Effect of homogeneity relative to the outgroup: what it is and how it influences us

How many times have we heard about 'all X's are the same? People tend to group under the same definition people who share some type of trait, falsely attributing common characteristics to them.

This phenomenon is what in social psychology has been called homogeneity effect relative to the outgroup, and in this article we are going to see it in greater depth.

• Related article: "What is social psychology?"

Effect of homogeneity relative to the outgroup: definition

The effect of homogeneity relative to the outgroup is a social phenomenon that occurs when a person, who belongs to a certain group, sees a the members of other groups as more similar to each other, while perceiving the members within the same group as very varied group. That is, this phenomenon refers to how people we tend to see the outgroup, that is, an alien group, as something uniform, while we are aware of the nuances present in the endogroup, ours.

When we meet someone, we tend to get a first impression, which can be greatly influenced by the way in which we see, in very general terms, the rest of their peers who share some characteristic.

These characteristics can be race, gender, age, nationality, profession, among many others..

As you can understand, this common trend in most human beings is the raw material used by stereotypes.

Between error bias and the adaptation mechanism

There is some controversy about whether this phenomenon should be considered as a bias due to wrong beliefs or, instead, if it serves as an adaptive mechanism of social perception.

With bias, in this case, we would mean that people, based on wrong information, we make judgments of others without really knowing what they are like, while, as an adaptive mechanism of social perception, this effect would have the function of simplify the information of the world, making generalization and categorization help us to synthesize the world.

• You may be interested: "Cognitive biases: discovering an interesting psychological effect"

Study of this phenomenon

We have one of the first scientific approaches to this effect in the 1981 work by Jones, Wood and Quattrone. In their study, they asked university students, who frequented four different clubs, what they thought of the members of their own club and of those who frequented the other three.

The results showed that there was an important tendency to generalize in terms of the description of the members of the other clubs, attributing the same characteristics and behaviors to them. Instead, when they spoke of their own club, they emphasized that there were individual differences, that each one was as it was and not by going to the same place had to be equal.

There are many other studies that have addressed this phenomenon but taking into account characteristics that are difficult to modify, such as gender, race and nationality. It is well known how in the United States, especially in cities where the distribution of black and white people is highly localized according to which neighborhoods, as one moves away from the neighborhoods with a black majority and enters neighborhoods with a white majority, the idea that those of the other race are all the same becomes much stronger.

Possible explanations for this effect

Although research may suggest that the reason why people tend to generalize the characteristics of people who belong to a group that is not their own is due to the lack of contact between the members of one group and the other, this has been seen to be So.

One might think that not knowing the members of another group encourages the generation of stronger stereotypes and prejudices, arising from lack of contact and avoidance of take it. However, there are many cases from everyday life that show that this belief is false.

A clear example of this is the differentiation that men and women make with respect to the other gender. These prejudices do not arise because men have little contact with women and vice versaGiven that, although it is true that men and women tend to have more friends of their gender, there are not a few people of the other who are usually part of the contact list. Sayings such as "all men / women are equal" do not arise precisely from ignorance, but from an interest in generalizing about the other group.

It is for this reason that it has been necessary to propose some more sophisticated explanations to better understand why this is. One of them is the way in which human beings store and process information concerning the endo and exogroup. One of the theories that has best exposed this idea is the theory of self-categorization.

Self-categorization theory

According to this theory, the effect of homogeneity to the outgroup occurs due to the different contexts present when perceiving the endo and outgroup.

Thus, hypothetically, the outgroup homogeneity effect occurs due to different contexts, in which both intra and intergroup comparisons are made.

When any person, who belongs to a certain group, has knowledge of another group, it is normal for him to make a comparison between his group and the other, giving here a process intergroup.

To facilitate this comparison, it is necessary to synthesize the information corresponding to both the own group and the other, that is, make generalizations of both the endo and the outgroup; this way the process is easier for you.

It is here that special emphasis is placed on characteristics that are shared by the majority of the outgroup members, Remaining in memory the idea that they are all the same. But, when it comes to comparing exclusively the members of the in-group, that is, an intra-group process, it happens that it pays more attention to differential traits among its members.

By being part of the same group and getting to know several of its members better, he will be aware of the individual differences of his fellow men, differentiating between himself and other colleagues.

The theory of self-categorization has shown some evidence when seeing that, in intergroup situations, both the endo and the outgroup are perceived in a more homogeneous way. However, in a context in which one group is isolated from others, differences and heterogeneity arise more easily.

Bibliographic references:

• Quattrone, G. TO.; Jones, E. AND. (1980). The perception of variability within in-groups and out-groups: Implications for the law of small numbers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 38 (1): 141–152. doi: 10.1037 / 0022-3514.38.1.141
• Judd, C. M.; Ryan, Carey S.; Park, B. (1991). Accuracy in the judgment of in-group and out-group variability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61 (3): 366–379. doi: 10.1037 / 0022-3514.61.3.366
• Rubin, M., Hewstone, M., Crisp, R. J., Voci, A., & Richards, Z. (2004). Gender out-group homogeneity: The roles of differential familiarity, gender differences, and group size. In V. Yzerbyt, C. M. Judd, & O. Corneille (Eds.), The psychology of group perception: Perceived variability, entitativity, and essentialism (pp. 203-220). New York: Psychology Press.