Minimal group findings on discrimination depend on allocating benefits, not penalties.

Evidence

Though well documented and reliable, the tendency to group on trivial bases and then use the resultant group status to structure in-group and out-group relations has limits, which all too often are glossed over (see Diehl, 1988, 1989, 1990). The tendency to overgeneralize the typical minimal group findings does not mitigate the central result, but it certainly forestalls more comprehensive understanding. It seems that the in-group = deserving and out-group = unworthy interpretation owes, in part, to the use of research designs that have focused determinately and exclusively on the distribution of positive outcomes to in-group or out-group members in the minimal group paradigm for, indeed, the great majority of minimal group studies have used the allocation of positive rewards as the critical outcome variable, despite warnings about the threats to generalizability that such mindless consistency entails (Crano & Brewer, 2002; Dobbs & Crano, 2001). … This tendency to focus on the provision of positive reinforcements probably is a result of researchers’ propensity to follow the lead of early research in the field, which almost unswervingly made use of Tajfel allocation matrices as the central dependent measure despite Tajfel and colleagues’ early insistence that allocating penalties in lieu of rewards was an acceptable indication of discrimination in the minimal group paradigm (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy, & Flament, 1971, pp. 153–154). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1379

Categorization

• XREF: A methodological critique paralleling replication-crisis critiques of other fields’ locked-in measurement conventions.
• QUESTION: Do minimal group effects replicate when penalties rather than rewards are the outcome variable? Worth chasing the Dobbs and Crano follow-ups.