Mentor/s
Damon Tomlin, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology
Participation Type
Paper Talk
Abstract
Human beings frequently categorize others into ingroups (“us”) and outgroups (“them”) and preferentially allocation resources to ingroup rather than outgroup members. While this can be easily demonstrated by asking participants to make choices regarding two obviously distinct groups, less is known about how individuals draw such distinctions when not given explicit categories. The purpose of this research was to assess whether people make ingroup/outgroup distinctions, and demonstrate ingroup favoritism, when the stimuli are abstract and the dividing line must be drawn by participants themselves. Using a computerized task depicting sets of colored circles, participants allocated “points” to other individuals, each represented by a circle of a color and location of varying similarity to the participant’s own assigned color and location. Participants also completed a survey that assessed personality and attitudes toward members of common outgroups, such as people from other countries, immigrants, and fans of rival sports teams. Analysis revealed that appearance-based and location-based biases were significant, especially when there were few resources, rather than many, to give out. Furthermore, these forms of bias were correlated across participants - those that made allocations based on appearance also made allocations based on location - when resources were scarce.
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College and Major available
Biology, Psychology
Location
Digital Commons
Start Day/Time
4-24-2020 2:00 PM
End Day/Time
4-24-2020 4:00 PM
Comments
This is a narrated presentation (6 min., 53 sec.) and an additional file is attached.
Resource Distribution in a Social Decision-Making Task
Digital Commons
Human beings frequently categorize others into ingroups (“us”) and outgroups (“them”) and preferentially allocation resources to ingroup rather than outgroup members. While this can be easily demonstrated by asking participants to make choices regarding two obviously distinct groups, less is known about how individuals draw such distinctions when not given explicit categories. The purpose of this research was to assess whether people make ingroup/outgroup distinctions, and demonstrate ingroup favoritism, when the stimuli are abstract and the dividing line must be drawn by participants themselves. Using a computerized task depicting sets of colored circles, participants allocated “points” to other individuals, each represented by a circle of a color and location of varying similarity to the participant’s own assigned color and location. Participants also completed a survey that assessed personality and attitudes toward members of common outgroups, such as people from other countries, immigrants, and fans of rival sports teams. Analysis revealed that appearance-based and location-based biases were significant, especially when there were few resources, rather than many, to give out. Furthermore, these forms of bias were correlated across participants - those that made allocations based on appearance also made allocations based on location - when resources were scarce.
Students' Information
Winner, Provost's Prize.
Winner, Dean's Prize: College of Arts and Sciences.
Madison Robotti, Department of Psychology, not Honors, May 2021
Marisa Otto, Department of Psychology. not Honors, May 2020
Kate Rybak, Department of Psychology and Department of Biology, not Honors, May 2020
Jeffery A. Young II, Department of Psychology, not Honors, May 2020