An experiment, conducted with 112 Dutch teenagers formed into pairs of groups, investigated the minimal conditions that produce a more favorable evaluation of the ingroup than the outgroup. Members of each pair of groups, all of whom were strangers, rated first impressions of each other and of the two groups under one of a graded series of experimental treatments. Simply classifying subjects into two distinct groups yielded no difference between the evaluations of ingroups and outgroups. However, flipping a coin to decide which of the two groups would receive a gift produced a significant bias in favor of the ingroup and its members. A proposed interpretation is that the chance win-loss created intergroup bias by leading subjects to anticipate better outcomes from interpersonal encounters with ingroup members than outgroup members.
The present study takes its departure from the general position that a social group constitutes a special type of psychological environment for the individual, and that this environment differs in significant ways from the environment of the isolated individual. Motivational theory is based in the main on the study of the individual in isolation, and we attempt here to reexamine the operation of motivational processes in the light of the person interacting with the group.T1he experiment reported here is the third of a series designed to make this sort of reexamination. In the first experiment (5) we considered the fact that as a group takes action toward its goals, members may find themselves in new situations even though they have taken no personal action. In this type of environment, therefore, a member may find himself "carried" by the group towards or away from his personal goals or avoidances by the" ground moving under his feet." We were able in this study to establish a number of relationships between the environmental circumstances of a group's moving with respect to its goals and the reduction or increase of motivational tensions in the individual.In the second experiment (6) in this series we examined the effects of being "carried" in a group environment on the relation between 0 2 decs.jon-making and motivation. Experimental studies with isolated individuals assume that if the person is acting toward a goal, and engages in one of two alternative courses of action, he has made a decision between the alternatives. In a group situation, however, the personmay find himself obliged to engage in one of the alternative courses of action while he is still in a state of indecision--that Js he may be "icarried" beyond the point of decision before he has made up his mind. We inquired in the second experiment into the motivational consequences of being obliged to act while still in a state of indecision. We hypothesized--and were able to confirm--a relationship between making or not making a decision and the way the person channels motivational energy: if, in the group situation, the person is allowed to make a decision, motivational tensions tend to be channeled into action; if decision-making is short-circuited, tensions tend to be channeled into wish-fulfillment.Whereas the preceding experiment dealt with decision-making between alternative paths to a goal, the experiment reported here deals with decision-making between alternative goals, with the path fixed.In group life, again in contrast to the situation of the isolated individual, some line of action may be required of the person although he has not decided what goal this action serves. An example of the general type of effect one may expect in this situation is given in Durkheim's Suicide (2).Durkheim discusses the paradoxical fact that with a sudden rise in economic prosperity the suicide rate tends to increase. His interpretation of this phenomenon may be paraphrased as follows: a middle-class individual engaged in business activity sees this activity a...
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