Minimal Group Effect

Intergroup discrimination is a feature of most modern societies, and the question of why individuals seem to favor their own groups over other groups, as expressed in phenomena such as prejudice and discrimination, is one that has interested researchers in many disciplines for many years. There have been many accounts of the motivations for prejudice and discrimination, some focusing on aspects of the individual and some focusing on the role of conflict between groups over resources. It was in attempting to investigate why prejudice and discrimination occur that Henri Tajfel and Michael Billig developed the minimal group paradigm (MGP) and first observed the minimal group effect. The minimal group effect refers to the fact that individuals will express ingroup favoritism even when there is minimal ...