Ways of Thinking...: 2024-02-04

Friday, February 9, 2024

Bonus Lesson: Superbowl Sociology

From the Media Ed Foundation, What are you actually watching (2019)?

If you’re one of the roughly 100 million Americans expected to tune into the Super Bowl this Sunday, you can expect to spend a lot more time being sold stuff than actually seeing the ball in play.As we’ve done annually for a few years now, the Media Education Foundation (MEF) crunched the numbers on last year’s Super Bowl broadcast and found that over the course of the three-and-a-half-hour game, the ball was in play for a mere 15 minutes and 34 seconds, or roughly 7% of the entire broadcast. In contrast, almost a full third of the broadcast – an hour and seven minutes in all – was dedicated to ads, branded content, and other commercial clutter. CBS, which charged upwards of $5.25 million for a 30-second spot, or roughly $175,000 per second, raked in more than $380 million from all of this in-game advertising.

From Todd Beer and The Sociological Toolbox (2016):

THE SUPER BOWL: A sociological view, Todd Beer on February 4, 2016

(Updated January 22nd, 2017)

Break out the guacamole, it is time for Super Bowl sociology!

What does the Super Bowl mean in our society? It is far from simply a sporting event or even just the final game of a season.

The Super Bowl is a sociological phenomenon.

It is a great teachable moment using an event that everyone has at least heard of and many of our students will be watching… or at least at a social event where the game is playing on the television. While many of our students will be highly engaged in the event, few may have thought about it from a sociological perspective. Below are some interesting resources from sociology and other disciplines that can help reveal the sociology in the Super Bowl.

Masculinity
First, The Society Pages own Doug Hartman has an excellent review piece in Contexts from back in 2003 examining sociologists’ explanation of the role of sports, football in particular, in socializing us into what it means to be “manly”. As Hartman writes, “Sports provided them, as young boys and teens, with a reason to get together, to engage with other boys (and men), and in doing so to begin defining what separates boys from girls: how to act like men.” Boys play sports in large part because it is where they can be social with other boys. As a child, it is also an opportunity to spend time with older brothers and fathers. See the full article for many more roles that sports play in maintaining masculinity and a good list of recommended resources.

Social Pressure: Functional or False Consciousness?
Fast forward to adulthood and we attend Super Bowl watch parties because that is where we can be social with others. Imagine how quiet the dorm floor will be on Sunday night. “Where is everyone?” They are with others watching the Super Bowl. The pressures of socialization strongly encourage us to go hang out with everyone else watching the game even if we don’t like, care about, or have any clue about the game. Try explaining to someone that you don’t want to go because “the Super Bowl promotes a violent hegemonic patriarchy and the commercialization of our leisure time (see more below).” I promise that you will at least get a weird look. One site claims that only 5% of viewers watch the game alone and the average number of people at a Super Bowl party is 17. This data would need some critical analysis before being taken to heart, but it is interesting. We watch the Super Bowl collectively, socially. Rejecting that opens you up to social sanctions. We watch it together so much that cities with teams in the Super Bowl see a rise in flu deaths due to the increased interaction of people. Watching the Super Bowl together generates a sense of social cohesion to such a degree that, à la Durkheim, researchers have found that suicide rates on more recent Super Bowl Sundays are lower than the Sunday before and after the Super Bowl.

Symbolic Interaction and the Drama(turgy) of the event
There is a socially determined way you watch the Super Bowl and cheer on your team. Watching the Super Bowl is different from watching a Broadway musical. Cheering on your team involves active support as the event is occurring. We yell, “go, go, go!” when our team’s running back breaks away from a tackle. We may even get so excited that we spill some beer or knock the chips over. We don’t do the same at musicals, even if you feel like you wanted to.

Ethnographic Superbowl Watching: Watch how we watch
The Super Bowl is also a great place to watch gender roles in action. To demonstrate the sanctions around gender roles ask your female students to see what happens when they cheer on a team with the same intensity and aggression as the male students in the room. Do others respond to such aggressive cheering by the females with, “Damn Jane, take it easy.” When females become “too aggressive” or impassioned, do they breach the boundaries of what it means to be feminine? Are they subject to subtle or overt verbal sanctions?

Are men and women watching the content of the Super Bowl for the same reasons? John Clark, Artemisia Apostolopoulou and James Gladden’s 2009 article, “Real Women Watch Football: Gender Difference in the Consumption of NFL Super Bowl Broadcast” examines this question and we can draw sociological conclusions from it. Women viewers ranked the commercials, a celebrity singing the national anthem, and the halftime entertainment as more important than the average male viewer who rated the teams playing, the competitiveness of the game, and the postgame show as more important. Women viewers were more likely to agree that the performance at halftime enhances their enjoyment of watching the Super Bowl and the main reason they watch the Super Bowl is to see the halftime entertainment. On average, men even reported that they thought the halftime entertainment made the actual game unnecessarily long.

Consumerism and Media as Agent of Socialization
Then there are the ads. The next day when people talk about the Super Bowl they often talk about their favorite ads. The media certainly continues to cover the ads as content during the following week and beyond. The ASA TRAILS teaching resource (now free to all ASA members) has an activity posted by Carla D Ilten, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Drawing on the work of Horkheimer and Adorno, the activity ties in Super Bowl ads to Critical Theory.

Her abstract explains more:

“In this media activity, students will learn to watch advertisements through the lens of Critical Theory. Students will discover how ‘the whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry’ and distinguish the fun and amusement of this genre from the cultural messages of inclusion and exclusion it entails. This media activity is intended as an in-class exercise that follows a lecture on Horkheimer and Adorno’s text ‘The Culture Industry. Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ (1944). It uses a hit list of ’10 funniest Superbowl commercials’ to facilitate students’ active recognition and understanding of central Critical Theory concepts such as the ‘commodity character of culture,’ consumerism, totality and alienation, as well as amusement, fun, entertainment as vehicles for repressing resistance and mitigating powerlessness.”

However, the social acceptance of football is changing. As the correlation between brain injuries and football grows, former players, parents, and fans are questioning if the sport is worth it. Documentaries, including Frontline’s League of Denial, and based-on-real-life dramas, such as Concussion starring Will Smith, have emerged in the media. Former players are also speaking out. For example, star player Chris Borland walked away from a $3 million contract after just one year out of fear of long term damage to his own brain. He states on the Frontline website (also see a related video): “The idea that just the basis of the game, repetitive hits, could bring on a cascade of issues later in life, that was, it changed the game for me,” he says. “I couldn’t really justify playing for money and I think what I wanted to achieve put me at too great a risk so I just decided on another profession.” Organizations have formed, such as, Mothers Against Concussions and parents are thinking long and hard before letting their children play football. See here, here, and here for articles examining parents’ dilemma.

Others are even beginning to argue the game has become immoral. Dave Bry wrote in The Guardian, “… it’s not the players who I am calling immoral. The onus is on us, the fans (and, more directly, the team owners) who pay the players to hurt themselves for our enjoyment. Huge amounts of money, let-your-parents-retire-and-set-up-the-next-generation-of-your-family-to-go-to-college money, ‘make him an offer he can’t refuse’ money. The money is there, so if one 20-year-old does muster up the sense to say no, there’ll be 20 others waiting in line to say yes.”

Based on increasing concerns about brain injuries and long-term damage, normative sanctions of shaming have begun to crack the all-American image of football. A class action lawsuit was brought on behalf of retired players and the NFL and the NCAA. The NFL agreed to pay up to $5 million to each retired player that had suffered brain injuries. The idea that at least some of the players in the upcoming Super Bowl will go on to have life-endangering brain injuries will certainly loom in part over this year’s game. Unless the rules are changed or technology develops “safe” helmets, the game of football and subsequently the Super Bowl will begin to take on additional social meanings, ones tainted compared to the raucous celebrations of today.

“Pass the chips please and can we watch something else?”

Teach well, it matters.

1.9 Critical Thinking about Data and Statistics

As students enter, please look over the reading by Joel Best, "The Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics."

Be ready to answer questions about the reading.

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.

Small group discussion of reading.
1. What's the problem with the statistic about children killed by guns?

2. According to Best, what are the 2 harmful ways that people view statistics?

3. How does Best say people should view statistics?

4. Rather than viewing a statistic's flaws, how does Best say that people should be thoughtful about statistics?

How to be critical of statistics/research:

Ask questions.

Don't just accept the data but ask where it came from.

Look for a section (usually at the end) called Discussion or Limitations; usually, authors are critical of their own work.

Apply: Best's reading to your own research.

Individually

5. What statistics or claims are in the research that you found? Apply some of Best's suggestions to statistics from your research article.

Watch this humorous take on science and stats from John Oliver.

Applying Critical Thinking to Violence in Chicago

Examining Statistics in Sociology (and generally) requires critical thinking. By critical, I mean being detailed and inquisitive about the stats. For example, let's examine the following claim that we hear often (and many of us or our parents may even have said).

Claim: There is a lot of violence in Chicago.

6. How can we be critical of this claim; what questions would you ask before accepting this claim as fact? What details would you want to know?

Research this claim critically. In small groups try to examine this claim critically and then explain your finds to the class. What nuances should we know before making this claim?

Remember that statistics are rhetorical - they must be defined and explained by words.

Here is a great example of critical assessment from the Chicago Reader,

From the way CPD has presented the numbers it’s not at all clear how many of the 1,127 arrests were actually related to last year’s 1,417 carjacking cases. Deenihan didn’t explain that oftentimes CPD arrests multiple people related to a single carjacking incident, nor did he mention how many of those arrests were for incidents that happened in prior years. In a table breaking down arrestees’ age ranges in five-year increments, the 15-20 age group was indeed the largest in 2020. More than half of the people arrested, however, were actually over the age of 20.

While carjacking had spiked, last year saw 21,567 fewer robberies, burglaries, and thefts compared to 2019. This was part of a yearslong trend in the decline of these types of crimes. About 18,000 parked, unattended cars are stolen every year in Illinois, and that hadn’t become more common in 2020; CPD claims that these days cars are easier to steal because many people leave their key fobs in their vehicles. “Meanwhile this one uptick in this one subcategory of robbery had story after story and press conference after press conference,” she remarked about carjacking.

Here are some sites to help you:

Cross-Cultural Research

Statista ranks the most violent countries in the world here.

Statista ranks the most violent cities in the world.

From Bloomberg, Gun Violence in US Cities Compared to the Deadliest Nations in the World (2013):

Cross-sectional Research on Crime Within the United States

A critical analysis of post-pandemic violent crime rates from the Brennan Center for Criminal Justice (2023) shows that understanding crime rates is complex and requires a critical analysis.

Reported violent crime per capita by state from Statista

Violent crime is generally contrasted with property crime, with the latter defined as the taking of money or property without force (or the threat of force) against the victims. Note that in these definitions, robbery counts as violent crime whereas burglary does not. Comparing the the number of committed crimes in U.S. by category, property crime far outnumbers violent crime, while aggravated assault accounts for some two-thirds of all violent crime.

Crime per capita by state from World Population Review

Crime overall is relatively low in Illinois and the homicide rate is middle of the pack.

Gun deaths by state from World Population Review

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-deaths-by-state

Firearm deaths by state from CDC

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm

Cross Sectional Research within Chicago

Mixed methods study (2023) from Brookings Institution including qualitative analysis highlights the differences between actual crime and perception of crime as well as violent crime and non-violent crime comparing Chicago to three other large U.S. cities.

Longitudinal Data

Crime in Chicago; What Does the Research Tell Us? from Northwestern U.

https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2018/crime-in-chicago-research.html

The violence was also extremely concentrated. Skogan said 50 percent of all the shootings in 2016 occurred in just a handful of neighborhoods, including Austin, Garfield Park, North and South Lawndale, Englewood, and West Pullman. The crime is even more concentrated in those communities, often occurring within just a few blocks. There is one four-by-four block area in Humboldt Park, Skogan said, that has been in the top 5 percent of shootings in the city every year for 27 years.

Note that the crime rate has not spiked generally for all Chicagoans. As the graph above and the text above that explains, the crime is particularly high in smaller communities within Chicago.

From PBS, What U of Chicago Crime Lab Data says about Chicago crime

The Chicago Police Department reports 661 murders occurred as of Dec. 10, 2022, down 15% from 2021 when the tally was 776. Overall shootings are also reported as down by about 20% from 2021 numbers, from 3,399 to 2,718. But reported incidents of motor vehicle theft have nearly doubled from 2021, from 9,933 to 19,238. Theft numbers also showed a steep increase.

From Crain's Chicago Business; All Big Cities Have a Violence Problem. Chicago's is Different (2022):

How safe is Chicago? The answer depends on where you're standing.

The North Side is as safe as it's been in a generation, with a homicide rate that has declined steadily throughout this century, barely ticking up during the especially violent years of 2016 and 2020, then falling again in 2021, even as the city as a whole experienced its bloodiest year since the mid-1990s, according to Chicago Police Department data.

The homicide rate for the city’s four North Side police districts (the 18th, 19th, 20th and 24th) last year was 3.2 residents per 100,000, according to analysis of data from the University of Chicago Crime Lab—lower than Evanston’s, Champaign’s and Springfield’s, based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Overall, Chicago’s per-capita murder rate is higher than in New York City or Los Angeles, but is lower than in Midwestern cities such as Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

Qualitative Understanding of Violent Crime

Supreme Court narrows definition of violent crime

What is "violent" crime? Does armed robbery count?

FBI Uniform Report

The FBI categorizes violent crime as, "violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force."

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Chicago to Other Big Cities

The Council on Criminal Justice published this 2022 study of The Pandemic, Social Unrest and Crime in U.S. Big Cities.

Here is crime data from the City of Chicago:

Here is crime data from the City of Chicago.

Here is crime data from Chicago Police Department.

Here is crime data from the City of Chicago.

Here is the City of Chicago Crime Map

Why People Misperceive Crime Trends (Chicago Is Not the Murder Capital) from the NYT Upshot (2021)

Reviewing Unit 1:

Is the data above macrosociology or microsociology? Why?

What would data look like that is the opposite?

What questions would a structural functional sociologist ask about the data above?

What questions would a sociologist ask about the data above using the conflict paradigm?

What questions would a symbolic interactionist sociologist ask about the data above?

What conclusions might you make about the data above using a sociological imagination?

How might the data above apply to the social construction of reality?

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

1.82 Generalizations: Categories v. Stereotypes

While waiting, please review Joel Charon's "Should We Generalize About People?"

Action Item for next class: Joel Best, "The Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics."

A few announcements before the lesson begins:

First, Looking for a kind student to help me out? Willing to negotiate! Hear me out...
Next, we will meet in class on Friday. It will be the last lesson of the unit followed by a brief explanation about what to study. The testing window will be open over the weekend.
Finally, regarding the lesson on Monday (and today) I want to be clear that the lesson is not about the politics of the Middle East, but instead it is about how to react mindfully when you see someone that is different than you. You can disagree but avoid the pitfalls that come with outgroups (Monday's lesson) and stereotyping(today's lesson).

Categories and Stereotypes

After reading Joel Charon's "Should We Generalize About People?"

For discussion in class or in Google Form if absent:

6. According to Charon, is it okay to generalize? Why or why not?

7. What is the difference between a generalization and a stereotype?

After reading Joel Charon's "Should We Generalize..." hopefully, you realize that yes we must generalize because it is what makes us intelligent human beings. But our great strength as humans can also be a horrible flaw. If we do not generalize and categorize accurately then we run the risk of stereotyping. We must realize that although individuals can be categorized into certain groups, it doesn't mean that all individuals fit that group's generalization. Toward the end of the reading, Charon says,

"If we are open-minded and reflective, we can even evaluate how good or how poor our generalizations are, and we can alter what we know as we move from situation to situation."

This is both the task and the promise of sociology. Sociology challenges us to think about our generalizations and assumptions about what we know and it promises us that with proper thought and care we can understand people better.

Apply the idea of ingroups/outgroups and categories/generalizations to the research that you found:

8. What are the groups that are examined in the original research that you found? (Use the abstract)

9. Does your researcher make any generalizations/conclusions about the group? (Use the abstract or conclusion)

10. Does your researcher explain any nuances about the group that might help people from the outgroup think more critically about the group?

Examples of stereotypes and lessons we can learn from them:
Remember that without careful consideration, it is easy to stereotype entire categories - especially outgroups. The reality is that there are very nuanced opinions about both sides of the issues:

Not in Our Name; American Jewish Activists Lead March to White House over Isarael's 'Genocide'
Not in Our Name; Jewish New Yorkers Speaking Out against 'Dehumanization' of Palestinians
Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor by Yossi Klein Halevi, 2019
Many Palestinians in Gaza Hate Hamas, October 2023
Before the War Gaza's Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular, October 2023
Palestinian protests of Hamas, August 2023
Palestinians protest against Hamas in online event, January 2022
Palestinian Protests against Hamas in streets of Gaza, March 2019
How it Feels to Be Muslim in America
How Does it Feel to be Jewish [in North America]

Be mindful of the way that you may perceive Jewish or Muslim Americans if they are an outgroup for you:

Israeli policy does not reflect the feelings of all Jews and not even all Israelis
Hamas’s terrorism does not represent all Muslims and not even all Palestinians

Stereotypes about Muslims
The video called I am an American that shows the dangerous power that extreme stereotypes can lead to.

In this case, Muslim is the category, but it could be a different religion, ethnicity or any other category of people. United States' history is littered with examples of groups that have been scapegoated and vilified. This is how Muslims have been treated in many cases in post 9/11 America. But I have had so many Muslim students who prove that this is just a stereotype. And that is what this video is showing. There are caring, loving, neighborly Muslims all around us but extreme stereotypes lead us to only see the stereotype and ignore reality. Here is a page from Indiana University called Muslim Voices which is trying to correct the stereotyping.

Lesson: Don't give in to outgroup homogeneity. Even if you do not know the complex dynamics within an outgroup, be cognizant that those variations probably exist.

Examples of stereotypes about differently-abled individuals

Brett Eastburn
Brett Eastburn was born with no arms or legs. Here is an article in the Daily Herald about Eastburn visiting a school in Mt. Prospect. We might categorize him as disabled, but we should be careful about the assumptions and stereotypes that go along with that category. Here is a Ted Talk by Eastburn and here is his book, I'm Not Missing Anything.

Nick Vujicic
Another powerful differently-abled speaker is Nick Vujicic. He is a motivational speaker who also has no limbs. Here is a video of him on youtube

Aaron Fotheringham

This is a video about Aaron Fotheringham, an "extreme sitter." Aaron has been in a wheelchair his whole life, but he sees it as an opportunity. Again, we should be careful of our stereotypes. Aaron is way more rad than I will ever be, but he is in a wheelchair and I am not. If you search youtube, you can see Aaron doing a double backflip! But there are also lots of videoes of him crashing over and over again and again. It takes hard work and lots of effort to become good at what you do.

Hard work was a theme in all of the above videoes. And if you read the rest of Outliers, Gladwell makes the case that the most successful people spend ten thousand hours developing their skills. The other theme that comes out in all of these videoes from Brett Eastburn to Aaron Fotheringham is that in order to find meaning in your life you must find a way to serve others. Find a way to help other people. You have talents. Develop them and find a way to use them to help others. That is your purpose. And here is Aaron "wheels" Fotheringham at the 2016 Paralympics:

Here is the latest update from Wheelz on the BBC.

Here is a video about a different type of street performer that also challenges your assumptions about the category "disabled".

I love how these "disabled" people see their opportunity to teach others. Their lessons seem to be similar: The world doesn't owe you anything. You owe yourself hard work and dedication to become what you want. Find a way to help others/teach others. Don't stereotype and keep an open mind.

Lessons from differently-abled individuals:

Accept yourself as a part of creation; your existence is the universe's confirmation to you that you matter.
Develop your talents/desires. Whatever you want takes hard work. It takes failure, discomfort and effort.
Find ways to serve others. Whenever you don't know what to do or when your life feels directionless or meaningless, find a way to serve others. We all have talents that can help others.

11. Choose one of the examples of stereotypes above. What did you think about the example? What is the category? What is a stereotype of that category? What are some accurate generalizations?

12. Apply categories and stereotypes to the research article that you are examining:

What are the categories that your research article covers?

Are these ingroups or outgroups for you?
What are the generalizations in your research article?
Are there stereotypes that your research article dispels?

EXTRA:

Dealing with stereotypes
Finally, when you feel like you have been stereotyped, how do you react? What do you do? Anis Mojgani suggests that you shake the dust. Checkout his slam poem. Here is a link to his poem in writing.

Lesson from Mojgani: When you have been stereotyped, shake the dust. Move on and don't let the dust settle on you. Don't let it define you.

13. Have you ever been the victim or perpetrator of a stereotype? What was the stereotype and category? Share a personal example.

The Cookie Thief, a poetic example of judging
There is a poem I like that illustrates Charon's point. The poem called "The Cookie Thief" by Valerie Cox. We are all cookie thieves sometimes in how we erroneously use the categories that Charon talks about.

Lesson:
We have all been both the victim of stereotyping and the perpetrator of it. Try not to be the cookie thief.

This American Life, radio episode about stereotypes

Another great source about stereotypes is episode 362 from This American Life. Click here to listen to the episode where 5 people tell stories about stereotyping. Listen to the prologue about people with disabilities, and Act One about NY cops stereotyping people coming from Brooklyn.

Research on Ingroups and Middle School Cliques

Patricia and Peter Adler studied adolescents extensively and they concluded that the creation of cliques happens cyclically even before middle school begins and these can lead to prejudice and discrimination. Here is one of Patricia and Peter Adler's ethnographies and you can read the abstract below:

Outgroups and the war in Iraq

In this TED talk by Sam Richards, he explains how understanding outgroups might lead to a radical experiment in empathy.

Reviewing from last lesson:

3. Please share one or more examples from your own experience where you ay have had a misconception about an outgroup, but after getting to know someone from the outgroup, you had a new understanding of people from the group.

4. Examine the research article that you found for this unit.

Was the research focused on an ingroup or outgroup for you?

5. How might your research shed light on this group to avoid viewing the group with outgroup homogeneity?

Now think about your own life. What are your in groups? What are the outgroups that you could become more aware of, more empathetic to?

Action item for next class:

Joel Best, "The Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics."

Monday, February 5, 2024

1.8 In-groups, Outgroups, Generalizations, Stereotypes

While waiting, please review Joel Charon's "Should We Generalize About People?"

Action Item for next class: Joel Best, "The Truth about Damned Lies and Statistics."

Today's Lesson:

Please sit in your designated areas.

In and out is not just for burgers, it is also for groups! Sociologists use the terms ingroup and outgroup to refer to groups that you are either a member of (ingroup) or not a member of (outgroup).

To illustrate this, today I separate the class into two different groups. To put it another way, I create an ingroup and an outgroup for each student. Each group made a list of reasons why the other group was in that outgroup. Every time I do this lesson, the reasons break down into judgments against the other group.

For example, in class I split students into 2 groups of students wearing spirit wear and those who were not. I asked each group to list as many answers as they could about the other group:

In just a few minutes, I created an in-group and an out-group.

Ingroups are groups that an individual is in. You have membership in it, and because of that, you feel aligned to the group and you have ownership in it and you are more likely to trust it. It is easier for individuals to recognize the diversity within their ingroups.

Out-groups, by contrast, are the groups that one is not a part of. People tend to fear outgroups and judge them more than their own ingroups. This can result in people unnecessarily fearing outgroups and scapegoating them. They also tend to see outgroups as being less diverse and having less individuality/differences than those of an ingroup. This is known as outgroup homogeneity. Often, outgroups are based on a master status - a sociological term for a person's most salient group membership, or a group that defines the person to a society.

Some years I divide students by who is wearing jeans, or who is wearing hoodies or who is wearing gym shoes. Regardless of how arbitrary the groups are, a similar result happens: students generalize about the other group and pass judgments. This is a small example of what happens with ingroups and outgroups. Imagine how much we are affected by the ingroups and outgroups that we experience from the time we are young.

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.

1. What are some ingroups that you are a part of in your life?

Examples of how people can have fears and judgmental views of outgroups:

Religious outgroups

Outgroups can be used as a scapegoat to drum up fear and anger to galvanize support for leaders. This has been used unabashedly and unprecedentedly by Donald Trump, especially against Jewish Americans (ADL, JDCA, WaPo, Time, Charlottesville, Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting) and Muslim Americans (PEW, Scientific American, CNN, USC, CAIR, Chapel Hill mass shooting, Murfreesboro).

This 2017 example from NBC news explains the outgroup effects clearly,

Much of hate is based in fear, said Dr. A.J. Marsden, an assistant professor of psychology at Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida — "basically, fear of the unknown, fear of what might happen and fear of anything that's different than you or falls outside your definition of what's supposed to be normal."
"We establish ourselves as a tribe, and we say this is the group for which I have a love for, for which I identify with." Marsden cited Islamophobia as an example,"There's a lot of hatred in the United States toward Muslims," she said. "One of the reasons is they don't understand the religion. ... There's a lot that they don't know, and that scares them, because there is a small part of Muslims who are violent, and that is what is driving the hate."
"That concept is known as the 'in-group/out-group theory' — the idea that people tend to define themselves in social groupings and are quick to degrade those who don't fit into those groups."

This 2017 NPR news story explains how terrorism gets used as an outgroup label,

There is a systematic bias in the way terrorism is covered "terrorism" label is often only applied to cases where the perpetrator is Muslim. And, those cases also receive significantly more news coverage.

"When the perpetrator is Muslim, you can expect that attack to receive about four and a half times more media coverage than if the perpetrator was not Muslim,"
Put another way, "a perpetrator who is not Muslim would have to kill on average about seven more people to receive the same amount of coverage as a perpetrator who's Muslim."
Perhaps these findings are not all that surprising to you. But there are disturbing implications for the way Americans perceive Muslims, and the way Muslims perceive themselves."

Quartz (2017) uses outgroups to explain why Americans are more afraid of 94 deaths from terrorism than from 301,797 deaths from guns,

According to the New America Foundation, jihadists killed 94 people inside the United States between 2005 and 2015. During that same time period, 301,797 people in the US were shot dead, Politifact reports. But... Americans are more afraid of terrorism than they are of guns, despite the fact that guns are 3,210 times more likely to kill them.
Chapman University has conducted a Survey of American Fears for more than three years. It asks 1,500 adults what they fear the most. It organizes the fears into categories that include personal fears, conspiracy theories, terrorism, natural disasters, paranormal fears, and more recently, fear of Muslims.
In 2016, Americans’ number-one fear was “corruption of government officials”—the same top fear as in 2015. Terrorist attacks came second. In fact, of the top five fears, two are terror-related. And number five is not fear of guns but fear of government restrictions on guns. Fear of a loved one dying—whether by gun violence or anything else—came next.
... after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, people began flying less and driving more. The result, estimated Gerd Gigerenzer, a German risk specialist, was that 1,595 more Americans died in road accidents during the 12 months after 9/11 than would have otherwise....

According to data compiled from the Centers for Disease Control, over 2005-2014, an average of 11,737 Americans a year were shot dead by another American (21 of them by toddlers), 737 were killed by falling out of bed, and nine were killed by Islamic jihadists—who in most cases were US citizens, not immigrants (Nearly twice as many Americans kill themselves with guns as kill each other).

Racial Outgroups

Jane Elliot's Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes illustrates racial outgroup attitudes

Jane Elliot, a teacher in the 1960s conducted an experiment in her third grade classroom to show the power of ingroups and outgroups.

You can watch the whole video on Frontline's website.

And there is an updated version of this. Jane Elliot returns to do the experiment with college kids called Angry Eye.

The power of recognizing our own outgroups

I think that the point of sociological mindfulness is becoming more aware of others and part of that awareness is an understanding of how we may have portrayed that group in our own minds. So understanding the idea of in-group/out-group dynamics is easy but applying it to ourselves is the challenging part. But when we recognize outgroups, we can be more mindful about how we think about them and question where our assumptions about them have come from. And maybe most importantly, we can bridge these outgroups by getting to know people who are part of our outgroups.

Powerful examples of how bridging outgroups can make a difference

Stranger at the Gate is a 2022 short documentary that shows the power of both outgroups and conquering their dangerous consequences through our shared humanity.

Here is the movie's website.

Here is a PBS story about the movie (Watch from :26 - 3:11)

Here is a preview from NPR's Here and Now.

Former marine Richard "Mac" McKinney was determined to bomb the local Islamic center in Muncie, Indiana. But the kindness he was shown there not only made him drop his plans, but eventually become a member of the community. The story is told in the new short film "Stranger at the Gate," directed by Josh Seftel.

Listen to it below:

Former student of mine, Amina Amdeen

Here is a Muslim former student of mine, Amina Amdeen on NPR's Story Corps who makes me so proud. Listen to her story about the danger of outgroups and how bridging the gap can bring people together.

Here is NPR's coverage of the story.

Transforming a white supremacist
This episode of On Being demonstrates how creating an ingroup can also create empathy.

"We'd heard Derek Black, the former white power heir apparent, interviewed before about his past. But never about the friendships, with other people in their twenties, that changed him. After his ideology was outed at college, one of the only orthodox Jews on campus invited Derek to Shabbat dinner. What happened over the next two years is like a roadmap for transforming some of the hardest territory of our time."

More about Black's transformation in the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning book by Eli Saslow called Rising Out of Hatred.

Cubs Joe Maddon and The Creation of Ingroups and Empathy

Cubs Joe Maddon's "Hazelton Integration Project" is a great example of how creating ingroups can help people bridge outgroups like race, immigration status and social class. Essentially Coach Maddon did what I did in class: He created ingroups. Except, he did it to create bonds between people who would have previously identified each other as outgroups. Watch this short summary here about how Maddon's project helped to create a sense of community and ingroup relationships.

As this semester goes on, be mindful of the groups that we talk about that are your outgroups. You must make a conscious effort to understand these groups and recognize the diversity within these groups.

Research is important in helping us understand the unique aspects of out groups that we may not be familiar with. Additionally, it is important to recognize our own biases connected to our in-groups so that this does not affect the objectivity of our research.

2. Choose one of the examples above that you think is a good example of the importance of ingroups and outgroups. Identify the two groups in the article. how does one of the groups judge/stereotype their outgroup?

Applying ingroup/outgroup dynamics:

3. Please share one or more examples from your own experience where you ay have had a misconception about an outgroup, but after getting to know someone from the outgroup, you had a new understanding of people from the group.

4. Examine the research article that you found for this unit.