Homogeneity Effect Relative To The Outgroup: What It Is And How It Influences Us
How many times have we heard the saying ‘all X’s are the same? People tend to group under the same definition people who share some type of trait, falsely attributing to them common characteristics.
This phenomenon is what in social psychology has been called outgroup relative homogeneity effect and in this article we are going to look at it in greater depth.
The outgroup relative homogeneity effect is a social phenomenon that occurs when a person, who belongs to a certain group, sees the members of other groups as more similar to each other, while perceiving the members who are within them as very varied. from your same group. That is, this phenomenon refers to how people We tend to see the outgroup, that is, an outside group, as something uniform while we are aware of the nuances present in the ingroup, ours.
When we meet someone, we tend to make a first impression, which can be greatly influenced by the way we see, in very general terms, the rest of our peers who share some characteristic. These characteristics can be race, gender, age, nationality, profession, among many others
As can be understood, this tendency, so common 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 a bias due to mistaken beliefs or, instead, if it serves as an adaptive mechanism of social perception.
By bias, in this case, we would mean that people, based on wrong information, We make judgments about others without really knowing what they are like while, as an adaptive mechanism of social perception, this effect would have the function of simplifying the information in the world, making generalization and categorization help us synthesize the world.
Study of this phenomenon
We have one of the first scientific approaches to this effect in the work of Jones, Wood and Quattrone in 1981. In their study they asked university students, who frequented four different clubs, what they thought of the members of their own club and those who belonged to them. the other three frequented.
The results showed that there was an important tendency to generalize regarding the description of the members of the other clubs, attributing to them the same characteristics and behaviors. Instead, When they talked about their own club, they placed more emphasis on the fact that there were individual differences that each one was as he was and not because they went to the same place did they have to be the same.
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 very localized depending on which neighborhoods, as one moves away from majority black neighborhoods and enters majority white neighborhoods, 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 a group and the other, this has been seen not to be the case.
One might think that not knowing the members of another group encourages the generation of stronger stereotypes and prejudices, arising from the lack of contact and the avoidance of contact. However, there are multiple 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 versa, given that, although it is true that men and women tend to have more friends of their gender, there are quite a few people from the other who are usually part of the contact list. Sayings like ‘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 the reason for this. One of them is the way in which human beings store and process information concerning the ingroup and outgroup One of the theories that has best exposed this idea is the theory of self-categorization.
Self-categorization theory
According to this theory, the outgroup homogeneity effect occurs due to the different contexts present when perceiving the ingroup and outgroup.
Thus, hypothetically, the outgroup homogeneity effect occurs due to different contexts, in which Comparisons are made both within and between groups
When any person, who belongs to a certain group, is aware of another group, it is normal for them to make a comparison between their group and the other, here an intergroup process occurs.
To facilitate this comparison, it is necessary to synthesize the information corresponding to both the own group and the other, that is, make generalizations from both the ingroup and the outgroup; This way the process is easier for you.
This is when special emphasis is placed on characteristics that are shared by the majority of the members of the outgroup, leaving in memory the idea that they are all the same But, when going on to compare exclusively the members of the ingroup, that is, an intragroup process, it happens that it pays greater attention to differential features between 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 peers, differentiating between himself and other classmates.
The theory of self-categorization has shown some evidence in seeing that, in intergroup situations, both the in-group and the out-group are perceived in a more homogeneous way. However, in a context in which a group is isolated from others, differences and heterogeneity arise more easily.
