16 Ingroup Bias Examples

Ingroup bias is the tendency to favor individuals that are in the same group as ourselves. We sometimes also call this the affinity bias.

In-groups can be formed on a wide range of attributes, including gender, race, ethnicity, age, neighborhood, geographic region, religion, nationality, or sports team (just to name a few).

One of the first scholars to write about this phenomenon was the sociologist William Sumner (1906):

“Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exists in its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders” (p. 13).

Individuals that are members of our group are favored, while those that are outside this group are not. This is referred to as ingroup-outgroup bias.

Ingroup Bias Examples

• Team Affinity: People often prefer to socialize with those who share their favorite sports team, feeling a stronger connection based on this common interest. This shared passion can create a sense of camaraderie and foster positive feelings towards fellow fans.
• Age Segregation: Individuals tend to congregate with others in their age group, as they often share similar experiences and perspectives. This can lead to a sense of comfort and understanding, while potentially excluding others who fall outside this age range.
• Intelligence Bias: We may perceive individuals who are similar to ourselves as more intelligent than others, as our shared traits and perspectives validate our own beliefs. This can create an illusion of superiority and limit our willingness to learn from diverse perspectives.
• Preferential Treatment: Allowing someone to cut in line because they wear a political slogan we agree with demonstrates an ingroup bias favoring those who share our beliefs. This preferential treatment can create feelings of connection and solidarity with others who hold similar views.
• Fraternity Favoritism: Choosing a job applicant because they were part of our college fraternity highlights a preference for those with shared experiences. This may lead to overlooking other, potentially more qualified candidates in favor of someone with a familiar background.
• Athlete Bonding: School athletes sitting together at lunch exemplify the tendency to gravitate towards others with similar interests or affiliations. This can lead to exclusion of non-athletes and reinforce stereotypes or divisions among students.
• Ethnicity Preference: A teacher favoring students of the same ethnicity demonstrates an ingroup bias based on shared cultural background. This can result in unfair treatment or advantages for some students and harm the learning environment for everyone.
• National Pride: A flight attendant being extra nice to passengers from her home country showcases ingroup bias based on nationality. This can create an atmosphere of preferential treatment and potentially alienate other passengers.
• Tech Elitism: Apple users displaying superiority over Windows users highlights the inclination to favor one’s own group based on brand loyalty. This can lead to condescending attitudes and create unnecessary tension between users of different products.
• Dietary Divides: Vegetarians may exhibit an ingroup bias by distancing themselves from non-vegetarians, based on shared dietary choices. This can create social divisions and reinforce stereotypes about both groups.
• Belief Perseverance: Holding onto our beliefs despite contrary evidence can be seen as a form of ingroup bias, as it strengthens our connection to those who share our views. This can hinder our ability to objectively evaluate new information and adapt our beliefs accordingly.

5 Best Examples

1. Political Affiliations

There’s an old saying that you should never discuss religion or politics at the dinner table. There are no more divisive subjects that these. People take their religious beliefs and political ideology extremely seriously, so if you want to keep your friends, it’s best to keep the chatter to sports and movies.

Although that is sound advice, adhering to it is pretty difficult. People just have a tendency to talk about current events, and those often involve politics these days.

It seems perfectly reasonable that we would prefer to socialize with people that we have things in common with. People that share our values are easy to talk to and the likelihood of a heated debate are minimal. Afterall, who wants to have a friend that always disagrees with them?

While all of this is understandable, the problem occurs when the “bias” part of ingroup bias comes into play. Denying people jobs or social rights is taking ingroup preferences a bit too far.

2. Military Vets and Civilians

The military changes people. Strict adherence to rules and protocols becomes firmly ingrained into a person’s psyche. Unrelenting respect for authority and following orders becomes second nature to anyone that has joined the armed services.  

That’s why we often see people with military experience preferring to socialize with others that have also served. They share certain values, mindset, and way of life. They have a ‘brotherhood’.

Having combat experience can take those characteristics to the next level. Civilians are just different. They have not seen the tragedies of conflict or had to learn how to handle the possibility of losing one’s life at any moment. Those experiences change a person’s personality forever.

It seems a little unfair to describe the preference to be around others that have endured these traumatic experiences as an ingroup “bias”. Perhaps a new term can be invented for this scenario, such as ingroup preference or ingroup matching.

3. Ingroup Bias and Eyewitness Testimony

Several decades of research have demonstrated the fragility of eyewitness testimony. People’s memory of events and people are far more susceptible to distortion than we realize. This calls into question the credibility of eyewitness testimony.

Lindholm and Christianson (1998) examined the role of ingroup bias in eyewitness testimony. Swedish students and immigrants watched a film depicting a simulated robbery. The perpetrator was either an immigrant or a Swede.
The results were quite interesting: both groups rated members of their outgroup as more culpable than members of their ingroup.

So it seems that the ingroup bias not only has implications for who we prefer to socialize with, but it can also have more serious ramifications regarding eyewitness testimony.

4. Cross-Cultural Conflicts

Nationality is a prominent grouping variable. Most people in the world have a very strong tie to their native homeland. They have internalized the values, customs, and beliefs of the culture every day of their lives.

This is completely natural. Nearly every one of us is the same in this regard. Unfortunately, this devotion to our nationality can sometimes lead to a divergence of treatment between locals and natives that borders on the unfair.

For example, as many ex-pats will attest, whenever there is a disagreement between a local and a foreigner, the local authorities have a slight tendency to point the blame in one direction.

Whether this is intentional or not is hard to say. The ingroup bias is often an unconscious act that may be difficult to control. We also sometimes call this ‘cultural bias‘.

5. A Class Divided

Maybe one of the most compelling demonstrations of ingroup bias occurred in the third-grade classroom of a small school in Iowa.

In 1968, Jane Elliot turned her adorable third-graders into students filled with prejudice and bias.

Simply by dividing the class into two groups based on eye-color, the students began to turn on each other and show signs of hostility that are reflected in the world on a daily basis.

Students in the outgroup began to perform poorly and show signs of anxiety and depression almost immediately. The next day, when the roles were switched, so did their psychological states.

The PBS Frontline Documentary “A Class Divided,” tells the fascinating story of Elliot’s simple but extremely powerful experiment. 

Related Psychological Bias: Outgroup Homogeneity Effect

Conclusion

The ingroup bias means we prefer to be around others like ourselves. This includes people of our same race or ethnicity, political or religious affiliation, or even others that are also fans of our favorite sports teams.

The ingroup bias can manifest in a variety of ways. For instance, doing favors for our fellow ingroup comrades, perceiving them as more intelligent, or even being more likely to give them a job.

Although it may be unfair to outgroup members, we can’t blame people completely for engaging in this bias because it is often unconscious and uncontrollable.

References

Sumner, W. G. (1907). Folkways: A study of the sociological importance of usages, manners, customs, mores, and morals. Boston: Ginn and Co.

Brewer, M. B. (2007). The social psychology of intergroup relations: Social categorization, ingroup bias, and outgroup prejudice. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles (pp. 695–715). The Guilford Press.

Tajfel, H., & Turner J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson Hall.

Hamley, L., Houkamau, C., Osborne, D., Barlow, F., & Sibley, C. (2019). Ingroup love or outgroup hate (or both)? Mapping distinct bias profiles in the population. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219845919

Lindholm, T., & Christianson, SA. (1998). Intergroup biases and eyewitness testimony. The Journal of Social Psychology, 138(6), 710-723. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224549809603256