WEBVTT - The Minimal Group Paradigm 0:00:02.960 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:14.640 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:18.320 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.160 fair warning, folks. If I if I sound like I 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.119 speak with the voice and mind of some kind of 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.800 decrepit bog monster today, it is. It is because I'm 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:30.680 on the mend from a from a bad cold. Sou 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.560 so apologies on whatever's happening in your ears right now. 0:00:34.640 --> 0:00:38.240 But but but here I am on Mike. Well, sometimes 0:00:38.320 --> 0:00:41.200 bog monsters are quite wise, so you know, it depends 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:43.280 on the story you're looking at. I hope to bring 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:48.640 a real meg muckle bones energy today's episode, so you'll 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:50.680 have to tell me how I do. But yeah, what 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:53.080 are we talking about today, Rob, Well, we're gonna be 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:56.120 talking about about a little something called the minimal group paradigm, 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.840 which sounds I know, if you're not familiar with it, 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:03.040 sounds a bit a bit duffy. Perhaps perhaps sounds a 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:05.760 little bit clinical, but I think it's it's a very 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:09.440 fascinating little topic. Shouldn't make for a nice one part 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.280 episode here because it attempts to come down to some 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:19.760 of the major concerns regarding human civilization and human interactions 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:22.680 basically coming out of the question of like, just how 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.399 divisive are human beings and how little does it take 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:30.160 for us to split into factions over something or next 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.080 to nothing even And I think for many of us, 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:35.240 the answer seems to be that we're, you know, who 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.080 are very divisive and that it doesn't take much at 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:41.200 all for us to split off into factions. And I 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:43.920 think this has been played to great effect in literature 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.160 and cinema, especially comedically, and two examples always come to 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.520 my mind. So one of them, Joe, I'm not sure 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:52.720 if you're familiar with this. I don't know if we've 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.880 talked about this before, but in the nineteen fifty three 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:59.760 story from Doctor SEUs the Sneeches has this the butter 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:02.840 the bread one. No, no, you're thinking of the Butter 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.480 Battle Book, which does get into a similar situation. That's 0:02:06.520 --> 0:02:10.320 a where you have two different groups and one side 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.919 thinks you should do the butter side down there those 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.600 butter side up, and they get into this big Cold 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:19.679 War stalemate. This is an arms race, an escalation of 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:25.320 their weaponry based on the butter ideology difference. Yeah, so 0:02:25.320 --> 0:02:27.440 that's a good one to bring up to the sneeches 0:02:27.880 --> 0:02:33.440 concerns this population of avian creatures that in their entire 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:36.480 social hierarchy is based on which ones have a star 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:38.440 on their bellies and which ones don't have a star 0:02:38.600 --> 0:02:41.240 on their bellies, and the star bellies sneeches are the 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:44.160 ones that live at the top and the rest live 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:46.519 at the bottom. But then a con artist moves into 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.280 town with a star on machine and then later a 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:53.800 star off machine to capitalize on their divisiveness. Though at 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.000 the end of that, the Sneeches move beyond all of 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:58.320 this and they unite as a single people. So it's 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:01.440 kind of a nice message. Oh that's that's very nice. 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.200 That's a much happier ending than the butter Battle Book, which, 0:03:04.639 --> 0:03:07.720 as I recall, it ends with basically both sides on 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.119 a hair trigger with their ultimate weaponry. Yeah. Yeah, it's 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:15.000 it's a real clincher that one. But another example that 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:16.400 comes to mind, and I know you're familiar with this 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:20.239 one is of course Monty Python's Life of Brian. There's 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.480 a memorable scene in which the anti Roman resistance is 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:27.600 split more than split between the Judean People's Front and 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:30.680 the People's Front of Judea and various other fragments of 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.400 their independence group. One of the characters in the Judean 0:03:34.440 --> 0:03:37.600 People's Front proudly proclaims that the only people they hate 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.560 more than the Romans is the People's Front of Judea. 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:42.760 I think this is meant to play on a concept 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:47.440 that was called the narcissism of small differences by Sigmund Freud. 0:03:47.800 --> 0:03:49.520 I don't know if Freud was the first person ever 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:52.040 to observe this, but I think that's where the phrase 0:03:52.120 --> 0:03:55.680 comes from, is his writings about the idea that it's 0:03:55.720 --> 0:04:00.400 actually like the most bitter, hateful, divisive struggles in the 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:03.640 world tend to be between people who actually share a 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:07.880 lot of things in common but have some difference that 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:13.440 really appears minor to people looking in from the outside. Now, 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:14.760 I think a lot of you out there. You may 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.400 be able to think of examples from other works of fiction, 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.800 or certainly from real life, many of the various serious 0:04:20.800 --> 0:04:24.120 things we divide ourselves over, or you know, some of 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:27.320 the equally seemingly silly, at least from the outside, things 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:29.359 that we get that we're very divisive over, and to 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:33.960 your points, sometimes they're within like subgroups and fandoms. Even 0:04:34.360 --> 0:04:38.040 all manner of brand and sports team loyalty can lead 0:04:38.080 --> 0:04:42.000 to division that doesn't necessarily make much sense on closer inspection. 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:46.919 Perhaps you prefer Puma shoes and this other person prefers Adidas. 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:48.920 How could the two of you ever see eyed eye? 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:52.640 And this specific example ties into I think, what is 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:56.760 a great example of division in human beings and human groups? 0:04:56.920 --> 0:05:00.320 One I originally saw pointed out by and it's it's 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.360 been well documented for a while by j Van Babel 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.560 and Dominique Packer in a ted Ed video. This is 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.839 like an animated educational short that ted Ed puts on 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:14.400 Wonderful Shorts. It's regular viewing in my household with my family. 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:17.200 But the title of this one is the sibling rivalry 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:20.159 that divided a town. So I thought i'd cover the 0:05:20.200 --> 0:05:24.560 basics of this sibling rivalry all right, So are you 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:27.520 familiar with this story, Joe, I'm not What all starts 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:31.279 in around nineteen nineteen. That's when these two brothers, Adolph 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:35.680 and Rudolph Dassler found a shoe company called Gabruda Dassler 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:40.320 Shoe Fabric or GAETA in their hometown of Herzogen. I 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:43.400 rock in Bavaria. It turns out they were very successful. 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.920 These shoes were really took off. You even had a 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.440 situation where in the nineteen thirty six Olympics American runner 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.240 Jesse Owens apparently was wearing some of these shoes. But 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.240 then World War two breaks out. This disrupts everything, to 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.560 say the least, Rudolph is drafted into the An Army, 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.760 the factory is transformed into a weapons factory, and again 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.440 everything is just super disrupted until after the war the 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:12.119 brothers reunite, their work continues ad Is until nineteen forty 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.600 eight when they split over some personal issues. And I 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:18.800 think there are a few different analyzes of what those 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:22.600 personal issues might have been, but the results are the same. 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:25.239 Meaning anyway you cut it, the company is split into 0:06:25.760 --> 0:06:31.360 that means material, workforce, and so forth. Rudolph founds Ruda, 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.919 which becomes Puma, and Adolph starts Adidas. Now that's not 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:38.560 that crazy, right, It's just one shoe company splitting into 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:42.520 two shoe companies. Now. The interesting thing about this, though, 0:06:42.520 --> 0:06:45.360 according to Javan Babble and Dominique Packer and that ted 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:47.960 Ed video, is that the brothers feud and business division 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:53.120 ultimately divides the entire town quote residents became fiercely loyal 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:56.560 to one brand of shoe, local businesses chose sides, and 0:06:56.760 --> 0:07:01.560 marriage across lines was discouraged. Herzegoganak eventually became known as 0:07:01.839 --> 0:07:05.160 the town of bent necks because its residents looked down 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:09.239 to ensure they were interacting with members of their group. Oh, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.840 look down at the shoes. That one took me a second. Yeah. 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.600 So I think it's a great example, not because not 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:18.960 only because it's kind of has some sort of comical 0:07:19.000 --> 0:07:21.520 elements to it, kind of like belly stars, but also 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.120 we do see these various elements to the division, the personal, 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:29.240 the business, the social, and the schism is is quite real, 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:32.920 and it is funny to think how how split people 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.880 can be about brands. I mean sometimes I think it's 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.600 it's meant jokingly. You see a lot of joking comments today, 0:07:40.800 --> 0:07:44.679 even about things like coke versus Pepsi, or Twizzlers versus 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:46.960 red vines or something. And then also things that are 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:51.160 not even brand oriented, like overhanded versus underheaded toilet paper rolls. 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:54.280 I recall divisions of this type. We're big on like 0:07:54.440 --> 0:07:58.080 early Facebook, like mid two thousands Facebook, where people would 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:00.400 make all these joke groups, and it would be like, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.000 you know, for people who like red vines, because twizzlers 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:09.200 are for cowards. I mean, it's still I think, very 0:08:09.200 --> 0:08:11.600 prominent in like name making. You know, people like to 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:13.760 get in on this sort of thing. I don't know, maybe, 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:16.920 especially when it's meant jokingly. It's kind of like low 0:08:16.960 --> 0:08:21.080 stakes things to sort of mock disagree about. I'm not sure. 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:24.600 But then at what point does does does just sort 0:08:24.600 --> 0:08:26.840 of trolling and mock fund At what point does that 0:08:26.960 --> 0:08:30.720 then become like an actual entrenched belief or opinion? Oh? 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:35.080 I think rather quickly actually, So in this episode of 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:36.640 Stuff to Blow your mind, where you're going to look 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.920 at a at a social psychology concept that ties into 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.480 all of this, the minimal group paradigm, a method for 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:46.679 sussing out what might be the absolute minimal conditions for 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:50.400 discrimination to take place between two groups. Will their findings 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:53.000 be twiddlers versus red vines? Is that the minimal thing? 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:55.719 I don't know, you'll just have to find out, all right, 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:59.120 So where does this minimal group paradigm come from? All right? So, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.480 one of the sources that I was looking at specifically 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:04.880 in order to understand the minimal group Paradigm and its 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.720 History was The Origins of the Minimal Group Paradigm by 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.080 Rupert Brown of the University of Sussex, twenty twenty, published 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:15.520 by the American Psychological Association. Brown points out that the 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:19.120 basis of prejudice and inner group discrimination has of course 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:21.480 been a human concern for a long time, and certainly 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.880 was a long time concern of people in psychology. But 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:28.640 the MGP or the minimal group paradigm as we know 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:34.000 it generally is attributed to Polish social scientists on Retash 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:37.640 Fill who of nineteen nineteen through nineteen eighty two, and 0:09:37.960 --> 0:09:41.560 also a British social psychologist Michael Billigg, who worked with him, 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.560 was born nineteen forty seven. Typically, I see a lot 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.760 of references to work they did in the early seventies. 0:09:48.000 --> 0:09:52.000 One of the main citations is on retash film Michael Billig, 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:55.800 Robert Bundy and Claude Flament, and the title is Social 0:09:55.840 --> 0:10:00.240 Categorization and Intergroup Behavior, published in the European Journal of 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.599 Social Psychology, nineteen seventy one. If you want to go 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.840 back to the source now, tash Fell it's worth noting 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.240 was a survivor of the Holocaust, and this is important 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:13.880 to keep in mind because much of his work does 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.000 ponder the question of what drives groups of people to 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:21.360 take up extreme prejudice views and does the transference rely 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:24.560 on extreme personality types or is it something more mundane. 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:30.040 So yeah, in the early nineteen seventies, tash Fell at 0:10:30.040 --> 0:10:34.000 all conducted a series of experiments on MGP studies that 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.360 would end up having an enormous impact on the field 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:39.400 of social psychology. More on this in a second, but 0:10:39.440 --> 0:10:42.320 I also want to point out that Brown stresses that 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:45.880 there is also a pre tash Fell origin in the 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:50.840 work of Dutch social psychologist Yap Robbie in nineteen sixty four. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:55.240 So Robbie suspected that common fate was the essential component 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:58.800 for a group to hold together and for intergroup discrimination 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:03.120 to occur. Common fate is a distalled psychology concept that 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.640 says that objects functioning or moving in the same direction 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.400 appear to belong together, kind of like we're off to 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.680 see the wizard, right, I mean, you're going to see 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:13.240 the wizard, while I'm going to the sea. We'll see 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:14.960 the wizard. Or I'm going down this road. Well, I 0:11:14.960 --> 0:11:18.080 guess we're we're a group, Okay, so under this view, 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:22.040 the thing that would make you prefer and show favoritism 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:25.160 to members of your in group is a basic belief 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:27.640 that the same kind of thing is going to happen 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:30.640 to all the members of this group. Yeah. Yeah, and 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:32.120 I think you can probably you know, cut it a 0:11:32.160 --> 0:11:34.600 few different ways, but yeah, it's like there's something about 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:37.720 your your sort of common direction, common fate, if you 0:11:37.760 --> 0:11:39.920 want to put it that way, that this sort of 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:45.679 binds you together. Now, Robbie's experiments involved classifying subjects into 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:49.280 groups to explore inner group discrimination, but he ultimately concluded 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:54.080 that mere classification was not enough to elicit in group favoritism. 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:57.360 So um again Worth noting that he was looking at 0:11:57.400 --> 0:11:59.960 some of the some of the same stuff that would 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:03.120 become important to the mental group paradigm and what kind 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.240 of lays some of the groundwork for it, even but 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:11.360 his findings were different. Now, this raises a question that 0:12:11.360 --> 0:12:15.439 Brown explores, why was Robbie overlooked and why is he 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:19.400 still sort of overlooked and some of the documentation surrounding 0:12:19.640 --> 0:12:23.240 MGP and Brown breaks it down and attributes it to 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:28.000 three reasons. So, first, tash Fell's findings were counterintuitive and 0:12:28.040 --> 0:12:30.959 therefore more newsworthy. That's one of the big things about 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.040 MGP is that you know a lot of people going 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.080 into it, you don't expect to see the results you see. 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:39.080 You don't expect to see this thing that seems to 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:41.640 explain a lot of the division that goes on in 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:47.320 groups and the discrimination that occurs between groups. Just based 0:12:47.400 --> 0:12:49.880 on as we'll get into, like just sort of random 0:12:49.880 --> 0:12:54.200 grouping of people, it makes more sense to assume that 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.760 if people are showing in group favoritism, it would be 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.800 because I don't know, they assume that all of the 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:03.120 members of the group are sharing a common fate or 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.520 something like that. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to keep 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:10.200 in mind is toash Fell's MGP work helped inspire and 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.960 like the groundwork for social identity theory, which became huge, 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:18.160 so that that in turn elevated his work with MGP, 0:13:18.559 --> 0:13:22.000 and in fact, the social identity theory was formulated by 0:13:22.800 --> 0:13:25.200 tash Fell and John Turner, who lived nineteen forty seven 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.120 through twenty eleven in the nineteen seventies and the nineteen eighties. 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:30.560 And then the third factor that Brown points out is 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.600 that personality differences between the two men. So tash Fell 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:37.000 has been characterized as more of a go getter, essentially 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.480 someone who really, you know, took full advantage of any 0:13:41.520 --> 0:13:46.160 opportunity to you know, sort of explore his ideas and 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:50.679 get his ideas out there, whereas Robbie was more unassuming. 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:55.439 So some combination of these three factors, according to Brown, 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:58.000 So tash Fell was quite aware of these studies, but 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:02.559 suspected that the opposite was true and was already experimenting 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:05.080 with the social comparison theory. So fast forward to the 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:09.360 nineteen seventies and the first MGP experiments. I'm not going 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:12.920 to bust these experiments out blow by blow necessarily, but 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:17.360 certainly hitting the really important parts the basics of the 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:21.760 MGP experiments. So the first part is you have subjects 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:24.520 carry out a task, and the task is often described 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:26.680 as something like estimating the number of dots on an 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.480 image or answering an opinion question about a work of 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:35.400 abstract art. All right, Next, presumably based on these results, 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.360 subjects are placed into groups. But known only to the researchers, 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:41.800 not to the subjects, is the fact that the group 0:14:41.840 --> 0:14:45.640 assignment is actually random. Okay, So, for example, if the 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:48.480 question you were given had to do with like estimating 0:14:48.520 --> 0:14:52.160 the number of dots. You might break people into groups, 0:14:52.360 --> 0:14:55.280 say and tell them that, okay, group A is the 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:58.840 people who overestimated the number of dots in the image, 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:01.640 and group B is the number of people who underestimated 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.160 the number of dots in the image. Or with the 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:08.720 question about art, you might separate people into different taste categories. 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:10.760 You say like, oh, you were the people who preferred 0:15:10.760 --> 0:15:13.360 the art by this artist, and group B is the 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:17.560 people who preferred the art by this other artist. Yeah. Yeah, 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:19.120 you can certainly break it down like that, But I 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.040 think on the other end, you could also just not 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:24.600 explain what the what the methodology is at all, Like 0:15:24.960 --> 0:15:27.640 you could just put people into groups and it's just 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:31.600 the idea that there's something about data that originates in 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:35.520 you that informed this choice because it's actually random. But 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:37.480 you don't want people to think it's random, that you 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.400 want them to think that it's based on something. Yes, 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.200 now there's no interaction between the resulting groups, no room 0:15:44.240 --> 0:15:47.600 for interpersonal bonds, you know, not enough to be like, hey, 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.320 those the people who apparently guess differently from me about 0:15:51.440 --> 0:15:54.240 jelly beans in a jar. They seem a little stuck up, 0:15:54.320 --> 0:15:55.720 or they seem a little sting. You know, there's no 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:57.760 room for that at all, or likewise, no room for 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:00.160 you to say, well, they seem like decent people, even 0:16:00.200 --> 0:16:02.720 if they count dots differently or estimate dots differently than 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.920 I do. In fact, a group membership was anonymous, right, 0:16:05.960 --> 0:16:07.920 so you didn't know who was in the other You 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:09.920 couldn't like look around the room and be right, here 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:13.440 are the group a people. Yeah, and that's important to 0:16:13.520 --> 0:16:16.440 stress too, because yeah, it's just really the beauty of 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.240 this experiment and the attractiveness of it is that it 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:23.200 does just strip everything else away, everything that you could 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:27.640 use and also could therefore muddy and complicate the findings. Okay, 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:30.640 so people are assigned into these random groups. They think 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.040 there is a reason for the assignment. They don't know 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:35.160 who's in the groups. They just know they're in one 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:38.640 of them. Right, So now it's time to get busy. Here, 0:16:39.320 --> 0:16:42.040 a second task is assigned, in which subjects had to 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:47.000 assign reward tasks to anonymous individuals, either two from the 0:16:47.040 --> 0:16:49.760 end group, two from the outgroup, or one from each 0:16:50.400 --> 0:16:53.160 These individuals would be marked by a code number, and 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:55.960 your code number would never come up, so it wasn't 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:59.440 completely self serving, right, And these would be what are 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:02.960 known as allocation tasks, tasks that are used in a 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.040 number of different experiments to try to see what people 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:10.000 value or reward. And generally these are just experiments where 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:14.120 subjects play some kind of game that involves distributing rewards 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:17.040 off in monetary rewards like a number of dollars or 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:20.840 tokens of some kind that can be exchanged for something 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:24.840 to these anonymous players belonging to the in group or 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.439 the outgroup or both. Yeah, and you might think that 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:31.480 this would all favor even handed distribution, since there's just 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:34.840 so little to go on aside from group affiliation in 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:38.160 divvying it up. And I've read that in some cases 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.560 many subjects did try to distribute things kind of fairly. 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:46.000 Like one of the later reviews of minimal group paradigm 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:48.840 I was looking at by Sabine Oughton from twenty sixteen 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:54.919 said that basically quote fairness concerns strongly guided intergroup allocations, 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:59.200 but that didn't always hold true. There was a number 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:04.560 of exceptions. Yeah, Ultimately, subjects consistently engage in constant in 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:08.439 group bias, so the groups were again entirely made up 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:12.280 by chance, there was no contact here, but it was 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:15.640 enough to generate a sense of group belonging. It created 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:18.359 in us, and it also created a them which you 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.800 then see borne out in the study results. So that's 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:25.600 the big take home from the minimal group paradigm, even 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:30.480 without factors such as religion, race, nationality, socioeconomic class, even 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:33.200 without things like what do other people? What do people 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:35.720 in the outside group look like or act like? When 0:18:35.760 --> 0:18:37.879 you know, what do I have in common with the 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:40.120 people around me? It was even stripping all that away, 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:45.200 humans rather swiftly foreign factions and discriminate against others. So, 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.240 to offer a little bit more detail from that later 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:51.719 piece I mentioned this was a paper called the Minimal 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:56.000 Group Paradigm and its Maximal Impact in Research on social categorization. 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:58.919 This was published in Current Opinion and Psychology in twenty 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:03.359 sixteen by Sabinet. One thing Oughton mentions is that when 0:19:03.520 --> 0:19:08.080 Tashfell and colleagues first came up with the minimal group paradigm, 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:14.080 their original intention was apparently to investigate whether people would 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:18.159 display in group favoritism even in situations where there was 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:21.679 no actual conflict for resources between the two groups. So 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.680 their original question was a little bit different, but as 0:19:24.680 --> 0:19:28.919 a preliminary avenue of research to that project to address 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:32.479 this other question. First, they wanted to just find out 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:35.560 what were the minimum criteria that could be leveraged to 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:38.919 cause people to show in group favoritism. So this was 0:19:38.920 --> 0:19:42.479 originally supposed to be just like trying to establish what 0:19:42.520 --> 0:19:45.480 they would need to do in this other test oughten 0:19:45.560 --> 0:19:48.520 Wrights quote. They planned to start with a most minimal 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:52.320 setup and to successively add elements to the design until 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:57.639 intergroup discrimination would emerge. So they started with these novel 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.880 social categorizations based on things that they expected to have 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:05.159 no power of social cohesion at all, like tendencies in 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:08.760 you know, the numerical estimation game, the dots game, or 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:12.440 preferences for the types of paintings. And again these were 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:15.520 only pretenses. The people were actually assigned to groups randomly 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.800 in most are all cases, And instead what they found 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:23.240 was that these fake, made up bases for social categorization 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:27.199 were good enough to kickstart in group favoritism. So they 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.359 were trying to find the minimum criteria, and it turns 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:32.400 out they just didn't really have to look very hard. 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:36.200 There's barely a minimum at all. Yeah, and that again 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:38.680 I think is the thing that that that floored everybody, 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.119 and I in still floors people when they hear about 0:20:41.119 --> 0:20:54.520 it for the first time or reminded him. Oughton recognizes 0:20:54.640 --> 0:20:59.320 three experimental features for recognizing what authors in this experimental 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.720 domain college mere categorization effect. That's what's going on in 0:21:02.760 --> 0:21:06.239 the minimal group paradigm. It's like people are behaving in 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.840 ways that indicate group favoritism, but only based on merely 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:13.960 being categorized in a group, and like nothing happening in 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.800 the real world. The three features, as autenlists of them are. 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:22.040 Number one, categorization is novel and arbitrary, no history of 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.640 experiences within group and or out group, so it's got 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.600 to be all new in the experiment. Number two, categorization 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:32.720 is anonymous, no face to face interaction between group members, 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.119 because you can obviously see how that would introduce complications 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:42.160 and see no utilitarian self interests can be directly served 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:46.119 by intergroup evaluations or allocations. So you don't want to 0:21:46.119 --> 0:21:50.080 complicate your study by having people have the ability to 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.000 pay money out to themselves because that would obviously add 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:56.960 in new variables, right right, That would be the self 0:21:57.000 --> 0:22:01.600 interest kicking in for sure. But a really interesting thing 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:05.920 emerges with the allocation tasks, that is, along the lines 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.480 of self interest. Instead of individual self interest, it is 0:22:09.640 --> 0:22:13.479 in group interest. So Otton says, as we've discussed, there 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:17.240 were fairness concerns that did guide some inner group allocations, 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.280 but also there was evidence of in group favoritism even 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.119 when the group had just been formed. It meant essentially 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.280 nothing and the members were anonymous. And here's a really 0:22:27.320 --> 0:22:32.560 interesting thing. In some cases quote, the tendency to positively 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:37.720 differentiate the in group from the outgroup was stronger than 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:43.000 the tendency to maximize the in group's profit. So the 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:47.280 example Latton gives here would be, instead of giving twelve 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:50.959 dollars to the in group and eleven dollars to the outgroup, 0:22:51.440 --> 0:22:56.000 some subjects would select a strategy that gave eleven dollars 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:59.280 to the in group and nine dollars to the outgroup. 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:04.439 Everybody gets less, but the difference between the rewards of 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.520 the two groups is greater. And if you were on 0:23:07.560 --> 0:23:10.720 the top of that difference, even if you got less, 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:14.480 some people preferred that, oh wow, and this thing about 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:19.639 sacrificing the overall objective gains of the in group for 0:23:19.880 --> 0:23:23.320 a greater distinction in gains between the in group and 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:26.440 out group made me think about a thing I read 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:29.159 in the context of a different paper exploring a different theory, 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:33.280