Ingroup, Outgroup, Nogroup

     Aligning with the opinions of your friend group, political group, or even nationality is a very basic social psychological concept. It is called the Ingroup Bias. We assign our groups to the ingroup and anyone that does not align with our group to the outgroup. Those within these outgroups we compete with and often assign them stereotypes.

      In Jane Elliott's Classic Blue Eye vs Brown Eye Experiment (follow Link to Watch Video), she test children to understand what conditions will be brought from creating ingroups and outgroups. Elliott assigned each kid to a certain group based on eye color. The kids with blue eyes were placed into the dominate and more preferable group but the kids with brown eyes were placed in a subordinate and less desired group. The rights and privileges of things like drinking fountains or getting lunch first were taken away from those in the brown eyed group. As expected the kids in the blue eyed group felt they were part of an ingroup and assigned those in the brown eyed group to the outgroup. The kids with blue eyes clearly felt superior. Pretty soon there was hostility and name calling between groups.

     These behaviors are not just found in kids as some of Elliott's later work shows when she applies the same experiment to adults. History has also witnessed Ingroup Bias. Ingroups were evident in the civil rights movements of women, African Americans, LGBTQIA, and other minorities. All of those groups were highly stereotyped and attacked as the inferior outgroup.

     The world is filled with feelings of hostility between groups. Republican vs Democrat, American vs Muslim, Heterosexual vs Homosexual. Jane Elliott's experiment showed that kids that were nearly identical would turn on each other even when falsely categorized; perhaps our society is not that much different than that classroom. Ask yourself what created this hostility, why do we hate these other groups, our my feelings irrational, what can I do to break boundaries? Maybe we can start assigning ourselves to a Nogroup.

Peace,
Love,
Paperclips,
Alex