In-group bias operates even when group assignment is arbitrary and trivial

Evidence

Allport’s ideas about social categorization and recategorization at higher levels of inclusiveness foreshadowed many of the theoretical and empirical developments of importance to contemporary thinking about prejudice and prejudice reduction. Indeed, social categorization is as central to contemporary work in intergroup relations (see also Brewer & Gaertner, 2001) as it was to Allport’s thinking about nature of prejudice. Although Allport’s analysis focused primarily on personality dynamics, he identified the central role of categorization, particularly in terms of the distinction between ingroups and outgroups. This distinction became the cornerstone for socialcognitive (Hamilton & Trolier, 1986), social-identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and self-categorization (Turner, 1985) approaches to prejudice. In the process of categorizing people into groups, people typically classify themselves into one of the social categories and out of the others. Because of the centrality of the self in social perception, this distinction has a profound influence on evaluations, cognitions, and behavior. Perhaps one reason why ethnocentrism is so prevalent is because these biases operate even when the basis for the categorization is quite trivial, as when group identity is assigned randomly in laboratory experiments. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 545

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the minimal-group paradigm from Tajfel’s experiments, well-established social-psychology knowledge. — connects to: Mild individual in-group preference generates macro segregation spontaneously — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 383
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ethnocentrism is prevalent precisely because ingroup favoritism is triggered by minimal, even random, categorization is a dense, counterintuitive point about how little it takes to activate bias.