A critical appraisal of ingroup love and outgroup hate using the social identity approach
Researchers found that individuals became more selfish over time, leading to a decrease in ingroup love.
Groups can be distinguished by their individual, collective and group interests, which helps social psychologists understand the implications of their actions on the group’s identity and in the real world. Researchers have explored these effects by focusing on intergroup and intragroup conflict, using the IPD-MD game (Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma- Maximising Difference), where participants were given the choice to contribute their monetary tokens to one of two pools which would benefit the ingroup, but not affect the outgroup, or benefit the ingroup whilst decreasing the outgroup’s payoffs (Halevy et al., 2008). Although the study found that participants were not competitive and preferred to help their own group, the experiment was conducted on a small-scale and could not be linked to wide-scale conflict.
Halevy, Weisel and Bornstein’s (2012) paper measures the extent to which group members’ cooperative or competitive behaviour influence group dynamics, specifically intergroup and intragroup conflict. As group dynamics can change over time, researchers developed a repeated interactions effect in the IPD-MD game, to determine whether group rivalry would increase over time. The game involved a series of competitive rounds labelled the IPD condition, where participants only contributed their tokens to a between-groups pool (pool B), rather than their ingroup (pool W). By artificially creating a history of conflict, the researchers were unable to measure factors such as cultural-specific norms, group morality and group solidarity which influences the dynamics in real-life group conflict.
Although a large sample size of undergraduate students were used in the study, there are limits to the generalisability of the sample to the wider population. In real-life conflict, groups can consist of people from various cultural and religious backgrounds, as Anier et al., (2019) investigated prejudice and discrimination in intergroup conflict by focusing on cultural-specific norms. The study found that relative deprivation (i.e., how groups and individuals feel they are being treated) was an important factor in determining cultural norms. In Halevy et al., (2012) study, relative deprivation could have influenced competition between groups, as an individual’s decisions were tied to the overall group’s fate and relations. However, whilst this is a prevalent factor in group conflict, the researchers found that despite the IPD condition, outgroup hate did not prevail, suggesting that collective interests may have been prioritised in this context.
Moreover, the rationale of the paper solely focused on the effects of individual participation on the group’s relations and competition. How can the IPD condition, where conflict was artificially created, be linked to wide-scale conflict? Recent research investigated ingroup love and outgroup hate in a natural group of football fans and found that conflict can occur based upon whether the group was morality-based (Weisel & Böhm, 2015). The findings suggested that the degree of enmity, which can be defined hostility towards rival teams, has a significant impact on intergroup and intragroup conflict. Morality was also a factor that affected group saliency (i.e., an individual’s awareness of group membership). These concepts can be linked to the present study as Halevy et al,. (2012) found that competition diminished over time, suggesting that morality might have played a role as group members preferred to maximise absolute group gains.
Intergroup and intragroup conflict has been explored by drawing upon principles from the social identity approach, which suggests that groups of people categorise themselves with similar individuals, forming an ingroup, and individuals that are unlike them, the outgroup (Cuhadar & Dayton, 2011). In Halevy et al, (2012), a variation of the minimal group’s paradigm was used, as the participants were told they would be in a specific group, which is enough to trigger ingroup love and outgroup hate (Cuhadar & Dayton, 2011). However, as repeated interactions were used in the study, the researchers found that individuals became more selfish over time, leading to a decrease in ingroup love (Halevy et al., 2012). This highlights that an individual’s actions in the present experiment (to withhold or contribute tokens to a pool), would determine ingroup love and outgroup hate as a collective, group relation. As the group’s fate was not tied to group membership or group communication, future research should explore whether incorporating these factors would strengthen or weaken group relations. Another possible issue of having a repeated interactions game would be potential order effects, as participants were becoming familiar with the environment the experiment was being conducted in.
Yamagishi and Mifune (2009) illustrated that group solidarity plays an important role during group activities, as adopting this tactic reduces intergroup conflict. They also found that gender differences affected group solidarity, as men were more willing to help the ingroup compared to women (Yamagishi and Mifune, 2009). Halevy et al, (2012) did not explore gender differences in their study, in relation to group conflict and how groups perceive themselves, thus this is a potential extension to the present IPD-MD repeated interactions game.
Overall, in the Halevy et al., (2012) study, the IPD-MD game was extended by using repeated interactions to resemble real-world group conflict. However, as participants did not have a real-life history of ongoing conflict with their ingroup or the outgroup, neither group would have perceived the other as a threat to their group identity and actions, reducing competitive behaviour and motives in both groups. Future research should use a mixed sample of participants from diverse backgrounds to determine whether cultural-specific norms strengthen intergroup and intragroup relations or cause increased conflict. The repeated interactions game could have led to order effects, thus a solution to this issue would be to use counterbalancing, which would mean that participants would be given slightly different treatments. Researchers also ought to extend the IPD-MD game to understand the effects of group solidarity and morality which resemble the foundations of natural groups in society, rather than focusing on an individual’s contribution and its effects on the group.
Written by Evelyn Antony
“Hello! My name is Evelyn and I recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Master of Arts (with Honours) degree in Psychology. My undergraduate dissertation leveraged data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study, where I investigated the role of emotional dysregulation in explaining the association between ADHD and internalising emotional problems amongst young children. Throughout my degree, I have acquired valuable and meaningful experiences working with young people that have profound mental health issues and additional needs, as well as working in research and events management within higher education settings. Collectively my work experiences and undergraduate degree in psychology has led me to pursue postgraduate studies, in educational psychology, which commences later in 2021.”
Connect with Evelyn on Linkedin and through her personal blog.
References
Anier, N., Roebroeck, E., Kleinlogel, E., Badea, C., Nugier, A., Berthon, M., & Guimond, S. (2019). The effect of the normative context on intergroup discrimination: implications for the scientific value of exact and conceptual replications. International Journal Of Intercultural Relations, 73, 43-58. doi: 10.1016/j.ijintrel.2019.07.006
Cuhadar, E., & Dayton, B. (2011). The social psychology of identity and inter-group conflict: From Theory to Practice. International Studies Perspectives, 12(3), 273–293. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-3585.2011.00433.x
Halevy, N ., Bornstein, G. & Sagiv, L. (2008). “Ingroup Love” and “Out-Group Hate” as Motives for Individual Participation in Intergroup Conflict. Psychological Science, 19(4), 405-411. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02100.x
Halevy, N., Weisel, O. & Bornstein, G. (2012). “In-Group Love” and “Out-Group Hate” in Repeated Interaction Between Groups. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25(2), 188-195. doi: 10.1002/bdm.726
Weisel, O., & Böhm, R. (2015). “Ingroup love” and “outgroup hate” in intergroup conflict between natural groups. Journal Of Experimental Social Psychology, 60(11), 110-120. doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2015.04.008
Yamagishi, T., & Mifune, N. (2009). Social exchange and solidarity: in-group love or out- group hate?. Evolution and Human Behavior, 30(4), 229-237. doi: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.02.004