Key Study: Tajfel (1972)
Aim: To investigate the minimal groups paradigm and how it is relevant to social identity theory (SIT)
Participants: 48 males aged 14-15 from the same state school in Bristol, UK. The boys were randomly allocated to 3 groups consisting of 16 boys per group
Procedure:
- The boys were randomly assigned to a group by the researchers
- The boys had been shown slides of paintings by the artists Klee and Kandinsky and were asked to state which artist they preferred
- They were then told that their preference for one of these two artists would form the basis of the group they would be assigned to (in actual fact this did not happen – the boys simply thought that this had happened, thereby creating minimal groups)
- The boys were not told which of the other boys were members of their group and there was no face-to-face contact with other group members once they had made their choice
- The boys were then shown, individually, to a cubicle and asked to conduct the following task:
assign money (virtual, not real) to members of either the boy’s ingroup (based on the preference for the artist previously stated) or outgroup (preference for the other artist) - The boys did not know the identity of each boy, only a code number which identified whether they were ingroup or outgroup
- The trials were set up in a randomised design by the researchers and tested the boys on a range of measures including whether they would opt for maximum joint profit, maximum ingroup profit, maximum difference between ingroup and outgroup
Results: The boys tended to favour the ingroup members, choosing to go for a higher reward and to penalise the outgroup i.e. they went for the choice which maximised the biggest profit/loss difference between the ingroup and the outgroup, often at the expense of possible maximum joint profit
This was based solely on the mere idea of the other group rather than on any actual interaction between ingroup and outgroup members, even when the difference between the groups was minimal i.e. not based on any shared group characteristics but on the (illusion) that the other boys in the group also preferred the same artist
Conclusion: Ingroup favouritism can be manipulated via the minimal groups paradigm in which participants use social categorisation to make decisions i.e. simply knowing that another (rival) group exists is enough to suggest the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’
Evaluation of Tajfel et al. (1971)
Strengths
- This was a lab experiment which uses a standardised procedure and quantitative data which should ensure reliability
- The fact that the boys did not meet or even see the ingroup and outgroup members adds validity to the procedure as it eliminates possible sources of bias from the decision as to how to award money i.e. physical appearance and personality factors cannot have influenced the decisions made in the task
Weaknesses
- There was no jeopardy involved in the task: assigning virtual money to faceless strangers does not reflect real-life situations therefore the study lacks ecological validity
- The boys may have succumbed to response bias i.e. rewarding their ingroup because they felt that this is what the researchers wanted them to do
Key terms:
- Minimal groups paradigm
- Ingroup
- Outgroup