The Pros And Cons Of Ingroup Projection

The author of this piece is Dr. Gordon Allport. He is the former head of Harvard’s Department of Psychology as well as the founding father of social psychology. Allport published many books including The Nature of Prejudice (1954). The purpose of the article is to inform the audience that in-groups are everywhere and identity is based on our in-groups. This essay is an excerpt from the book The Nature of Prejudice in 1954 and is a credible source because the principles Allport discussed are still studied by psychologists and researchers today. In the essay, Allport speaks of reference groups and how it relates to in-groups. According to Allport reference groups are the group that an individual wishes to be apart of, but an in-group is

Outgroup homogeneity bias is the tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than among members of the

This movie portrayed people of different races and present how people from different cultures stereotype others. The first concept that I want to illustrate is “out group homogeneity”. “Out group homogeneity” means that people tend to see outgroups less diverse than themselves whereas they view themselves as unique and individual. Outgroup members are viewed as highly similar. The ingroup members tend to attribute that the outgroup members have the same characteristics and personalities. The outgroup homogeneity effect was observed in wide and diverse groups,

Deflate-gate is an instance where I had a biased viewpoint. This is when, in the AFC championship two years ago, the Patriots defeated the Colts. It was found that the balls, that the Patriot’s offense was playing with were underinflated. The news caused an uproar for months to come. The main controversy was if Tom Brady was involved or not, and I immediately thought that he wasn’t.

Stereotyping characteristics are associated with our past experiences of the particular group’s characterization and thus, in essence, we would have to have a certain picture of that group’s social behaviors on our minds. Eventually, such characterization leads to the generalization of the entire group’s social and cognitive behaviors that we believe are inbound or depict the true

The Ho, Roberts and Gelman article ‘Essentialism and Racial Bias Jointly Contribute to the Categorizations of Multiracial Individuals’ examined the joint effects of cognitive biases and social biases on hypodescent. Loosely, hypodescent can be defined as individuals’ penchant to categorize mixed race individuals into solely the race of the minority category (Ho et al., 2015). While previous studies have examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivation on hypodescence respectively, the authors were motivated by the dearth of available studies that examined the effects of cognitive biases and social motivations jointly. Since both cognitive biases and social motivations require higher levels of cognitive processes, it can be inferred that the researchers would endorse a top-down view of perception, especially when it comes to racial categorization (Psych 240 Lecture 9/14/15). The researchers hypothesized that subjects who exhibited essentialist thinking—the belief that individuals belong to specific discrete groups in which members share inextricable qualities—in conjunction with high levels of anti-black bias would exhibit hypodescence, by categorizing Black-White multiracial individuals into solely a Black racial category.

The journal article used in reference to stereotyping was retrieved from the The Journal of Experimental Psychology. The purpose of this article is to illustrate how being exposed to social stereotypes can subconsciously affect our behavior. The article explores the theory that if the self is compared to the social stereotype of a perceived out-group, a group with which one does not identify, one will subconsciously behave differently. Therefore, there will be disparities between the similarities

In a study conducted by Ford and Tonander (1998), it was hypothesized that when one’s social identity was threatened by a group who is largely different from them, that individual is likely to form stereotypes. This is based

Few people are going to openly admit to being prejudice against people of other races, gender, and religions. However that doesn’t stop many of us from having unintentional racist thoughts. In 1979, Henri Tajfel, a social psychologist, proposed that “the groups which people belonged to are an important source of pride and self-esteem. Groups give us a sense of social identity: a sense of belonging to the social world.” This ideal of categorizing and subconsciously labeling ourselves is better known as “Social Identity Theory”. Tajfel continues by saying “In order to increase our self-image we enhance the status of the group to which we belong. For example, England is the best country in the world! We can also increase our self-image by discriminating and holding prejudice views against the out group (the group we don’t belong to). For example, the Americans, French etc. are a bunch of losers! Therefore, we divided the world into “them” and “us” based through a process of social categorization (i.e. we put people into social groups). This is known as in-group (us) and out-group (them). Social identity theory states that the in-group will discriminate against the out-group to enhance their self-image.” We all unintentionally discriminate against others that are in the “out-group”, and by doing this we are excluding ourselves from certain religions, cultures, races, and even genders. This ideal of labeling ourselves can be traced back to childhood and factors such as where we

Have you ever judged a person by their age, gender or appearance rather than really knowing them? When you meet a tattooed man on the street, your first impression of him might be bad, i.e. a negative categorization, since tattoos are associated with criminals and unemployed people. However, he could be a person who does volunteer and works as a business manager. People tend to automatically categorize a person into groups by visual judgements, demographic features, personality and own perceptions or beliefs (Billig & Tajfel, 1973). Social categorization is a process of classifying people into different groups based on their similar characteristics and group memberships. It is a natural part of social perception and serves a basic epistemic and identity function in organizing and structuring people’s knowledge about the world and make things become manageable in daily life (Bodenhausen, Kang & Peery, 2012). It occurs spontaneously without much thoughts (Crips & Hewstone, 2007). In social categorization, we usually form a general conclusion about other people and begin to respond to them as a member of a particular social group than as individuals. It allows us to communicate and connect with those who share the same or similar group membership. Social groups that we use in social categorization can change under different situations and over time. Whaley and Link (1998) discovered that there is a strong association between categorization and stereotype-based judgments. For

For example, a female individual who believes in feminism will most likely identify higher with a group of feminists than a group of females that are ant-feminist. This strength in social identification leads to in-group favouritism whereby members see the members of their group in a positive manner and see members of other groups in a negative or denigrative manner (Swann Jr et al., 2009). Through the process of depersonalisation. self-categorisation and group membership, an individual develops a social identity that serves as a social cognitive schema for behaviours that are related to the group (Korte, 2007; Swann Jr et al., 2009).

We as humans tend to relate to those that are similar to us, and tend to alienate those that we deem as different than us. Whether it is by race, gender, culture, or religion, it is something that is almost always present in human interactions, and often times can be completely subconscious. In our textbook Interpersonal Communication by Kory Floyd, an ingroup is defined as “A group of people with whom one identifies.” An outgroup is conversely defined as “A group of people whom one does not identify.” Henri Tajfel first coined this terminology while he was working to devise his social identity theory. These ideas of classifying people into ingroups and outgroups can lead to many

However, many of the group-based stereotypes are incorrect and generalizing and it promotes further misunderstandings and prejudice. Prejudice is having a false attitude toward an out-group in comparison to one’s in-group. Prejudiced individuals are prejudging without knowing any information about the “Others” (Rogers and Steinfatt).

Prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping are important topics at the cause of debating within social psychology. A stereotype is a generalization about a group of people, in which certain traits cling to all members, regardless of actual individual variation (Akert, Aronson, & Wilson, 2010). As humans, people assign objects and individuals into categories to organize the environment. Individuals do this for not only organization, but also survival. Is stereotyping inevitable? That is the question; according to Devine (2007), it is, but Lepore and Brown (2007) have to disagree. Devine believes that “stereotyping is automatic, which makes it inevitable.” On the other hand, Lepore and Brown are not convinced that stereotyping is

The presences of stereotypes are overwhelming and are developed by both the environment a subject is raised in and their family. Stereotypes, which are pervasive throughout different societies, become intertwined in the collective values of the society as justification for all forms of social, economic, and political inequality among groups (Devine and Elliot 2000;Kaplan 2004; Operario and Fiske 2004). As people become more exposed to stereotypes they start to become a permanent part of a person’s life, they begin to stereotype themselves almost always involuntarily.