Social Identity

Hi,

This week’s email is about a key aspect of social dynamics between and within groups.

Here are the key practical points you should know (mainly from my article):

• An ingroup is a social group that a person identifies as being a part of, based on factors like nationality and religion, while an outgroup is a social group that a person does not identify with, based on similar factors.

• For example, a religious person might view members of their religion as being a part of their ingroup, and at the same time view members of other religions as being a part of their outgroup.

• People can identify with ingroups and outgroups based on many factors, like ethnicity, gender, age, occupation, political affiliation, and even arbitrary criteria like being told they’re part of team A and someone else is a part of team B.

• The intergroup bias involves unequal treatment of ingroups and outgroups, for example in the form of blindly favoring the ingroup and hating the outgroup.

• You can reduce intergroup bias in various ways, including increasing awareness of the issue, creating shared group identity across groups, identifying positive things about the outgroup and negative things about the ingroup, empathizing with outgroup members, and increasing contact between group members.

As always, I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Have a great week,
Itamar