Suggests that existence of groups cause prejudice. Humans have a natural tendency to form groups.
Stereotyping is pre-conceived judgments about certain groups/people based on characteristics. Based on normal cognitive process – tendency to group things together. When doing so we exaggerate the differences between groups and similarities of in-groups.
Social Categorisation: Categorising people into groups by race, gender & social class. Some more relevant to some people. We do this to understand our social environment, allowing us to learn things about them & determine how to correctly behave in their context.
Social identification: Process of making from categorising yourself with an in-group to identifying more overtly. Adopt the identity of our in-group & conform to their social norms. Emotional & self-esteem will be bonded with the group.
Social comparison: We compare our in-group to our out-group maintaining esteem as we compare favourably. Once group identify themselves as rivals they are forced to compare to maintain self-esteem.
To increase self-image we enhance status of the group we belong to. We hold prejudice views & discriminate against the other groups.
In group favouritism: extend an individual identifies with a group. Extent for grounds of comparison with out-group. Relevance of in-group to out-group
| Strengths | Weaknesses |
| Sheriff – at a summer camp, when both groups split, they formed groups & picked leaders creating prejudice for their outgroup rival – demonstrates that there is an ingroup & outgroup which produces prejudice through own ability exaggeration.
Lalonde – observed a hockey team doing badly & knew the other team were better. The team favoured their dirty tactics which Lalonde disagreed with (saying tactics were dirty) – group inflation to show better than outgroup. High eco V – sheriff’s study was done in a natural setting of a summer camp – ppts would be acting in a natural way. Higher mundane realism. Application – states prejudice arises due to formation of group, by categorising people into in or out groups, identifying with their group where esteem & emotions are linked & comparing groups to make in-group better – can explain why nazi’s categorised themselves as superior & Jew’s as inferior & exaggerated the differences. |
Low R – sheriff’s study done in natural setting of a summer camp – therefore lack of control over extraneous variables meaning harder to test for consistencies.
Sheriff’s study also opposes the theory – found prejudice increased when competition was introduced in sports where ratters flag was burned – shows the importance of competition in creating prejudice Different theory – realistic conflict theory states prejudice arises due to scares resources like oil, jobs and money – show prejudice may not arise just by the formation of groups. Reductionist – doesn’t take into consideration historical conflicts or backgrounds of different groups, just tries to simplify complex human behaviour – theory is limited as it ignores causative factors. |