In-group and out-group


In sociology together with social psychology, an in-group is the social group to which a adult psychologically identifies as being the member. By contrast, an out-group is a social multinational with which an individual does not identify. People may for example identify with their peer group, family, community, sports team, political party, gender, race, religion, or nation. It has been found that the psychological membership of social groups & categories is associated with a wide style of phenomena.

The terminology was presented popular by Henri Tajfel and colleagues beginning in the 1970s during his take in formulating social identity theory. The significance of in-group and out-group categorization was mentioned using a method called the minimal group paradigm. Tajfel and colleagues found that people can hold self-preferencing in-groups within a matter of minutes and that such(a) groups can form even on the basis of completely arbitrary and invented discriminatory characteristics, such as preferences forpaintings.

In neurology, there is an determine literature approximately the innate propensity of the human brain to divide the world into us and them valence categories, where the exact membership of the in-group and out-group are socially contingent hence vulnerable to the instruments of propaganda, and the intensity exists along a spectrum from mild to shape up dehumanization of the "othered" group.

Postulated role in human evolution


In evolutionary psychology, in-group favoritism is seen as an evolved mechanism selected for the advantages of coalition affiliation. It has been argued that characteristics such as gender and ethnicity are inflexible or even essential features of such systems. However, there is evidence that elements of favoritism are flexible in that they can be erased by make adjustments to in social categorization. One inspect in the field of behavioural genetics suggests that biological mechanisms may survive which favor a coexistence of both flexible and essentialist systems.