Source: Julian Wills & Jay Van Bavel—New York University

The study of intergroup relations, such as prejudice, conflict, and discrimination, has always been a central topic in social psychology. Does discrimination stem from competition with other groups, a history of conflict, or derogatory stereotypes? Despite an abundance of real-world examples, the ingredients that lead to intergroup discrimination are often unclear.

To help solve this problem, a group of psychologists created "minimal groups" to strip away confounds like monetary self-interest and a history of conflict that are normally involved in intergroup discrimination. In minimal groups, participants are randomly assigned to completely novel groups. Thus, any consequences emerging from this minimal group induction must stem from identifying with a social group and separating the social world into "us" and "them." Research using minimal groups has shown that, despite the arbitrary nature of group membership, participants willingly discriminate by favoring members of their in-group over members of the out-group.

The minimal group paradigm is widely used in social psychology to study the most basic elements of intergroup relations. This method was first introduced in a 1971 paper called Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour by Henri Tajfel and colleagues.¹ Across three experiments, the authors documented the in-group favoritism that emerges from a rather minimal group induction. This video will demonstrate how to produce the minimal group induction in a manner similar to the first experiment, where groups were ostensibly created based on dot estimation tendencies.