Page 165 - The Social Animal

Social Cognition 147

alike, and act alike. For example, Bernadette Park and Myron Roth-
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bart conducted a study of sororities. They found that the women
perceived more similarity between members in other sororities than
within their own. One explanation for this effect is that when the
women thought of members in their own group, they had knowledge
of them as individuals, each with a unique personality and lifestyle.
When they thought of outgroup members, they lacked such individ-
ualizing information so they considered them in terms of a group
label and saw them all as similar to this identity.
Ingroup favoritism refers to the tendency to see one’s own group
as better on any number of dimensions and to allocate rewards to
one’s own group. Ingroup favoritism has been extensively studied
using what has come to be known as the minimum group paradigm.
In this procedure, originated by the British social psychologist Henri
Tajfel, complete strangers are divided into groups using the most
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trivial, inconsequential criteria imaginable. For example, in one
study, subjects watched Tajfel flip a coin that randomly assigned
them to either “Group X” or “Group W.”
What makes Tajfel’s research interesting is that significant re-
sults are often obtained on the basis of group identification that
means very little. That is, the subjects are total strangers prior to the
study and never interact with one another, and their actions are com-
pletely anonymous. Yet they behave as if those who share their mean-
ingless label (X or W, for example) are their good friends or close kin.
Subjects indicate that they like those who share their label.They rate
them as more likely to have a more pleasant personality and to pro-
duce better work than the people who are assigned a different label.
Most strikingly, subjects allocate more money and rewards to those
who share their label. As we will see in Chapter 7, these tendencies
can form the basis of racial and ethnic prejudice.

Constructive Predictions and

Reconstructive Memory

Two thinking processes play an important role in social cognition—
predicting our reactions to future events and remembering past
events—and both are subject to considerable error. Predicting how
certain outcomes will make us feel determines the goals we set and