Intergroup discrimination emerges without any conflict of interests

Evidence

An institutionalized or explicit conflict of objective interests between groups, however, does not provide a fully adequate basis, either theoretically or empirically, to account for many situations in which the social behavior of individuals belonging to distinct groups can be observed to approach the “group” extreme of our continuum. … And yet, there is evidence from Sherif s own studies and from other research that the institutionalization, explicitness, and objectivity of an intergroup conflict are not necessary conditions for behavior in terms of the “group” extreme, although they will often prove to be suf-ficient conditions. … One clear example is provided by our earlier experiments (Tajfel, 1970; Tajfel et al., 1971), which we shall discuss briefly below, in which it was found that intergroup discrimination existed in conditions of minimal in group affiliation, anonymity of group membership, absence of conflicts of interest, and absence of previous hostility between the groups. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2679

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines minimal-group conditions: discrimination emerges with no conflict, no hostility, no interdependence.
• SEED: The minimal group paradigm is a strong hook for an essay on how little it takes to trigger ‘us versus them’ — relevant to workplace factions, sports rivalries, online tribalism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2679