Blog 4: Prejudice, Stereotypes, Discrimination

Up until college I of course always belonged to a group of friends, but none were as close as the group I have now (we'll call them the SU group). The girls I spend time with now are like my sisters. Compared to friends I've had in the past, this group really feels like the group I'm meant to be with. These feel like "my people" whereas friends from the past feel like someone else's "people." I've had trouble identifying exactly what I was feeling and I think the description of ingroups and outgroups sums it up nicely. An ingroup is "a group with which an individual feels a sense of membership, belonging, and identity" (pg. 135). This is exactly how I feel about my present group of friends, as described above. An outgroup on the other hand, is "a group with which an individual does not feel a sense of membership, belonging, or identity" (pg. 135). For example, I have a group of friends from the school I went to up until 8th grade- we'll call them the MF (Marble Falls) group. I have always had plenty of fun with the MF group and can hang out with them and talk and enjoy myself. However, I never feel like I'm really at home with them or that I really belong. When I'm upset, or I need advice, or I want to share some exciting news, I don't call someone from the MF group, I call one of my closest friends (from the SU group). This is because the SU group is my ingroup of friends and any other group of friends, including the MF group, is an outgroup for me.

I've also experienced the outgroup homogeneity effect, which is "the tendency to assume that there is greater similarity among members of outgroups than among members of ingroups" (pg. 135), (Linville & Jones, 1980). That is to say, it is much easier for me to distinguish individuals within my SU group of friends than it is within the MF group. When I think of the MF group, I can generate one general picture to represent all members of the group. Of course, this is relative to the SU group, to whom I am very close. I do still see individuals within the MF group, and much more so than within a group with which I am not friends at all, but I do not make individual distinctions as easily as for the SU group. When I think of the SU group, I cannot possible generate one picture to represent everyone; all I can see is one individual after another and they are each very unique.


Linville, P. W., & Jones, E. E. (1980). Polarized appraisals of out-group members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 689-703.