Case Study: Tajfel 1970

    Cards (16)

    • When was the theory of this published?
      1979
    • What are the aims of this investigation
      investigate minimal conditions under which discrimination between social groups could be brought about
    • Who were the participants?
      48 males aged 14-15 from the same state school in Bristol
    • how were they told they were split into groups
      they were shown slides of paintings by the artists Klee and Kandinsky and were asked to state which they preferred and were told this would form the basis of their groups
    • How were they actually split into groups
      randomly with no reference made to their painting preferences
    • where they told who was in their group
      no. there was no face-to-face contact with other group members once they had made their choice.
    • under what circumstances did they do the experiment
      shown individually to a cubicle and asked to conduct the task
    • what was the task
      to allocate points to their ingroup which would give a corresponding number of points to the outgroup
    • what was the maximum joint profit
      13 - 13
    • largest possible reward to ingroup
      19-25
    • maximum difference
      7 - 1
    • what was the result of this experiment
      to favour the ingroup members choosing to go for a higher reward and penalise the outgroup
    • what were the results based on
      based on the idea of the group and not on any interaction with the group
    • what can you conclude from this experiment
      ingroup favouritism can be manipulated via the minimal groups paradigm in which participants use social categorisation to make decisions
    • Strengths of the study
      - This was a lab experiment which uses a standardised procedure and quantitative data which should ensure reliability- The fact that the boys did not meet or even see the ingroup and outgroup members adds validity to the procedure as it eliminates possible sources of bias from the decision as to how to award money i.e. physical appearance and personality factors cannot have influenced the decisions made in the task
    • Weaknesses of the study
      - There was no jeopardy involved in the task: assigning virtual money to faceless strangers does not reflect real-life situations therefore the study lacks ecological validity- The boys may have succumbed to response bias i.e. rewarding their ingroup because they felt that this is what the researchers wanted them to do