Ways of Thinking...: 1.08 Ingroups and Outgroups

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

1.08 Ingroups and Outgroups

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."

Please sit in your designated areas.

GYM SHOES or NO Gym Shoes

SNEAKERS NO Sneakers

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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. The tendency to view all members of an outgroup as similar 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.

When I do this lesson, 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:

RACE

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.

Here is a clip of her 1960s experiment:

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. Here is a 5 min clip. And here is the whole video.

Here is Jane Elliot on Jimmy Fallon in 2021 talking about her experiment.

RELIGION:

Below is a link to a video called I am an American that shows the dangerous stereotypes that outgroup homogeneity led to in the wake of 9/11. All of the audio is from real radio programs and it is juxtaposed on top of video of real Americans.

In this case, Islam is the example, but it could be any religion, ethnicity or group. United States' history is punctuated with examples of groups that have been scapegoated and vilified. This is how Muslims have been treated in many cases in post-911 America. For many Americans, Muslims are an outgrip and so Americans who don't know any Muslims easily fall prey to stereotyping/overgeneralizing them, judging them, fearing them. But I have had so many Muslim students that I don't see them as an outgroup, nor do I see them with homogeneity, or a monolith. And that is what this video is showing. There are caring, loving, neighborly Muslims all around us and they a diverse group of people, but when they are an outgrip, it is easy to not see these realities. Here is a link to a page hoping to end stereotypes about Muslims.

In fact, in the wake of 9/11, many Muslims were stereotyped as terrorists and some were victims of vengeful hate crimes. But because of outgroup homogeneity, the first person murdered as a hateful vengeance for 9/11 was not even Muslim or Arab - he was Sikh. His name is Balbir Singh Sodhi Here is his story on NPR's Story Corps. And 15 years later, Sikhs are still being victimized. But Sodhi's brother has made it his mission to preach forgiveness.

2017 Americans are afraid of Muslims especially after some people are scapegoating them:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/psychology-hate-groups-what-drives-someone-join-one-n792941

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."

2017 Research about media coverage of Muslims affects outgroup Americans fears

http://www.wbur.org/npr/532963059/when-is-it-terrorism-how-the-media-covers-attacks-by-muslim-perpetrators

"New research from Erin Kearns and colleagues at Georgia State University shows that the president is right — sort of. There is a systematic bias in the way terrorism is covered — just not in the way the president thinks.
Kearns says the "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," Kearns says. 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."

Connecting research, ingroups-outgroups, mindfulness and the fear of guns v. terrorism
https://qz.com/898207/the-psychology-of-why-americans-are-more-scared-of-terrorism-than-guns-though-guns-are-3210-times-likelier-to-kill-them/

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. Michael Rothschild, then an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, calculated some of the risks we face:
One in 6 million: Risk of dying in a plane hijacking, assuming you fly four times a month and hijackers destroy one plane every year. (Just to be clear, since 9/11, hijackers have not destroyed any flights in the US.)
One in 7,000: the risk of dying in a car accident in any given year
One in 600: the risk of dying from cancer in any given year
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).

In this example, the media and most Americans see terrorists as an outgroup and because some terrorists claimed to act in the name of Islam, Americans stereotype the category of Muslims into terrorist. The fear, mistrust and stereotype result from most Americans seeing them as an outgroup.

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.

The Power of Ingroups to Transform Society

Because social scientists know the power of ingroups, we can use that understanding to make a real difference in society. This is one reason why a diverse campus matters and a diverse friend group matters.

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 and the movie is on Youtube here.

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.

3. Why is it important to be sociologically mindful of our ingroups and outgroups?

4. 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:

5. 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.

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

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

7. 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?

More on Ingroups and Outgroups:

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: