These build on the social psychology literature and involve heightened sensitivity of fused individuals to perceived hypocritical group support from others. We find that simple self-referential judgement and ignorance of perceived hypocrites is sufficient to promote identity fusion and this is easily triggered by a sub-group of the population. Interestingly the self-referential judgement that we impose is an individual-level behaviour with no direct collective benefit shared by the population. The study provides clues, beyond qualitative and observational studies, as to how hypocrisy may have established itself to reinforce the collective benefit of a fused group identity. It also provides an alternative perspective on the controversial proposition of group selection - showing how fluidity between an individual's reputation and that of a group may function and influence selection as a consequence of identity fusion.
Subjective Social Status (SSS) is a robust predictor of psychological and physiological outcomes, frequently measured as self-reported placement on the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. ...Despite its importance, however, there are still open questions regarding how early into ontogeny SSS can be measured, and how well SSS measures can be extended to non-Western and small-scale populations. Here, we investigate the internal consistency of responses to the MacArthur ladder across four cultures by comparing responses to more explicit social comparison questions. We conduct these comparisons among children and adolescents, ages 4 to 18, in India, the United States, and Argentina, in addition to those in two indigenous communities of the Ecuadorean Amazon marked by differing degrees of market integration (total N = 363). We find that responses are consistent in all populations, except for the more remote forager-horticulturalist Ecuadorian community. We also find that, consistent with findings among American adolescents, SSS declines with age. We then assess the test-retest reliability of the MacArthur Scale across two time-points: a subset of Indian participants (N = 43) within one week, and a larger, second sample of Indian participants after one year (N = 665). We find that responses are highly correlated within one week (ρ = 0.47), and moderately correlated after one year (ρ = 0.32). These results suggest that responses to the MacArthur ladder are internally consistent and reliable among children across a range of diverse populations, though care must be taken in utilizing these measures among children of non-industrial, small-scale societies.
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