Frame of reference - stereotyping

If you've been able to attend our AFABC workshop called "Building Skills for Transracial Adoptive Parenting" you may recall at the beginning of session two we start off with a discussion of "Frame of reference" which always confuses the participants until we explain what we mean.

"Each of us has a frame of reference, a window through which we view and interact with the world. Generally, until human beings have the opportunity to learn otherwise, they assume that other people look at the world just as they do, i.e. everyone has similar values and everyone is motivated for the same reasons.

Some of us come from groups that we are told from day one we are different, eg; you are Black/First Nations/Indian/Asian/ Female/Disabled etc. Others come from groups that are taken for granted, so that they do not see themselves as members of the group or how deeply influenced they are by it. For example, being white, being male, being middle class. These elements and many more help to form our values."

By this point in the discussion the participants are starting to understand the concept, and can identify some of the groups to which they unknowingly belong, such as being a middle child, where they were born, what their religious beliefs are, etc.

So when I recently read an article on Social Identity Theory and why groups and prejudices form so easily, I thought it would be interesting to pass along.

Social identity theory states that our identities are formed through the groups to which we belong. As a result we are motivated to improve the image and status of our own group in comparison with others. Here's a classic social psychology experiment shows how little excuse people need to form into groups and start discriminating against others.

Participants, who were 14 and 15 year-old boys, were brought into the lab and shown slides of paintings by Klee and Kandinsky. They were told their preferences for the paintings would determine which of two groups they would join.

Of course, this was a lie designed to set up the idea of 'us' and 'them' in their minds. The experimenters wanted two groups of boys with not the faintest idea who was also in their own group or what the grouping meant or what they had to lose or gain.

After this setup, the boys were taken to a cubicle, one at a time. Each was then asked to distribute virtual money to the other members of both groups. The only information they had about who they were giving it to was a code number for each boy and that boy's group membership.

There were a series of rules for the distribution of the money that were designed to tease out who the boys favoured: their own group or the other group. The rules were changed slightly in different trials so that it was possible to test a number of theories. Did the boys distribute the money:

■Fairly?
■To obtain maximum joint profit?
■For maximum ingroup (own group) profit?
■For maximum difference between groups?
■Using favouritism? This involves a combination of maximum ingroup profit and maximum difference?

Startling findings
From the way the virtual money was distributed, the boys did indeed demonstrate the classic behavioural markers of group membership: they favoured their own group over the other.

Remember, the boys had no idea who was in their group 'with them' or who was in the other group. But, the most puzzling aspect of this experiment is that the boys had nothing whatsoever to gain from favouring their own group - there didn't seem to be anything riding on their decisions.

Out in the real world there's a good reason to favour your own group - normally it is also advantageous to yourself. You protect yourself by protecting others like you.


Seen in the light of social identity theory, the boys in the experiment do have a reason to be selfish about the allocation of the virtual cash. It is all about boosting their own identities through making their own group look better.

Criticisms
There are two criticisms often levelled at this experiment and its interpretation:

1.The participant's behaviour can be explained by simple economic self-interest. But: in another experiment only symbols were used rather than 'virtual' money and the results were the same.
2.The participants were responding to what they thought the experimenters wanted (psychologists call this 'demand characteristics'). But: it is unclear to the participants what the experimenters wanted. Recall that the rules for distributing money frequently changed. Also, the participants were encouraged to think that choosing whose paintings they liked (the 'first' experiment) was unrelated to the allocation of virtual money (the 'second' experiment).

This experiment shows that group membership is so important to us that we join the most ephemeral of groups with only the slightest prompting. We will then go out of our way to make our own group look better compared to others.

The simple fact of how important group membership is to us, and how easily we join groups, often without realising it, is both a subtle and profound observation about human nature.


From: www.spring.org.uk