Ingroup Bias in the Minimal Group Situation: An Experimental Test of the Inequity Prevention Hypothesis

The inequity prevention explanation of ingroup bias in the minimal group situation holds that group members expect biased behavior from the outgroup. As a consequence, they would favor their own group in order to compensate for this anticipated outgroup bias. As a test of this interpretation,the relationship between experimentally created minimal groups was operationalized in such a way that subjects of some conditions could indeed expect biased behavior from the outgroup. In another condition, they had no reason to expect such biased behavior. The results revealed that subjects participating in the first kind of condition did indeed think that the outgroup was biased. In the condition of the second type, they thought that the outgroup was fair. Their actual intergroup behavior was nevertheless equally discriminatory in both kinds of conditions. The theoretical implications of the data are discussed.