Minimal group paradigm

According to social psychologists, humans are inclined to separate into groups, and therefore form identities based upon them (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971). Within these groups, members identify with each other, those in the in-group, positively, and those in the out-group, they identify negatively (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). An example of this is how rival schools evaluate each other, by often stating that they are the best and devaluing another school as being the worst. In 1967, Tajfel studied how English school boys discriminated on an insubstantial sense of group membership against a perceived out-group. This gave way to his second experiment 1971, where Tajfel and colleagues set out to investigate what the minimal amount of conditions were necessary to establish a sense of group membership that would form the basis for discriminatory practices (Tajfel et al., 1971). What they found out is that the minimum condition for group favoritism was categorization.

In Tajfel’s original experiment, a class was broken up into two groups randomly by labeling one group as “over-estimators” and the other group as “under-estimators," but this did not reflect accuracy (Tajfel, 1970). They were indeed randomly separated. Other groupings included in his experiment was accurate and inaccurate. In his second experiment, groups were based on the preference for Klee or Kandinsky paintings, in which case they were separated into either Klee or Kandinsky groups (Tajfel, 1970). In each case, the groups had a chance at winning monetary rewards.

Part of the conditions of his experiment was that there was no face-to-face interaction between the subjects, no one knew who belonged to which group, subjects could not benefit in any useful way, and responses that demonstrate bias could not be justified by any group. However, in the first experiment, each of the groups showed significant favoritism for their in-group and there was evidence for discriminatory behavior. There was significant in-group favoritism in the second experiment.

Cultural differences and scarcity of resources

Among the different sources of intergroup conflict, competing for goals and cultural differences can complement the minimal group paradigm. Within both, much like Tajfel’s experiments, there is a chance for groups to form based on simple categorization. Intergroup conflict based on cultural differences is apparent in current world politics. In looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, two groups exist who are war with other because of different cultures. One of the prime motivators for the conflict is explained just by a person either being Jewish or Palestinian (Ben Hagai, Hammack, Pilecki, & Aresta, 2013). As a result, this has led to decades of fighting which has yet to see an end.

In a study aimed to test conversational conditions associated with moments of perspective taking, both Israelis and Palestinians were asked to articulate themselves as to why they have good intentions to live in peace, but at the same time defend themselves (Hubbard, 1999). In doing so, conflict arose out of each other's social categorization. Aside from cultural differences, other personal differences such as education, tradition, and family background can lead to intergroup conflict as well.

In the topic of religion, intergroup conflict has happened due to differing beliefs. Over the last 2000 years, many wars have been fought trying to establish the dominance of a competing religious belief. In one major instance, the competing religious belief turned into a fight for resources when Saladin fought for the capture of Jerusalem in opposition to Christians in what is known as the Siege of Jerusalem (Hanna, 1992).

Tajfel’s research was initially designed to discover a baseline intergroup condition of non-discrimination (Dobbs & Crano, 2001). Whereas original work focused on the scarcity of resources as an impetus for extreme intergroup behavior, MGP results suggested that just grouping people was enough to cause discrimination (Dobbs & Crano, 2001). Despite numerous criticisms and lack of generality among his work, MGP has gone on to explain many intergroup conflicts within the frame of social identity theory (Dobbs & Crano, 2001).

References

Ben Hagai, E., Hammack, P. L., Pilecki, A., & Aresta, C. (2013). Shifting away from a monolithic narrative on conflict: Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans in conversation. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 19(3), 295–310. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0033736
Dobbs, M., & Crano, W. D. (2001). Outgroup accountability in the minimal group paradigm: Implications for aversive discrimination and social identity theory. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(3), 355–364. http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167201273009 ↩1 ↩2 ↩3
Hanna, R., III. (1992). Contextualizing the siege of Jerusalem. The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 06, 109–121. http://doi.org/10.1484/J.YLS.2.302879 ↩
Hubbard, A. S. (1999). Cultural and status differences in intergroup conflict resolution: A longitudinal study of a Middle East dialogue group in the United States. Human Relations, 52(3), 303–325. http://doi.org/10.1023/A:1016993004765 ↩
Tajfel, H. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific American. ↩1 ↩2
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations, 33(47), 74. ↩
Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology, 1(2), 149–178. http://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2420010202 ↩1 ↩2