LE 17: Reducing Prejudice, In-group Bias, and Longitudinal Societal Trends

Introduction and Midterm 2 Administration

• Lab Update: Students who could not submit their "choice question" in lab on Friday can still complete it in the assignments section of Canvas.

Foundations of In-group and Out-group Psychology

• Group Formation: Humans naturally affiliate with social groups, which serve as key components of identity formulation.

• Evolutionary/Historical Utility: Traditionally, groups functioned as instruments or tools for completing tasks and work. Some group tasks historically involved conflict with other groups to secure advantages.

• In-group Bias Definition:     * Positive Prejudice: Positive feelings and stereotypes directed toward members of one's own group (the in-group).     * Negative Prejudice: Unfair treatment or negative feelings toward those not in the group (the out-group).     * Discrimination: The behavioral consequence involving favoring in-group members and disfavoring out-group members.

• Laboratory Conflict: Conflict can be ignited in a laboratory setting by randomly assigning individuals to group identities. Social psychology demonstrates that the mind quickly constructs the world as groups competing over zero-sum resources (where one group's gain is the other's loss).

The Minimal Groups Paradigm: Henry Tajfel's Investigations

• Overview: Developed by Henry Tajfel in the $1960 ext{s}$, this paradigm explores the triviality required to construct meaningful social groups that influence behavior.

• Experimental Criteria: Groups are assigned based on arbitrary, insignificant criteria.

  • Dot Estimation Task: Participants estimate the number of dots in a figure. They are then randomly labeled as "overestimators" (e.g., if the actual number were $150$, a high guesser) or "underestimators."

  • Artistic Preference: Participants judge paintings by Paul Klee or Vasily Kandinsky and are randomly assigned to be a "Klee fan" or a "Kandinsky fan."

Resource Allocation Matrices: In Tajfel's first experiment, participants made nine decisions regarding assigning points to two other subjects identified by group membership.

• Variables: Matrices vary from highly unequal (e.g., $-19$ points for Subject A and $6$ points for Subject B) to fair (treating both the same)

Strategies:

1. Maximum Joint Profit: Maximizing the total points delivered to both parties (maximizing welfare).

2. Maximum Fairness: Keeping the allocation as equal as possible between the two parties

3. Maximum Differentiation: Choosing an option that creates the largest possible gap in favor of the in-group member, even if it results in fewer absolute points for the in-group member.

Findings

In-group/In-group or Out-group/Out-group comparisons: Participants typically favor fairness, treating members of the same category as substitutable. In-group/Out-group comparisons: Participants exhibit a significant shift away from fairness (< 20 ext{%} of participants) toward Maximum Differentiation. They prioritize creating a gap over distributing more total benefit.

Schmidt and Drake: Contemporary Replications and Open Science

Background: Schmidt and Drake (published in Collabra: Psychology approximately two years ago) conducted preregistered replications of the Minimal Groups Paradigm using Open Science principles.

Manipulations: They tested six varieties of in-group/out-group status:

1. Direct Choice: Choosing to be in the "blue" or "green" group.

2. Dot Estimation: The classic over/underestimator task.

3. Imagination: Simply picturing being in a specific group

4. Name Memorization: Memorizing names of six members of their assigned group

5. Art Preference: Kandinsky vs. Klee

6. Random Assignment: Purely random assignment with no criteria provided (the most minimal form).

• Internal Evaluations: Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and explicit surveys, they measured:

  • Evaluation: Good/bad judgments (e.g., associating joy/cheer with the in-group).

  • Identification: Feeling attached to the group.

Results: Confirmed significant in-group bias across all conditions. Implicit and explicit scores showed values significantly above $0$, proving the mind rapidly builds and acts on group distinctions.

Gordon Allport’s Contact Hypothesis

• Source: The Nature of Prejudice ($1954$).

Core Assertion: Prejudice may be reduced through equal status contact between majority and minority groups, particularly in the pursuit of common goals.

• Four Optimal Conditions for Contact:

  1. Equal Status: Groups must interact without power hierarchies; members should have similar backgrounds, qualities, and interests within the context

  2. Common Goals: The groups must share a common problem or objective

  3. Intergroup Cooperation (Superordinate Goals): The task must require cooperation to succeed. The goal is "superordinate," meaning it transcends individual group interests

  4. Support of Authorities, Law, or Custom: Interaction must be supported by local norms, laws, or institutional frameworks that encourage a "local atmosphere" of cooperation.

Case Study: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Sherif, 1954)

• Researchers: Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif.

• Objective: Test Realistic Conflict Theory, which posits that conflict arises due to competition for limited resources.

• Participants: $22$ children ($11$ to $12$ years old), all white, middle-class, Protestant, and unknown to each other.

• Stage 1: Bonding: Groups (Eagles and Rattlers) bonded separately through swimming and hiking.

• Stage 2: Competition: Friction was induced through baseball, tug-of-war, and football. Winners received medals and knives; losers received nothing. This led to flag burning, cabin raids, theft, and physical fights.

• Stage 3: Reducing Friction

  • Failed Strategy: Simple non-competitive contact (coexistence) failed to reduce tension

  • Successful Strategy: Implementing superordinate goals

    • Example 1: Contributing money together to watch a movie.         * Example 2: Fixing the water tank/supply arranged by researchers. Example 3: Pulling a food delivery truck out of the mud together.

• Conclusion: Working together as allies for a shared benefit successfully eliminated prejudice and discriminatory behavior.

Meta-Analytic Evaluations of the Contact Hypothesis

• Tropp and Pettigrew: Analyzed $50$ years of research; reported a medium effect size ($d = 0.43$) indicating contact reduces prejudice.

• Critique: Many studies lacked random assignment or proper implementation of Allport’s conditions. Corrections for p-hacking reduced the effect to $d = 0.22$.

• Betsy Paluck (Princeton): Analyzed preregistered experiments with delayed outcome measures (testing impact weeks later). Found the effect size dropped essentially to zero after correcting for publication bias.

• State of Research: Findings are mixed. The lack of preregistered, randomized studies with delayed outcomes suggests more high-quality work is required to determine why and how contact works.

• Note on Jigsaw Classroom: Elliot Aronson’s Jigsaw Classroom was mentioned but excluded from detailed discussion due to time; students were told it would not be graded if it appeared on the exam.

Longitudinal Trends in Prejudice and Discrimination (1950s–Present)

• Explicit Attitude Shifts (Survey Data):     * Housing Discrimination: In $1973$, 60 ext{%} of people believed owners should have the right to discriminate; as of $2018$, over 80 ext{%} support anti-discrimination laws.     * Interracial Marriage: In the $1950 ext{s}$, approval for Black-White marriage was near 0 ext{%}. By $2015$, approval reached approximately 80 ext{%} nationally (including over 90 ext{%} among Black respondents).     * Political Eligibility: Willingness to vote for a well-qualified Jewish, Atheist, or Black president has significantly increased since the late $1950 ext{s}$.

• Implicit Attitude Shifts (7.1 Million IATs since 2007):     * Declining Bias: Implicit and explicit negative attitudes toward sexuality, race, and skin tone are decreasing (lower D-scores).     * Stable Bias: Implicit bias regarding age and disability remains largely unchanged.     * Increasing Bias: Body weight (fatphobia) is the only area where implicit intolerance is trending upward, though explicit measures show some decline.

• Summary: While societal attitudes are improving regarding many groups, scientists still do not fully understand the exact mechanisms causing this cultural change, and progress is not necessarily permanent.