WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Minimal Group Paradigm 0:00:06.280 --> 0:00:07.960 Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:08.039 --> 0:00:09.320 name is Robert Lamb. 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:12.119 And I am Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:14.360 go into the vault for an older episode of the show. 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.239 This one was on the minimal group Paradigm, and it 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.800 originally published March thirtieth, twenty twenty three. Is this from 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:23.840 exactly one year ago today? I think so? 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:31.240 Yeah, Hey the Jackpot, hope you enjoy. 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:41.720 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:42.639 name is Robert. 0:00:42.479 --> 0:00:46.519 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, fair warning, folks. 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:49.440 If I sound like I speak with the voice and 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:53.320 mind of some kind of decrepit bog monster today, it 0:00:53.479 --> 0:00:57.200 is because I'm on the mend from a bad cold. 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:01.640 So apologies on what's happening in your ears right now. 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:04.400 But but but here I am on Mike. 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:07.560 Well, sometimes bog monsters are quite wise, so you know, 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:09.320 it depends on the story you're looking at. 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:13.240 I hope to bring a real meg muckle bones energy 0:01:13.920 --> 0:01:16.679 today's episode, so you'll have to tell me how I do. 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:19.240 But yeah, what are we talking about today? Rob? 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:21.800 Well? We're gonna be talking about a little something called 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.160 the minimal group paradigm, which sounds, I know, if you're 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:27.480 not familiar with it, sounds a bit a bit stuffy, 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:32.000 perhaps perhaps sounds a little bit clinical, but I think 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.240 it's it's a very fascinating little topic. I shouldn't make 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:39.759 for a nice one part episode here, because it attempts 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:43.440 to come down to some of the major concerns regarding 0:01:43.680 --> 0:01:48.480 human civilization and human interactions, basically coming out of the 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:52.360 question of like, just how divisive are human beings and 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.880 how little does it take for us to split into 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:59.000 factions over something or next to nothing even And I 0:01:59.240 --> 0:02:01.240 think for many of us, the answer seems to be 0:02:01.400 --> 0:02:05.360 that we're, you know, are very divisive and that it 0:02:05.360 --> 0:02:07.440 doesn't take much at all for us to split off 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.320 into factions. And I think this has been played to 0:02:09.360 --> 0:02:14.079 great effect in literature and cinema, especially comedically, and two 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:17.919 examples always come to my mind, so one of them, Joe, 0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:19.520 I'm not sure if you're familiar with this. I don't 0:02:19.520 --> 0:02:22.000 know if we've talked about this before, but in the 0:02:22.080 --> 0:02:26.520 nineteen fifty three story from Doctor Seuss The Sneeches, is this. 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:27.960 The butter on the bread one. 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.840 No, no, you're thinking of the Butter battle Book, which 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.880 does get into a similar situation. That's a where you 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.000 have two different groups and one side thinks you should 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.239 do the butter side down those buttered side up, and 0:02:41.480 --> 0:02:43.880 they get into this big Cold war stalemate. 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:48.640 This is an arms race and escalation of their weaponry 0:02:48.720 --> 0:02:51.639 based on the butter ideology difference. 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:53.679 Yeah, so that's a good one to bring up too. 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:59.840 The Sneeches concerns this population of avian creatures that in 0:03:00.000 --> 0:03:03.240 their entire social hierarchy is based on which ones have 0:03:03.280 --> 0:03:05.160 a star on their bellies and which ones don't have 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:08.160 a star on their bellies, and the star bellied Sneaches 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:10.800 are the ones that live at the top and the 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.120 rest live at the bottom. But then a con artist 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.880 moves into town with a star on machine and then 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.840 later a star off machine to capitalize on their divisiveness. 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:22.760 Though at the end of that, the Sneeches move beyond 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.120 all of this and they unite as a single people. 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:26.720 So it's kind of a nice message. 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:29.880 Oh, that's that's very nice. That's a much happier ending 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:33.080 than the Butter battle Book, which, as I recall, it 0:03:33.200 --> 0:03:35.720 ends with basically both sides on a hair trigger with 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:36.880 their ultimate weaponry. 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.480 Yeah, yeah, it's it's a real clincher that one. But 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:42.920 another example that comes to mind, and I know you're 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.840 familiar with this one is, of course Monty Python's Life 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:49.360 of Brian. There's a memorable scene in which the anti 0:03:49.480 --> 0:03:53.920 Roman resistance is split more than split between the Judee 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.440 and People's Front and the People's Front of Judea and 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.480 various other fragments of their independence group. One of the 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.480 characters in the Judea and People's Front proudly proclaims that 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.120 the only people they hate more than the Romans is 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:07.360 the People's Front of Judea. 0:04:07.920 --> 0:04:09.880 I think this is meant to play on a concept 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:14.560 that was called the narcissism of small differences by Sigmund Freud. 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:16.760 I don't know Freud was the first person ever to 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.680 observe this, but I think that's where the phrase comes from, 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:23.560 is his writings about the idea that it's actually like 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:28.120 the most bitter, hateful, divisive struggles in the world tend 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:31.200 to be between people who actually share a lot of 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:35.960 things in common but have some difference that really appears 0:04:36.080 --> 0:04:38.400 minor to people looking in from the outside. 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:41.760 Now, I think a lot of you out there you 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:43.960 may be able to think of examples from other works 0:04:43.960 --> 0:04:46.920 of fiction, or certainly from real life, many of the 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:50.919 various serious things we divide ourselves over, or you know, 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:54.200 some of the equally seemingly silly, at least from the outside, 0:04:54.200 --> 0:04:56.320 things that get that we were very divisive over. And 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:00.800 to your point, sometimes they're within like subgroups and and fandoms. 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.880 Even all manner of brand and sports team loyalty can 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:08.000 lead to division that doesn't necessarily make much sense on 0:05:08.120 --> 0:05:12.320 closer inspection. Perhaps you prefer Puma shoes and this other 0:05:12.360 --> 0:05:15.200 person prefers Adidas. How could the two of you ever 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.680 see eye to eye? And this specific example ties into 0:05:19.080 --> 0:05:22.479 I think, what is a great example of division in 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:25.480 human beings and human groups? One I originally saw pointed 0:05:25.480 --> 0:05:28.640 out by and though it's been well documented for a 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.160 while by Jay van Bavel and Dominique Packer in a 0:05:32.240 --> 0:05:36.080 ted Ed video. This is like an animated educational short 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:39.120 that ted Ed puts on Wonderful Shorts. It's regular viewing 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:42.760 in my household with my family. But the title of 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.599 this one is the sibling rivalry that divided a town. 0:05:46.279 --> 0:05:50.080 So I thought i'd cover the basics of this sibling rivalry. 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:52.920 All right, So are you familiar with this story, Joe, 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.279 I'm not. Well. It all starts in around nineteen nineteen. 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.240 That's when these two brothers, Adolph and Rudolph Dossler, found 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:05.240 a shoe company called Gebruda Dossler Shoe Fabric or GAETA 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:09.480 in their hometown of herzogen Rock in Bavaria. Turns out 0:06:09.480 --> 0:06:13.280 they were very successful. These shoes really took off. You 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.080 even had the situation where in the nineteen thirty six 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:19.760 Olympics American runner Jesse Owens apparently was wearing some of 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:23.320 these shoes. But then World War Two breaks out. This 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.880 disrupts everything, to say the least, Rudolph is drafted into 0:06:26.920 --> 0:06:30.200 the German Army, the factory is transformed into a weapons factory, 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:34.400 and again everything's just super disrupted until after the war 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.840 the brothers reunite. Their work continues, that is until nineteen 0:06:38.880 --> 0:06:42.640 forty eight when they split over some personal issues. And 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.599 I think there are a few different analyzes of what 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:49.400 those personal issues might have been, but the results are 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:51.560 the same. Meaning anyway you cut it, the company is 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:57.359 split into that means material, workforce, and so forth. Rudolph 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:01.839 founds Ruda, which becomes Puma, and add All starts Adidas. 0:07:02.200 --> 0:07:04.799 Now that's not that crazy, right, It's just one shoe 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:09.000 company splitting into two shoe companies. Now. The interesting thing 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:11.440 about this, though, according to j Van Babel and Dominice 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:13.880 Pucker and that ted Ed video, is that the brothers 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:18.360 feud and business division ultimately divides the entire town. Quote, 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.800 residents became fiercely loyal to one brand of shoe, local 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:27.080 businesses chose sides, and marriage across lines was discouraged. Herzegognoch 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:30.920 eventually became known as the town of bent Necks because 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:34.160 its residents looked down to ensure they were interacting with 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:35.360 members of their group. 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:38.080 Oh look down at the shoe. Is that one took 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:38.800 me in second? 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.440 Yeah? So I think it's a great example, not because 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.240 not only because it's kind of has some sort of 0:07:45.600 --> 0:07:48.160 comical elements to it, kind of like belly Stars, but 0:07:48.200 --> 0:07:51.600 also we do see these various elements to the division, 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.640 the personal, the business, the social, and the schism is 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.880 is quite real and it is funny to think how 0:07:59.040 --> 0:08:02.320 how split people can be about brands. I mean, sometimes 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.000 I think it's meant jokingly you see a lot of 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:10.080 joking comments today, even about things like coke versus pepsi, 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.560 or Twizzlers versus red vines or something, and then also 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:16.720 things that are not even brand oriented, like overhanded versus 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:18.200 underhanded toilet paper rolls. 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.400 I recall divisions of this type were big on like 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.200 early Facebook, like mid two thousands Facebook, where people would 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.520 make all these joke groups and it would be like, 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:31.080 you know, for people who like red vines because twizzlers 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:32.080 are for cowards. 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:37.080 I mean, it's still I think, very prominent in like 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:39.080 meme making. You know, people like to get in on 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.280 this sort of thing. I don't know, maybe especially when 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:44.920 it's meant jokingly. It's kind of like low stakes things 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:48.280 to sort of mock disagree about. I'm not sure. But 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:52.600 then at what point does just sort of trolling and 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:54.840 mock fun. At what point does that then become like 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:57.400 an actual entrenched belief or opinion. 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.600 Oh, I think rather quickly actually, So. 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:03.320 In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:06.400 going to look at a social psychology concept that ties 0:09:06.440 --> 0:09:09.120 into to all of this, the minimal group paradigm, a 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.880 method for sessing out what might be the absolute minimal 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:16.840 conditions for discrimination to take place between two groups, will 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:20.120 their findings be twizzlers versus redfines? Is that the minimal thing, 0:09:20.480 --> 0:09:22.040 I don't know, You'll just have to find out. 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.320 All right. So where does this minimal group paradigm come from? 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.439 All right? So one of the sources that I was 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.280 looking at specifically in order to understand the minimal group 0:09:31.320 --> 0:09:33.960 paradigm and its history was The Origins of the Minimal 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:36.680 Group Paradigm by Rupert Brown of the University of Sussex, 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:42.160 twenty twenty, published by the American Psychological Association. Brown points 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:45.640 out that the basis of prejudice and inner group discrimination 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.040 has of course been a human concern for a long time, 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:52.479 and certainly was a long time concern of people in psychology. 0:09:52.880 --> 0:09:55.600 But the MGP or the minimal group paradigm as we 0:09:55.640 --> 0:10:01.400 know it generally is attributed to Polish social scientists Henri Tashfell, 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.319 who live nineteen nineteen through nineteen eighty two, and also 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:09.000 British social psychologist Michael Billig, who worked with him was 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:10.280 born nineteen forty seven. 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:13.160 Typically, I see a lot of references to work they 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.679 did in the early seventies. One of the main citations 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:21.120 is Henri Tashfell, Michael Billig, Robert Bundy, and Claude Flement, 0:10:21.600 --> 0:10:25.800 and the title is Social Categorization and Intergroup Behavior, published 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:29.800 in the European Journal of Social Psychology, nineteen seventy one. 0:10:30.200 --> 0:10:31.320 If you want to go back to the. 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:35.720 Source now, tash Fell, it's worth noting was a survivor 0:10:35.760 --> 0:10:38.640 of the Holocaust, and this is important to keep in 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:41.800 mind because much of his work does ponder the question 0:10:41.880 --> 0:10:45.240 of what drives groups of people to take up extreme 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:50.040 prejudice views and does the transference rely on extreme personality 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:53.760 types or is it something more mundane. So yeah, in 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:58.840 the early nineteen seventies, Toashfel at all conducted a series 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:02.079 of experiments on MGP studies that would end up having 0:11:02.080 --> 0:11:05.560 an enormous impact on the field of social psychology. More 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:07.320 on this in a second, but I also want to 0:11:07.320 --> 0:11:10.520 point out that Brown stresses that there is also a 0:11:10.679 --> 0:11:14.120 pre tached Fell origin in the work of Dutch social 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:19.920 psychologist Yap Robbie in nineteen sixty four. So Robbie suspected 0:11:19.960 --> 0:11:22.840 that common fate was the essential component for a group 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:26.800 to hold together and for intergroup discrimination to occur. Common 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:31.840 fate is a distallt psychology concept that says that objects 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.400 functioning or moving in the same direction appear to belong together, 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:37.400 kind of like we're off to see the wizard, right, 0:11:37.480 --> 0:11:39.439 I mean you're going to see the wizard. Well I'm 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.920 going to see the wizard, or I'm going down this road. Well, 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:43.120 I guess we're a group. 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.680 Okay, So under this view, the thing that would make 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.000 you prefer and show favoritism to members of your in 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:53.400 group is a basic belief that the same kind of 0:11:53.520 --> 0:11:55.800 thing is going to happen to all the members of 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:56.960 this group. Yeah. 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.199 Yeah, And I think you can probably cut it a 0:11:59.240 --> 0:12:01.760 few different ways, but yeah, it's like there's something about 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.000 your sort of common direction, common fate, if you want 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:07.320 to put it that way, that this sort of binds 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:13.160 you together. Now, Robbie's experiments involved classifying subjects into groups 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.480 to explore inner group discrimination, but he ultimately concluded that 0:12:16.559 --> 0:12:21.120 mere classification was not enough to elicit in group favoritism. 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.560 So again worth noting that he was looking at some 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.360 of the some of the same stuff that would become 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:30.280 important to the minimal group paradigm and what kind of 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.720 lays some of the groundwork for it. Even but his 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:39.319 findings were different. Now, this raises a question that Brown explores, 0:12:39.720 --> 0:12:43.320 why was Robbie overlooked and why is he still sort 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:47.640 of overlooked in some of the documentation surrounding MGP, and 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:52.360 Brown breaks it down and attributes it to three reasons. So, first, 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:57.120 Toshfell's findings were counterintuitive and therefore more newsworthy. That's one 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:00.360 of the big things about MGP is that you know 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.599 a lot of people going into it, you don't expect 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:04.880 to see the results you see. You don't expect to 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.560 see this thing that seems to explain a lot of 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.680 the division that goes on in groups and the discrimination 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:15.640 that occurs between groups. Just based on as we'll get into, 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.240 like just sort of random grouping of people. 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:21.880 It makes more sense to assume that if people are 0:13:21.880 --> 0:13:25.800 showing in group favoritism, it would be because I don't know, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.720 they assume that all of the members of the group 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:30.920 are sharing a common fate or something like that. 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:31.920 Yeah. 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:32.320 Yeah. 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.120 The other thing to keep in mind is Toshfel's MGP 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:39.440 work helped inspire and the groundwork for social identity theory, 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:44.000 which became huge, so that that in turn elevated his 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:48.160 work with MGP, and in fact the social identity theory 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:51.439 was formulated by Tosh Bell and John Turner, who lived 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.319 nineteen forty seven through twenty eleven in the nineteen seventies, 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.760 in the nineteen eighties. And then the third factor that 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.640 Brown points out is that personality differences between the two men. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.080 So Toshvel has been characterized as more of a go getter, essentially, 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:09.360 someone who really took full advantage of any opportunity to 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:14.000 you know, sort of explore his ideas and get his 0:14:14.200 --> 0:14:20.080 ideas out there, whereas Robbie was more unassuming. So some 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:23.200 combination of these three factors, according to Brown. So toash 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.320 Fell was quite aware of these studies, but suspected that 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.920 the opposite was true and was already experimenting with the 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:33.040 social comparison theory. So fast forward to the nineteen seventies 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:37.080 and the first MGP experiments. I'm not going to bust 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.800 these experiments out blow by blow necessarily, but certainly hitting 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:45.680 the really important parts the basics of the MGP experiments. 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:49.360 So the first part is you have subjects carry out 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:51.960 a task, and the task is often described as something 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:54.680 like estimating the number of dots on an image or 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:58.480 answering an opinion question about a work of abstract art. 0:14:58.720 --> 0:14:59.200 All right. 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:04.360 Next, presumably based on these results, subjects are placed into groups. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:07.480 But known only to the researchers, not to the subjects, 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.600 is the fact that the group assignment is actually random. 0:15:11.080 --> 0:15:14.200 Okay. So, for example, if the question you were given 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.680 had to do with like estimating the number of dots, 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:21.520 you might break people into groups, say and tell them that, okay, 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.960 Group A is the people who overestimated the number of 0:15:25.000 --> 0:15:27.280 dots in the image, and group B is the number 0:15:27.280 --> 0:15:30.280 of people who underestimated the number of dots in the image. 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.480 Or with the question about art, you might separate people 0:15:33.600 --> 0:15:36.800 into different taste categories. You say, like, oh, you were 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.440 the people who preferred the art by this artist, and 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:41.960 group B is the people who preferred the art by 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:42.760 this other artist. 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.000 Yeah. Yeah, you can certainly break it down like that, 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:47.440 But I think on the other end, you could also 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:51.720 just not explain what the methodology is at all, Like 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:54.720 you could just put people into groups and it's just 0:15:54.800 --> 0:15:58.680 the idea that there's something about data that originates in 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:02.600 you that inform this choice because it's actually random. But 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:04.560 you don't want people to think it's random. That you 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:07.520 want them to think that it's based on something. Yes, 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:11.280 Now there's no interaction between the resulting groups, no room 0:16:11.320 --> 0:16:14.680 for interpersonal bonds, you know, not enough to be like, hey, 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:18.400 those the people who apparently guess differently from me about 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.240 jelly beans and a jar. They seem a little stuck 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:22.760 up or they seem a little sting, you know, there's 0:16:22.760 --> 0:16:24.760 no room for that at all, or likewise, no room 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:26.640 for you to say, well, they seem like decent people, 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.680 even if they count dots differently or estimate dots differently 0:16:29.680 --> 0:16:30.000 than I do. 0:16:30.480 --> 0:16:33.280 In fact, a group membership was anonymous, right, so you 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:35.680 didn't know who was in the You couldn't like look 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:38.360 around the room and hear the group a people. 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.840 Yeah, and that's important to stress too, because yeah, it's 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.640 just really the beauty of this experiment and the attractiveness 0:16:45.640 --> 0:16:48.600 of it is that it does just strip everything else away, 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:52.800 everything that you could use and also could therefore muddy 0:16:52.840 --> 0:16:54.160 and complicate the findings. 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:57.440 Okay, so people are assigned into these random groups. They 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.000 think there is a reason for the assignment. They don't 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:02.040 know who's in the groups. They just know they're in 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:02.760 one of them. 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.560 Right, So now it's time to get busy. Here a 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.159 second task is a sign in which subjects had to 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:14.040 assign reward tasks to anonymous individuals, either two from the 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.560 in group, two from the out group, or one from 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:19.760 each These individuals will be marked by a code number, 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.679 and your code number would never come up, so it 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:24.879 wasn't completely self serving. 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.800 Right, And these would be what are known as allocation tasks, 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.399 tasks that are used in a number of different experiments 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:34.879 to try to see what people value or reward. And 0:17:35.480 --> 0:17:38.440 generally these are just experiments where subjects play some kind 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:42.840 of game that involves distributing rewards, often monetary rewards like 0:17:42.880 --> 0:17:46.360 a number of dollars or or tokens of some kind 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:50.320 that can be exchanged for something to these anonymous players 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:53.080 belonging to the in group or the outgroup or both. 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:56.439 Yeah, and you might think that this would all favor 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.399 even handed distribution, since there's just so little to go 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:02.800 on aid from group affiliation in digvating it up. 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.560 And I've read that in some cases many subjects did 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:10.240 try to distribute things kind of fairly. Like one of 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:13.560 the later reviews of minimal group paradigm I was looking 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:17.840 at by Sabine Aughten from twenty sixteen said that basically 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:23.160 quote fairness concerns strongly guided intergroup allocations, but that didn't 0:18:23.200 --> 0:18:27.160 always hold true. There were a number of exceptions. 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:32.520 Yeah, Ultimately, subjects consistently engage in constant in group bias. 0:18:33.520 --> 0:18:36.119 So the groups were again entirely made up by chance. 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.800 There was no contact here, but it was enough to 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:43.240 generate a sense of group belonging. It created an us 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.600 and it also created them, which you then see born 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:50.680 out in the study results. So that's the big take 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:53.560 home from the minimal group paradigm, even without factors such 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:58.320 as religion, race, nationality, socioeconomic class, even without things like 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.000 what do other people what people in the outside group 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:03.359 look like or act like? When you know what do 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:05.760 I have in common with the people around me? It 0:19:05.800 --> 0:19:09.240 is even stripping all of that away, humans rather swiftly 0:19:09.400 --> 0:19:11.679 formed factions and discriminate against others. 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:14.960 So to offer a little bit more detail from that 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.399 later piece I mentioned, this was a paper called the 0:19:18.440 --> 0:19:21.840 Minimal group Paradigm and its Maximal Impact in Research on 0:19:21.880 --> 0:19:25.600 social categorization. This was published in Current Opinion in Psychology 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:29.440 in twenty sixteen by Sabine Aughten. One thing Aughton mentions 0:19:29.680 --> 0:19:32.880 is that when Tash fell and colleagues first came up 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:38.560 with the minimal group paradigm. Their original intention was apparently 0:19:38.640 --> 0:19:43.840 to investigate whether people would display in group favoritism even 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:47.560 in situations where there was no actual conflict for resources 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:50.080 between the two groups. So their original question was a 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.840 little bit different, but as a preliminary avenue of research 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:58.120 to that project to address this other question. First, they 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:01.600 wanted to just find out what the minimum criteria that 0:20:01.680 --> 0:20:05.160 could be leveraged to cause people to show in group favoritism. 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.440 So this was originally supposed to be just like trying 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.080 to establish what they would need to do in this 0:20:11.160 --> 0:20:14.520 other test. Oughten writes quote, they planned to start with 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.399 a most minimal setup and to successively add elements to 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:24.000 the design until intergroup discrimination would emerge. So they started 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.080 with these novel social categorizations based on things that they 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.560 expected to have no power of social cohesion at all, 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:34.679 like tendencies in you know, the numerical estimation game, the 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:39.160 dots game, or preferences for the types of paintings. And again, 0:20:39.200 --> 0:20:41.680 these were only pretenses that people were actually assigned to 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:45.280 groups randomly in most of all cases, and instead what 0:20:45.359 --> 0:20:48.720 they found was that these fake made up bases for 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:53.520 social categorization were good enough to kick start in group favoritism. 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.960 So they were trying to find the minimum criteria, and 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.000 it turns out they just didn't really have to look 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:01.320 very hard. There's barely a minimum at all. 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:04.840 Yeah, and that, again, I think, is the thing that 0:21:04.640 --> 0:21:07.560 that floored everybody and I and still floors people when 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:09.399 they hear about it for the first time or are 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:10.199 reminded of it. 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:25.600 Aughtan recognizes three experimental features for recognizing what authors in 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:29.320 this experimental domain call a mere categorization effect. That's what's 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:31.840 going on in the minimal group paradigm. It's like people 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:37.040 are behaving in ways that indicate group favoritism, but only 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.080 based on merely being categorized in a group, and like 0:21:40.160 --> 0:21:43.920 nothing happening in the real world. The three features, as 0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:48.159 outanlists them, are, Number one, categorization is novel and arbitrary. 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:52.280 No history of experiences within group and or outgroup, so 0:21:52.359 --> 0:21:54.840 it's got to be all new in the experiment. Number two, 0:21:54.920 --> 0:21:59.080 categorization is anonymous, no face to face interaction between group 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:02.359 members because you can obviously see how that would introduce 0:22:02.440 --> 0:22:08.840 complications and see no utilitarian self interests can be directly 0:22:08.880 --> 0:22:13.120 served by intergroup evaluations or allocations. So you don't want 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.800 to complicate your study by having people have the ability 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:20.760 to pay money out to themselves, because that would obviously 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:22.840 add in new variables. 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:25.119 Right right, That would be the self interest kicking in 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:25.639