Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination

Name: Under-estimators and over-estimators experiment conducted by Henri Tajfel (1970)

Aim: The aim of Tajfel's study was to demonstrate that categorization of people is sufficient for people to discriminate in favor of their own group and against people of the other group.

Participants: The participants were 64 boys of ages 14 and 15 from a school in a suburb of Bristol.T

Procedure: The participants were divided into 8 group. All of the boys in each group knew each other. The boys then were told to go together to the lecture room. In the lecture room the researcher told them that the experiment was interested in the study of visual judgments. Then forty clusters of varying numbers of dots were flashed on the screen. The boys were asked to record each of them. In this experiment were two conditions and the researchers made sure 4 groups of 8 served are in each condition. After they finished the test the boys who were in 1. condition groups were told that some people constantly overestimated the number of dots and some consistently underestimate the number of dots. In the 2. condition groups the boys were told that some of them were always more accurate than the others. After the judgments had been made the boys were told they were going to be divided into new groups according to the visual judgments they had just made. The truth is that the participants were randomly assigned to the groups. Then the researchers gave the participants another task. They were given a booklet of matrices and were told to give other students/participants rewards and penalties in real money. The boys did not know the identities of people who they were giving rewards and penalties. The boys were asked to three types of choice:

1. in-group choices: both top and bottom row referred to members of the same groups as the boy.
2. out-group choices: both top and bottom row referred to members of the different group from the boy.
3. inter-group choices: one row referred to the boys' own group and the other one to the other group.

Results: The researchers found out that in in-group and out-group choices participants gave the same amount of money to all members. However, in inter-group choices most of the participants gave more money to  members of their own group than to  members of other groups.

Conclusion: The experiment conducted by Tajfel demonstrates that inter-group discrimination is quite easy to trigger off. It also shows that categorization of people into groups leads to conflict.

Strengths: Tajfel made sure that he had the high-level of control on the procedure (for example when students were awarding points to other students they did not know their names).

Limitations: One of the limitations was that the experiment wasn't done naturally but in the laboratory. Tajfel's experiment was criticized for being ecologically invalid.

Cultural Differences: None

Errors of Attribution

Attribution errors

It's a psychological term for describing a process of inferring the cause of events or behavior without being aware of the underlying processes and biases that lead to those inferences.

Self-Serving Bias

It's an attribution error in which you attribute your success to your internal abilities like talent and your failure to external forces (outside variables). For example: when you win a basketball game, you attribute the win to your physical abilities or talent. However, when you lose  you put blame on the referrers. Psychologists and researchers believe that by doing this people just try to protect their self-esteem.

 Self-Serving Bias in Children

a) This study was conducted by Elizabeth Posey and Randolph A. Smith from Ouachita Baptist University

b) Its aim was to investigate self-serving bias in children (the study provides evidence of self-serving bias). Twenty male and 16 female second graders were participating in this experiment. These children were paired with with a partner of same gender and were asked to complete 3 minutes math worksheet as a group. However, one half of the participants was paired up with a friend while the other one was not. At the end all of them received feedback that indicated their success or failure.

c) The results showed that the people in non-friend groups were blaming the failure or the bad performance to their partners. When they were asked who did better job they tended to give a credit for themselves. On the contrary children who were paired up with a friend were less likely to blame others or external/situational factors for their failure.

d) Participants who were blaming others for the failure clearly demonstrated self-serving bias. By putting the blame on their partners children wanted to protect their ego or self-esteem.

Cultural Differences in Relation To The Self-Serving Bias 

a) This study was conducted in 1986 by Kashima and Triandis

b) 34 Japanese graduate students and 202 American undergraduate students participated in this experiment. The participants were shown and then asked to remember 15 slides pertaining to life in Israel, Greece and Iran. Then they were given 5-minute recognition test that was based on those slides. After the test the participants were shown 5 slides pertaining to life in India. Then they were given 3-minute test based on those 5 slides about India. Participants were randomly assigned to either success or failure group. People in the success group were told they scored 12/15 while the people in the failure group were told they scored only 5/15. Then all of the participants were given an attribution questionnaire.

c)American students tended to attribute their success to their talent or abilities. (Self-serving bias; individualistic country)

  Japanese students tended to attribute their failure to lack of their abilities. (Modesty bias; collectivist culture)

  Both Americans and Japanese students responded similarly when they were given situational information