Group conflicts can exist with no material stakes beyond the groups’ invented competition itself.

Evidence

A further distinction must be made between explicit and implicit conflicts—a distinction that has to do with conflicts that are “objective” in a different sense. A conflict may be “objective” despite the fact that the goals the groups are aiming for have no value outside of the context of intergroup comparison in that it may be institutionalized and legitimized by rules and norms (of whatever origin) accepted by the groups themselves. This was the case in Sherif’s studies in their phase of competition between the groups; and it also is the case in any football match and in countless other social activities. … The implicit conflicts are those that can be shown to exist despite the absence of explicit institutionalization or even an informal normative acceptance of their existence by the groups involved. The proof of their existence is to be found in the large number of studies (and also everyday occurrences in real life) in which differentiations of all kinds are made between groups by their members although, on the face of it, there are no “reasons” for these differentiations to occur. Examples of this have been provided in several studies mentioned in this chapter in which the introduction by the subjects of various intergroup differentiations directly decreased the objective rewards that could otherwise have been gained by the in-group, or even directly by the individual. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2762

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines explicit vs. implicit conflict and the sense in which competition can be ‘objective’ without real-world stakes.
• XREF: Connects to the minimal-group paradigm literature and Tajfel’s social identity theory, which this passage directly draws on.