In-group Bias
Script
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The film will begin with an explanation of in-group bias. In-group bias or in-group favouritism entails the tendency for people to associate more helpfully and positively with members that belong to their group over those members that belong to an outside group. According to scholars, in-group bias was observed in the early period of the 1900s and was believed to be a result of the human behaviour forming identities of groups and groups. Realistic examples entail ideologies in politics, ethnicity and religious beliefs. However, there are artificial settings that have brought about the in-group bias where members selected randomly are more likely to support persons that belong to their group as compared to those of other groups. The membership in such kinds of groups is dynamic and changes rapidly with time. It is thus seen to assume an “ebb and flow” over time. |
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| A black family and white family are friends and raise their children together. The difference in colour is evident and the children appreciate it. At a tender age, the colour is not much of a problem although it is a base of play and teasing. During the baby stages, children play with one another but go back to their homes that provide different environments and cultures. | |
| The children grow in different families and the environment begins to shape and wire them differently. Children at the age of six start developing the “us” ideology judging from the traditions they see their families engaging. They begin to understand and accustom top a certain type of music, cuisine, dress code, discipline, and family culture that shapes and conditions them to become certain people. The black children understand that they are black and as such must conform to black people things such as taste of music, thinking, speech, dress code and discipline as well as family respect. At this point, the children develop the mind-set of a black community versus the white community and always prefer the black community over the white fraternity. | |
| On the other hand, the young children that used to play with their black counterpart are slightly grown. Their families still relate with the black family but on their own, things are different differently. The young children begin to understand the difference between them and their black friends judging from the way they communicate as a family, the music they listen to, the way they spend family time and how they dress. It is now evident that the families are utterly different and the children develop the “us” notion. Their relations with the black friends change slightly and they go to school associating more with white children as the black children associate more with the black children. | |
| At school, the black children attend classes they feel they have a belonging to and end up associating more with black students. As this happens, their friendship with the white counterparts from childhood begins to dwindle as they get into adulthood relating more with their black community. The students attend music class, and play the same sports like football, basketball and athletics. | |
| In a similar manner, the white children are grown up and go to classes that relate with their white culture. They play games assumed to be white like baseball and swimming. As a result, they involve more with their white counterparts and end up relating and associating more with white children. They grow into adulthood understanding this and thus develop the white notion in everything they do. Their relationship and connection with their black friends loses touch and begins to dwindle majorly considering they find solace and belonging elsewhere. As they go to watch their black friends during their games, they do so with the idea of “their thing” in reference to the black people. | |
| The black man has already grown and looks for a black companion because he associates better and prefers the black woman. The thinking of white women for white men and black women for black men is instilled in him. He looks for a replica of what he had growing up or maybe a fulfilment of the expectations of his community. It seems absurd to marry outside the in-group that is the black community. The preference is born of the notion that their own is better than that one of the others. | |
| The white buddy goes on to college and finds the love of his life who is white. The white boy goes to a “white college” where he identifies with a white female. He finally presents his love and together with his black friends raise their families just as they were raised. |
Literature Review
Humans have done all their doings in groups. Therefore, the survival of beings is greatly dependent on social interactions. According to Everett (2015), such groups have been rapidly expanding from the small and kin-based forms to major groups dependent on nationality, language and religion as well as the geographical location among many other factors. The human species is tended to source for and identify with groups with many scholars suggesting that cooperation within the in-group and competition with outgroups have possibly co-evolved. Everett et al (2015) ask the question about what drives the preferences of favoritism and to what extent they increase or develop. In a bid to understand the dynamics of the question and proceed to answer them, the researcher studies the psychological theory and the research integrated with data from the economics of behavior by studying literature on economic games. The research method expands and builds upon previous discussions in the same line by employing a conceptual preference framework and beliefs that present data to demonstrate the in-group bias in the economic games.
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According to Everett et al (2015), the whole concept of social identity makes the key to the following research and is broadly contemporary to the work of social psychology and the processes of the intergroup. Social identity refers to that individual aspect of a person that emanates from their membership and affiliation to a given social group. It is facilitated by the emotions attached to that group membership. The approach of social identity addresses three primary concepts of the intergroup behavior and these entail psychological processes; various strategies people use to gain identity; primary characteristics of social structure that act to determine the social strategies (Everett et al., 2015). It is deduced and understood from the social identity approach that psychological processes that underlie the group phenomenon include self-categorization where persons gather to interpret the social world in terms of in-groups that group to which they belong.
Group members of an in-group become integrated with their selves recognizing the traits of the in-group as a representation of themselves when the members decide to categorize themselves in such a group. Social psychology has been key to enhancing the idea that persons who are low in identification have fewer chances or capability to form in-groups as compared to the individuals with high levels of identification. Furthermore, the social identity approach is adamant that identification with a particular group of belonging motivates one further to distinguish their group from that of others. The result is that one is able to attain and maintain more esteem as the member of a group (Everett et al., 2015). In all due respect, cooperation remains an essential part of human beings.
According to Dorrough et al., (2015), despite the importance of cooperation in human life, it almost always includes or entails putting people in situations where they must decide on whether to capitalize on their selfish gains or collective interests. A good number of factors affect the tendency of people to behave in a cooperative manner when presented with social dilemmas. One key factor that determines the group affiliation is the perception of a partner as to whether or not they belong to that given group (Dorrough et al., 2015). Group favoritism usually forms as the highest rates of cooperation towards the in-group members begin to create in the context of social dilemmas. In their analysis, Dorrough et al., (2015) asked the question of what determines the formation of in-groups among members of a society and how does that determinant influence their decisions afterwards. The method used to deduce the findings entailed a social experiment that had 72 participants. According to Dorrough et al, (2015), the theory of parochial altruism does well to elaborate on the concept of in-group bias from a perspective of evolution.
According to the theory and further studies favoritism by virtue of group belonging and affiliation increases the cooperativeness in an in-group courtesy of the norms of altruism that have an evolutionary origin. The in-group bias represents a genetic cum cultural attribute that co-evolves in the human beings aside from the aggressiveness or somewhat hatred against the out-group. In this regard, it becomes truthful and evident that persons only cooperate when they function around a given goal that only comes to reality through cooperative means expecting reciprocation from their partners.
Judging from the contact hypothesis, all interactions that are repeated with other individuals stand to probably reduce prejudice and hence lessen the differences that are experienced between the in-groups and the out-groups (Dorrough et al., 2015). It is just crucial that the expectations of behavioral cooperation be adjusted using experienced cooperation and the intended affiliation of these aforementioned or sorted out-groups. After the study experiment, Dorrough et al, (2015), deduced that favoritism is extremely dynamic and develops over contacts that take place in the in-group and out-group. However, one need not dismiss the favoring of the in-group by generalization bias because it stands as a key factor of influence with one needing to point towards the particular limitations of the experiment.
As earlier mentioned, children develop the tendency to favor their in-groups faster and the tendency increases up to when they attain the age of six beginning to affect their behavior. The young children demonstrate a particular liking for sexes of their own as well as race. It is evident by their preference to play with their similar sexes after age three. Usually, there is a norm that insists people need and must favor their in-groups. According to Jhangiani & Stangor (2015), egalitarian individuals are the ones that are more likely to show in-group favoritism. The favoritism extends to various social and cultural types in different settings and backgrounds. It does well to take place on the ratings of traits and as such see to it that the members of the in-group are properly rated as better than those in the out-groups. It is imperative to appreciate the manner in which in-group bias influences a person or a general society and the levels to which it scales in order to understand how best to curb its adverse effects. Furthermore, such an understanding helps in the orchestration of how best to impede such groups from having an immense effect on the society. Children develop the tendency to favor their in-groups faster and the tendency increases up to when they attain the age of six beginning to affect their behavior. The young children demonstrate a particular liking for sexes of their own as well as race. It is evident by their preference to play with their similar sexes after age three.
The favoritism is further evidenced in conversations that people have with most talking more vibrantly about their in-groups as compared to the out-groups. Even when concentrating on the negatives, people only talk of specific individuals as being bad or rather negative elements of the in-group but never at any given time generalize the negative aspect of the same. In addition, in-group members are seen to make attributions that benefit their in-groups in a similar way they make attributions that benefit them personally. Jhangiani & Stangor (2015) contends that there are many causes of favoritism seen in in-groups but perhaps the main one is social categorization. Such categorization is imperative because it assists in the simplification and structuring of the environment in an easier and more convenient manner.
In-group bias has a dynamic and flexible implementation procedure. Therefore, the idea of cultural evolution is central to the bias evolution. Social attributes in collaboration with the genetic aspects play a key role in influencing the formation of a network. Such dynamics of networks can convert the allies of before into competitors of today and forge previous enemies together when presented with the same threat (Fu et al., 2012). One example of such is the communities that hunted together by the fission and fusion dynamics. In addition, the identities of groups are vital in the modern world today (Fu et al., 2012). The above was demonstrated by the remodeling of the in-group bias through behavioral economic games. According to Fu (2012) and company, membership of a group is an evolving phenomenon in the human race. As such, when the membership is found to have associations with a given strategy then it is beneficial to act differently towards other groups and thus their members. Subjects thus selected a cultural group together with an action that would serve as the coordination game.
Fu et al (2012), further insists that the emergent and multi-faceted identity of a group is primary to bias. However, the evolution of the same is not yet given in explanatory form considering the past models accounted for competition between the stable and fixed groups or the prior groups. Agents are components of various groups while players are given the permission to partake a number of actions when dealing with either in-group or out-group members (Fu et al., 2012). The learners on the other hand act to imitate group membership together with the strategy and the result is that mistakes are made significantly. Therefore, it is particularly well and comfortable to exclaim that group membership is closely related to strategy. However, despite this strong relationship between the strategy and group membership, selection does not occur at the group level at any given instance whatsoever. Fu et al (2012) conducted a study on the cooperation and deflection of individuals in light of presented groups and determined that such groups influence the evolution of human behavior.
References
Dorrough, A. R., Glöckner, A., Hellmann, D. M., & Ebert, I. (2015). The development of in-group favoritism in repeated social dilemmas: Frontiers in psychology, 6, 476.
Everett, J. A., Faber, N. S., & Crockett, M. (2015). Preferences and beliefs in in-group favoritism: Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 9, 15.
Fu, F., Tarnita, C. E., Christakis, N. A., Wang, L., Rand, D. G., & Nowak, M. A. (2012). Evolution of in-group favoritism: Scientific reports, 2, 460.
Jhangiani, R., Tarry, H., & Stangor, C. (2015). Principles of social psychology-1st international edition https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/ingroup-favoritism-and-prejudice/
