minimal group experiment

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Key Studies: Minimal Group Paradigm (SIT – Tajfel et al)

Travis Dixon October 25, 2016 Social and Cultural Psychology

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Background Information

Social Identity Theory (read more here ) is a theory that attempts to explain inter-group behaviour, and in particular inter-group conflict, discrimination and prejudice. The theory basically explains how four key processes (social comparison, social identity, social categorization and positive distinctiveness) can influence inter-group behaviour.

The theory can be used to explain how group conflict may occur, even when there is no competition for resources (like Sherif proposed in his Realistic Conflict Theory).

A paradigm is a “typical example or pattern of something.” In psychological research it means a typical experimental design and methodology. Asch’s paradigm is the design of the experiment using the line lengths test and confederates. The minimal group paradigm involves putting people in groups based on arbitrary criteria (i.e. they’re meaningless groups – they have minimal things in common).

Methodology of the Minimal Group Paradigm 

The minimal group paradigm is the typical design used in experiments that inspired and support SIT. The basic idea is that participants (adults and children have been used in studies) are randomly divided into groups. They are then asked to award rewards, prizes or even money to other participants in specially designed booklets. The recipients are anonymous, except for a number and which group they are in (e.g. Member #28, Group X; Member #3, Group Y).

Originally, the Tajfel and Turner hypothesized that they would have to gradually increase the similarities between group members before they would observe in-group bias (e.g. positive distinctiveness). They were surprised to learn that even when groups were formed using complete arbitrary criteria, such as flipping a coin, they demonstrated in-group bias. Even when they were directly informed that the groups were meaningless, they still were biased to their in-group. This initial discovery is what lead to further development and elaboration of the SIT; they concluded that the mere existence of an out-group was enough for social comparison and in-group bias to occur.

The findings, from numerous studies, show that the in-group will act favorably towards members of their own in-group. Moreover, they will even sacrifice rewards for themselves to increase the difference in rewards given between the in-group members and the out-group members.

The experiments would often include a table like the one below…

Highlight the column of points you want to award your group and the other group. For example, if you want to give your group 12 points, you must give the other group 11.

In these experiments, even when the participants don’t know who else is in their group, they tend to give more rewards to their own group than to the out-group, thus demonstrating in-group bias (e.g. they would give their group 12 and the other group 11, instead of 17 to themselves which would mean they’d have to give the out-group more). Moreover, many participants selected only 7 points for themselves, which would be 1 point for the other group. This is the biggest difference between the two (6) that they could have chosen.

Critical Thinking Questions

• How do the minimal group paradigm studies support Social Identity Theory?
• What are the limitations in using the minimal group paradigm results to support SIT?

Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.

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Minimal Group Paradigm

Minimal group paradigm definition.

The minimal group paradigm is a procedure that researchers use to create new social groups in the laboratory. The goal is to categorize individuals into groups based on minimal criteria that are relatively trivial or arbitrary. For example, the classic procedure involves asking participants to rate paintings made by two artists with similar abstract styles. Participants are then told that they are members of a group that prefers one of the painters to the other. This is their new ingroup, and the people who prefer the other painter represent a new outgroup. In reality, participants are assigned randomly to one of the two groups. In addition, the members of each group remain anonymous and group members have no interaction or contact with one another. Thus, the minimal group paradigm creates a situation in which individuals are separated into novel ingroups and outgroups, and these individuals have no previous experience with these groups.

Minimal Group Paradigm Purpose

Ingroup Favoritism and Outgroup Derogation

The minimal group paradigm has since been used by researchers hundreds of times. Merely categorizing people into new groups affects a wide variety of perceptions, evaluations, and behaviors that reveal the degree to which people favor new ingroups over new outgroups. For example, group members evaluate new ingroups more positively on personality and other trait ratings (such as “likeable” and “cooperative”), and they evaluate products and decisions made by new ingroups more positively (even when they personally didn’t contribute to these products or decisions). Group members also allocate more resources (including money) to members of new ingroups. There is some controversy about the degree to which group members respond in a positive way toward the ingroup (ingroup favoritism) versus a negative way toward the outgroup (outgroup derogation). On the whole, however, it appears that ingroup favoritism is more prevalent than is outgroup derogation in the minimal group paradigm.

The tendency to express ingroup favoritism is very robust and persists even when changes are made to the minimal group paradigm. For example, researchers have changed the basis on which participants believe they are assigned into groups. In the original procedure, participants were led to believe that they shared a preference for a particular artist with their fellow ingroup members. Perhaps this perceived similarity drives ingroup favoritism. However, even when group assignment is completely random (e.g., based on a coin flip), people continue to favor the ingroup over the outgroup in many ways. Researchers also have examined how status differences between the new ingroup and outgroup affect ingroup favoritism. For example, participants have been told that either a majority or a minority of people are classified into their new ingroup. Regardless, participants continue to express ingroup favoritism. Participants also have been told that their new ingroup performed either better or worse on an intelligence test than the outgroup.

Surprisingly, participants who were told that their group performed worse than the outgroup still evaluated the ingroup more positively than the outgroup.

Theoretical Explanations of the Minimal Group Paradigm

Social psychologists have suggested several reasons why group members display ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm. Tajfel and his colleagues provided an explanation focusing on social categorization and social identity. Social categorization refers to the way in which people are classified into social groups. Just as people automatically perceive nonsocial objects as belonging to different categories (for example, shoes versus mittens), they also tend to categorize people into different groups. Social categorization is useful because it provides order and meaning to the social environment. For example, it is useful to be able to distinguish police officers from pharmacists. In different situations, different bases for categorizing people become relevant. For example, categorization may be based on gender or sexual orientation when people discuss romantic relationships, whereas it may be based on nationality or religious affiliation when people discuss international terrorism. In addition to classifying others into groups, social categorization also typically results in the classification of the self into a particular group. For example, a man may think of himself primarily as being male in some situations, whereas in other situations, he may think of himself primarily as being an American. Social identity refers to the aspects of the self-image that derive from these group memberships. When a particular group membership is used as the basis for social categorization, the corresponding social identity is based on that group membership. Thus, if a man is thinking about himself as an American (perhaps because he is speaking with a Japanese business associate about differences between the two countries), then his American identity is at the forefront. Importantly, according to Tajfel, social identity can be more or less positive in different contexts, and this has implications for self-esteem. Having positive self-regard (high self-esteem) is a basic human motive. So, people often engage in mental gymnastics (so to speak) to maintain or enhance their self-esteem.

How does all of this help explain ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm? According to Tajfel, the link between social identity and self-esteem creates pressure to evaluate ingroups positively in comparison with outgroups. This is called positive differentiation.

In the minimal group paradigm, the only relevant basis for social categorization is the novel ingroup and outgroup that the participants have just learned about. Thus, participants’ social identities and self-esteem are linked to these new groups. Because their self-esteem is on the line, they express favoritism toward the new ingroup (in whatever manner the research context provides) to positively distinguish the new ingroup from the new outgroup. So, participants evaluate the ingroup more positively, rate the ingroup’s products and decisions as being superior, and give more resources to the ingroup all as ways to maintain a positive social identity and protect or enhance their sense of self-esteem.

Other researchers have suggested other explanations for ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm. For example, it may be that assigning participants into groups affects their expectancies about the proper way to behave in that context. That is, people may have learned that interactions between groups are typically competitive, and thus they act competitively whenever they are in an intergroup context. Alternatively, people may evaluate the ingroup more positively and give them more resources because they expect their ingroup members to do the same for them. This is known as reciprocity. Another explanation is that learning about new social groups creates uncertainty and ambiguity. Generally speaking, people are uncomfortable in situations in which they are uncertain or unfamiliar. Designating the ingroup as being superior to the outgroup may restore some degree of certainty and order to the social environment that is created by the minimal group paradigm. Finally, several researchers have suggested that when people learn about new social groups to which they belong, they automatically assume that the new ingroup will be similar to themselves. Given that most people perceive themselves positively, the default expectation is that new ingroups are also positive.

Broader Implications of the Minimal Group Paradigm

In terms of societal implications, the robust tendency to express ingroup favoritism has two sides. On one hand, the basic tendency appears to be one in which people favor the ingroup rather than derogate the out-group. This positive orientation toward the ingroup is likely beneficial when interacting with fellow ingroup members. On the other hand, ingroup favoritism sets the stage for negative intergroup relations.

References:

• Aberson, C. L., Healy, M., & Romero, V. (2000). Ingroup bias and self-esteem: A meta-analysis. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 4, 157-173.
• Brewer, M. B. (1979). In-group bias in the minimal intergroup situation: A cognitive-motivational analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 307-324.
• Gramzow, R. H., & Gaertner, L. (2005). Self-esteem and favoritism toward novel in-groups: The self as an evaluative base. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 801-815.
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7-24). Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Minimal Group Paradigm

The Minimal Group Paradigm (MGP) is a method used in social psychology to investigate the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. This concept, first introduced by social psychologist Henri Tajfel, proposes that even trivial and arbitrary distinctions between groups, such as preference for a certain type of art, can trigger a tendency to favor one’s own group at the expense of others.

The Origins of the Minimal Group Paradigm

Henri Tajfel and his colleagues developed the Minimal Group Paradigm in the 1970s as a way to explore the roots of group bias and discrimination. The experiments performed under this paradigm showed that people are prone to ‘group-like’ behavior even when the group distinctions are entirely meaningless.

Exploring the Minimal Group Paradigm

The basic procedure.

In a typical MGP experiment, participants are divided into groups based on trivial criteria. Despite being told these groups are arbitrary and meaningless, participants consistently show favoritism towards members of their own group when it comes to distributing resources, demonstrating the prevalence of in-group bias.

The Power of Group Identification

The MGP demonstrates that people tend to identify with their ‘in-group’ and differentiate from the ‘out-group’ even when the group assignment is random and holds no real-world relevance. This finding suggests that in-group bias is not solely a result of competition over resources or long-standing rivalries but can form from the simplest bases of differentiation.

Real-World Examples

While the Minimal Group Paradigm was designed as a psychological experiment, its findings have implications that resonate with our day-to-day experiences. Below, we delve deeper into real-world instances where the effects of the Minimal Group Paradigm become apparent.

Sports Team Rivalries

One of the most observable manifestations of the Minimal Group Paradigm is in the realm of sports. Despite the arbitrary nature of sports team loyalty (often based on geographical location or familial tradition), fans display strong favoritism for their team and often a corresponding rivalry with opposing teams. This is in line with the MGP’s findings on in-group favoritism and out-group bias.

School Settings

In schools, students are often divided into houses, teams, or groups for various activities, creating a situation that echoes the conditions of the MGP experiments. These groupings, although arbitrary, can quickly foster a sense of identity and competitiveness among students, encouraging loyalty to one’s own group and rivalry towards others.

Work Environments

Within organizations, employees are often grouped into teams or departments. Despite these groupings often being created for administrative convenience, employees may still develop a sense of loyalty to their own team or department. This can lead to intergroup competition or bias, mirroring the patterns observed in MGP studies.

Social Media and Online Communities

The Minimal Group Paradigm also extends to the digital world. In online communities or social media platforms, users can quickly form groups based on shared interests, political views, or favorite memes. Even though these groupings are often formed around trivial shared interests, users frequently show strong in-group bias, defending their group and displaying hostility towards ‘out-groups.’

These real-world examples underscore the power and pervasiveness of the Minimal Group Paradigm. They serve as reminders that even the most insignificant bases for group categorization can have profound effects on our attitudes and behavior towards others.

The Implications and Applications

By highlighting the ease with which people favor their own group, the MGP provides valuable insights into the dynamics of intergroup behavior. These findings are especially relevant in various fields such as organizational behavior, conflict resolution, and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Criticisms and Limitations

While the MGP has provided valuable insights into the nature of group behavior, it is not without its criticisms and limitations. For example, some argue that real-world group dynamics are far more complex and can’t be fully understood through minimal groups.

The Minimal Group Paradigm serves as a powerful tool to understand the root of group biases and discrimination. By acknowledging the inherent tendency towards in-group favoritism, we can make strides towards mitigating harmful bias and discrimination in various social contexts .

• Social Identity Theory And The Minimal Group Paradigm

Social identity theory and the minimal group paradigm shows why people need little excuse to start forming into groups and discriminating.

Social identity theory helps to explain why people’s behaviour in groups is fascinating and sometimes disturbing.

People gain part of their self from the groups they belong to and that is at the heart of social identity theory.

It explains why as soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups.

Just glance at Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment for proof of how easy it is to provoke war between groups.

In-groups and out-groups in social identity theory

But think about the types of groups you belong to, or ‘in-group’ as social identify theory has it, and you’ll realise they differ dramatically.

Some groups are more like soldiers in the same unit or friends who have known each other from childhood.

Long-standing, tight-knit, protecting each other.

Perhaps it’s not surprising people in these groups radically change their behaviour, preferring members of their own group over others, referred to in social identity theory as an ‘out-group’, in many ways.

Other groups, though, are much looser.

Supporters of a large sports club, for example, or work colleagues only together on a project for a few months or even a group of people in an art gallery appreciating a painting.

Minimal group paradigm and social identity theory

It seems impossible that people stood together for only 30 seconds to look at a painting can be said to form a group in any measurable way.

Surely it’s too fleeting, too ephemeral?

This is exactly the type of question social psychologist Henry Tajfel and colleagues set out to answer in the development of social identity theory ( Tajfel et al., 1971 ).

They believed it was possible for a group, along with its attendant prejudices, to form at the drop of a hat.

In fact they thought a group could form even when there was no face-to-face contact between members, none of the people knew each other and their ‘group’ behaviour had no practical consequences.

In other words, they had absolutely nothing to gain (or lose) from this barely existent group (although social identity theory shows this statement is not quite right).

Forming a ‘minimal group’

Tajfel and colleagues came up with a neat solution for testing their idea, which is referred to as the minimal group paradigm.

From this experiment and others like it Henry Tajfel developed social identity theory.

Participants, who were 14 and 15 year-old boys, were brought into the lab and shown slides of paintings by Klee and Kandinsky.

They were told their preferences for the paintings would determine which of two groups they would join.

Of course, this was a lie designed to set up the idea of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in their minds.

The experimenters wanted two groups of boys with not the faintest idea who was also in their own group or what the grouping meant or what they had to lose or gain.

After this setup, the boys were taken to a cubicle, one at a time.

Each was then asked to distribute virtual money to the other members of both groups.

The only information they had about who they were giving it to was a code number for each boy and that boy’s group membership.

There were a series of rules for the distribution of the money that were designed to tease out who the boys favoured: their own group or the other group.

The rules were changed slightly in different trials so that it was possible to test a number of theories.

Did the boys distribute the money:

• To obtain maximum joint profit?
• For maximum ingroup (own group) profit?
• For maximum difference between groups?
• Using favouritism? This involves a combination of maximum ingroup profit and maximum difference?

Findings from the minimal group paradigm

From the way the virtual money was distributed, the boys did indeed demonstrate the classic behavioural markers of group membership predicted by social identity theory: they favoured their own in-group over the other out-group.

And this pattern developed consistently over many, many trials and has subsequently been replicated in other experiments in which groups were, if you can believe it, even more minimal .

When I first came across this experiment, my first reaction was to find it startling.

Remember, the boys had no idea who was in their group ‘with them’ or who was in the other group.

But, the most puzzling aspect of this experiment is that the boys had nothing whatsoever to gain from favouring their own group – there didn’t seem to be anything riding on their decisions.

Out in the real world there’s a good reason to favour your own group – normally it is also advantageous to yourself.

You protect yourself by protecting others like you.

Social identity theory

What Tajfel argued, though, was that there was something riding on the decisions the boys made, but it was something very subtle, yet incredibly profound.

Tajfel argued that people build their own identities from their group memberships.

For example, think of each of the groups you belong to: say at work, or within your family.

Part of who you are is probably defined by these groups (an important component of social identity theory).

Putting it the other way around: the nature of your group memberships define your identity.

As our group membership forms our identity, it is only natural for us to want to be part of groups that are both high status and have a positive image.

Crucially though, high status groups only have that high status when compared to other groups.

In other words: knowing your group is superior requires having a worse group to look down upon.

Seen in the light of social identity theory, then, the boys in the experiment do have a reason to be selfish about the allocation of the virtual cash.

It is all about boosting their own identities through making their own group look better.

Criticisms of the minimal group paradigm

No experiment can, or should, be automatically taken at face value.

Questions have to be asked about whether it is really telling us what the authors claim.

There are two criticisms often levelled at this experiment and its interpretation in light of social identity theory:

• The participant’s behaviour can be explained by simple economic self-interest. But: in another experiment only symbols were used rather than ‘virtual’ money and the results were the same.
• The participants were responding to what they thought the experimenters wanted (psychologists call this ‘demand characteristics’). But: Tajfel argues it is unclear to the participants what the experimenters wanted. Recall that the rules for distributing money frequently changed. Also, the participants were encouraged to think that choosing whose paintings they liked (the ‘first’ experiment) was unrelated to the allocation of virtual money (the ‘second’ experiment).

Despite these criticisms, Tajfel and colleagues’ findings have stood the test of time.

The experiment, or something like it, has been repeated many times with different variations producing much the same results.

Group membership in social identity theory

Social identity theory states that our identities are formed through the groups to which we belong.

As a result we are motivated to improve the image and status of our own group in comparison with others.

Tajfel and colleagues’ experiment shows that group membership  in social identity theory is so important to us that we join the most ephemeral of groups with only the slightest prompting.

We will then go out of our way to make our own group look better compared to others.

The simple fact of how important group membership is to us, and how easily we join groups, often without realising it, is both a subtle and profound observation about human nature.

→ This post is part of a series on the best social psychology experiments :

• Halo Effect : Definition And How It Affects Our Perception
• Cognitive Dissonance : How and Why We Lie to Ourselves
• Robbers Cave Experiment : How Group Conflicts Develop
• Stanford Prison Experiment : Zimbardo’s Famous Social Psychology Study
• Milgram Experiment : Explaining Obedience to Authority
• False Consensus Effect : What It Is And Why It Happens
• Negotiation : 2 Psychological Strategies That Matter Most
• Bystander Effect And The Diffusion Of Responsibility
• Asch Conformity Experiment : The Power Of Social Pressure

Author: Dr Jeremy Dean

Psychologist, Jeremy Dean, PhD is the founder and author of PsyBlog. He holds a doctorate in psychology from University College London and two other advanced degrees in psychology. He has been writing about scientific research on PsyBlog since 2004. View all posts by Dr Jeremy Dean

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• 00:00 Overview
• 01:11 Experimental Design
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• 08:51 Summary

Creating the Minimal Group Paradigm

Source: Julian Wills & Jay Van Bavel—New York University

The study of intergroup relations, such as prejudice, conflict, and discrimination, has always been a central topic in social psychology. Does discrimination stem from competition with other groups, a history of conflict, or derogatory stereotypes? Despite an abundance of real-world examples, the ingredients that lead to intergroup discrimination are often unclear.

To help solve this problem, a group of psychologists created “minimal groups” to strip away confounds like monetary self-interest and a history of conflict that are normally involved in intergroup discrimination. In minimal groups, participants are randomly assigned to completely novel groups. Thus, any consequences emerging from this minimal group induction must stem from identifying with a social group and separating the social world into “us” and “them.” Research using minimal groups has shown that, despite the arbitrary nature of group membership, participants willingly discriminate by favoring members of their in-group over members of the out-group.

The minimal group paradigm is widely used in social psychology to study the most basic elements of intergroup relations. This method was first introduced in a 1971 paper called Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour by Henri Tajfel and colleagues. 1 Across three experiments, the authors documented the in-group favoritism that emerges from a rather minimal group induction. This video will demonstrate how to produce the minimal group induction in a manner similar to the first experiment, where groups were ostensibly created based on dot estimation tendencies.

Intergroup behavior has long been studied within and among various societies. The variables in these studies have been derived from conflict, competition, cooperation, personal interaction, structures, personalities, etc . Whether caused by utilitarian reasons or emotional investment, social environments divide people into "us" and "them," i.e ., in-groups and out-groups. Early studies were premised on the notion that there can be no intergroup behavior without the social environments that create these divisions among people.

However, Tajfel and other psychologists' research addressed the issue of whether the sole act of social categorization-isolated from other variables like competition or anticipation of future interaction-can lead to discrimination from the in-group toward the out-group.

1. Participant Recruitment

• Conduct a power analysis and recruit a sufficient number of participants.

2. Organize materials.

• Create forty images of dot clusters with various amounts (see example of one in Figure 1 ).

• Label each row, "These are rewards and penalties for member number [insert code number] of your group", or "of the other group".
• Type A : The maximum penalties exceed maximum rewards. Order the boxes such that the two maximum joint payoff and maximum fairness terms are in the middle.
• Type B : No penalties and constant joint payoff. Order the boxes such that the two maximum fairness terms are in the middle.
• Type C : The maximum rewards exceed maximum penalties. Order the boxes such that the maximum joint payoffs are at both extremes and the two maximum fairness terms are in the middle.
• In-group choices : The top row refers to rewards and penalty outcomes for one in-group member and the bottom row refers to outcomes for another in-group member.
• Out-group choices : The top row refers to rewards and penalty outcomes for one out-group member and the bottom row refers to outcomes for another out-group member.
• Differential (intergroup) choices : One row refers to rewards and penalty outcomes for an in-group member and the other row refers to outcomes for an out-group member. Randomize the order of these rows such that three matrices reflect in-group choices on the top and the other three reflect out-group choices on the top.

• Randomize the order of the 18 matrices.
• Title the front of each section, "For member of the [insert group identification]" where group identification reflects one of the four experimental conditions: (1) under-estimator groups, (2) over-estimator group, (3) better accuracy group, and (4) worse accuracy group.

3. Data Collection

• Seat each participant at a computer.
• Present each of the 40 dot-cluster images very briefly, anywhere from 125-500 ms.
• Allow time between images so that participants can estimate the number of dots they see and record their responses on the computer.
• Randomly assign half the participants to either the neutral condition or the value condition.
• Randomly assign half of these participants to "under-estimators" and the other half to "over-estimators".
• Randomly assign half of these participants to the "better accuracy" group and the other half to the "worse accuracy" group.
• Lead participants to separate cubicles and inform them that they will soon make real monetary decisions where they can (anonymously) reward and punish other participants.
• Have the participants do the matrices with their corresponding group identification. Instruct them to indicate their choices by selecting one box per matrix ( Figure 3 ).

• Fully debrief participants.

4. Data Analysis

• Score the matrices from 1 to 14, where 14 stands for the choice in the matrix which gives the member of the in-group the maximum possible points on that matrix and 1 gives the in-group the minimum possible points; a score of 7.5 represents maximal fairness.
• Perform one-sample t-tests to determine whether the individual means scores within groups were significantly different from the point of fairness.

The factors that contribute to prejudice and discrimination between different groups of individuals are unclear, even though such relations have long been studied within and amongst various societies.

To understand the influences that lead to intergroup bias, confounds like monetary self-interest and history of conflict can be stripped away by randomly assigning individuals to novel sets—what psychologists call minimal groups.

Thus, any consequences emerging from this arbitrary redistribution must result from identifying with a new group. Interestingly, such categorization induces strong favoritism towards fellow in-group members—separating the social world into “us” versus “them”.

Based on previous work by Tajfel and colleagues, this video demonstrates how to induce minimal groups in order to examine how social categorization biases decision-making.

In this experiment, participants are subjected to two phases—group categorization and decision-making—to examine whether discriminatory behavior can be arbitrarily generated.

In the first part—group classification—participants are asked to complete an estimation task, where they simply guesstimate how many dots are shown on the screen over a number of trials.

Their performance levels are used to separate them into two groups: neutral and value. Participants in the neutral condition are further divided and labeled as under- or over-estimators—in which they are told they provided the lowest and highest estimates, respectively. Whereas, for the value condition, participants are either told their estimates are more or less accurate than average.

Subsequently, in the second phase, they are given several matrices to make decisions that either monetarily reward or punish other participants. To accomplish this, every matrix consists of numbered terms ordered in two rows and 14 columns, and each line is labeled as supporting the participant’s members—the in-group—or the others, the out-group.

Combining these possibilities creates three types of choices: in- and out-groups—where both rows are within the same groups—and differential—one of each, setting up intergroup decisions

Furthermore, to vary trade-off amounts within and between groups, the matrices are designed to satisfy one of three criteria: A, the maximum penalties exceed the maximum rewards; B, there are no penalties and the payoff is nearly equal; or C, the maximum rewards exceed the maximum penalties.

Within each matrix type, the terms are organized based on fairness. That is, the end positions reflect the opposite extremes of punishment and reward, while the middle columns represent maximal fairness, as the payout is the most equal. The dependent variable then is the position of the chosen terms.

To average across all choice types, the positions are scored from 1 to 14, where 14 stands for the choice which gives the member of the in-group the maximum possible points on that matrix, and 1 gives the in-group member the minimum possible points. Thus, a 7.5—an average of columns 7 and 8—represents the maximally fair decision across all choice types.

Regardless of conditions, it is predicted that in-group favoritism will emerge, supporting intentional discriminatory behavior after social categorization.

Prior to the experiment, conduct a power analysis to recruit a sufficient number of participants.

To begin, greet each participant and escort them into the lab. Once they are seated, hand them a laptop.

Start the first task—the presentation of dot clusters. Notice that the inter-stimulus-interval, or ISI, varies from 125 to 500 ms to allow enough time for each participant to estimate the number of dots they observed. Also note that their responses are saved.

Following the dot estimation, inform all participants that you are interested in studying other types of judgments and, for convenience, you will be placing them into one of two groups.

Without them knowing the actual results, randomly divide the neutral condition into under- and over-estimators, and the value condition into those who gave either more or less accurate estimates.

Now, lead participants into separate cubicles and inform them that they will soon make real monetary decisions where they can reward and punish other participants.

Allow them to complete the matrices according to their group identification. Instruct them to indicate their choices by selecting one box per matrix.

Finally, after all choices have been made and turned in, fully debrief the participants.

To analyze the responses, individually score each matrix from 1 to 14, where 1 gives the in-group member the minimum possible points and 14 provides them the maximum possible on that matrix.

To visualize the data, plot the average scores across choice types for each condition. Use one-sample t-tests to determine whether the individual means scores in each group were significantly different from the point of fairness, 7.5.

Notice that regardless of condition, participants responded fairly when decisions involved members of their group—in-group choices—or those entirely outside of their group—out-group decisions.

However, when it came to making decisions between groups—the differential choices—the averages were significantly greater than 7.5. These results reflect that in-group favoritism—a form of discriminatory behavior—can emerge after arbitrary classifications.

Moreover, the differences cannot be attributed to general tendencies to make unfair decisions, since participants typically chose the maximally fair option when deciding between two in- or two out-group members.

Now that you are familiar with how individuals deliberately make decisions that reward their in-group at the expense of others, let’s look at how researchers use minimal group inductions to investigate social interactions like empathy, as well as to examine the underlying neural correlates of intergroup biases.

Researchers used the same initial estimation task to fictively divide participants, and then asked them to observe pictures of people in painful or non-painful situations.

They were then instructed to imagine themselves or members of two minimal groups—in-group vs. out-group—in the same situations and accordingly rate the level of perceived pain.

Individuals felt more empathy for someone in pain when that person was in their same social group, which suggests that in-group biases are also present in empathic situations.

In another study by Van Bavel and colleagues, White participants were randomly placed into mixed-race groups, and then scanned via fMRI to identify the neural substrates involved in processing faces from in- and out-group members.

In the first part, they were asked to rate each face on a scale ranging from dislike to like. Regardless of race, individuals gave more positive ratings for their own group compared to those in the out-group.

Moreover, activity within the orbitofrontal cortex mediated such biases. These results indicate that minimal group inductions can even override racial categorizations.

You’ve just watched JoVE’s video on creating the minimal group paradigm. Now you should have a good understanding of how to design and conduct an experiment that induces discrimination, as well as how to analyze data and make conclusions about intergroup behavior.

Thanks for watching!

This procedure typically results in considerably higher payouts ( i.e. , more rewards and less penalties) for in-group members compared to out-group members. This in-group favoritism emerges regardless of the experimental condition; even when the group labels signal no objective value ( i.e. , "under-estimator" and "over-estimator"), this distinction is sufficient for discriminatory behavior ( Figure 4 ). Moreover, these differences cannot be attributed to general tendencies to make unfair decisions, since participants typically choose the maximally fair option when deciding between two in-group or two out-group members.

Applications and Summary

Participants favored their own groups in the distribution of real rewards and penalties in a situation where a fairly irrelevant classification distinguished the in-group and out-group. The results support the theory that social categorization, regardless of the organizing principle, is capable of creating intentional discriminatory behavior.

People deliberately choose decisions that make their in-group "winners" even at the expense of maximizing joint collective utility. These seminal findings eventually led to the development of Social Identity Theory 2 and Social Categorization Theory 3 ,which continue to be highly influential models for understanding intergroup relations. These theories stipulate that individuals can simultaneously possess any number of social identities which can then be selectively activated depending on the context. As a result, some researchers have found behavioral and neurological evidence that minimal group inductions can even override racial categorizations. 4 Since the original study, the minimal group induction has been used in hundreds of social psychology experiments due to its (1) simplicity, (2) robust influence on cognition and behavior, and (3) relevance to one of the discipline's core constructs. This research has also proven influential in fields ranging from political science to social neuroscience.

• Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. European journal of social psychology , 1 , 149-178.
• Tajfel, H. (1974). Social identity and intergroup behaviour. Social Science Information/sur les sciences sociales .
• Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory . Basil Blackwell.
• Van Bavel, J. J., Packer, D. J., & Cunningham, W. A. (2008). The neural substrates of in-group bias a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation. Psychological Science , 19 , 1131-1139.

To understand the influences that lead to intergroup bias, confounds like monetary self-interest and history of conflict can be stripped away by randomly assigning individuals to novel sets—what psychologists call minimal groups.

Thus, any consequences emerging from this arbitrary redistribution must result from identifying with a new group. Interestingly, such categorization induces strong favoritism towards fellow in-group members—separating the social world into “us” versus “them”.

In this experiment, participants are subjected to two phases—group categorization and decision-making—to examine whether discriminatory behavior can be arbitrarily generated.

In the first part—group classification—participants are asked to complete an estimation task, where they simply guesstimate how many dots are shown on the screen over a number of trials.

Their performance levels are used to separate them into two groups: neutral and value. Participants in the neutral condition are further divided and labeled as under- or over-estimators—in which they are told they provided the lowest and highest estimates, respectively. Whereas, for the value condition, participants are either told their estimates are more or less accurate than average.

Subsequently, in the second phase, they are given several matrices to make decisions that either monetarily reward or punish other participants. To accomplish this, every matrix consists of numbered terms ordered in two rows and 14 columns, and each line is labeled as supporting the participant’s members—the in-group—or the others, the out-group.

Combining these possibilities creates three types of choices: in- and out-groups—where both rows are within the same groups—and differential—one of each, setting up intergroup decisions

To average across all choice types, the positions are scored from 1 to 14, where 14 stands for the choice which gives the member of the in-group the maximum possible points on that matrix, and 1 gives the in-group member the minimum possible points. Thus, a 7.5—an average of columns 7 and 8—represents the maximally fair decision across all choice types.

Start the first task—the presentation of dot clusters. Notice that the inter-stimulus-interval, or ISI, varies from 125 to 500 ms to allow enough time for each participant to estimate the number of dots they observed. Also note that their responses are saved.

Notice that regardless of condition, participants responded fairly when decisions involved members of their group—in-group choices—or those entirely outside of their group—out-group decisions.

However, when it came to making decisions between groups—the differential choices—the averages were significantly greater than 7.5. These results reflect that in-group favoritism—a form of discriminatory behavior—can emerge after arbitrary classifications.

Now that you are familiar with how individuals deliberately make decisions that reward their in-group at the expense of others, let’s look at how researchers use minimal group inductions to investigate social interactions like empathy, as well as to examine the underlying neural correlates of intergroup biases.

They were then instructed to imagine themselves or members of two minimal groups—in-group vs. out-group—in the same situations and accordingly rate the level of perceived pain.

You’ve just watched JoVE’s video on creating the minimal group paradigm. Now you should have a good understanding of how to design and conduct an experiment that induces discrimination, as well as how to analyze data and make conclusions about intergroup behavior.

|   |   |   |   |   |   |   |  The Minimal Group Paradigm is a methodology employed in social psychology to investigate the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. This paradigm, where a number of assumptions, concepts, values or practices were accepted in order to better allow a view of reality in relation to the onset of human group formation and of the appearance of discriminatory behaviours was originally planned to provide a baseline in order to test subsequently the minimal necessary and sufficient conditions for in-group favouritism and out-group derogation to occur based on a sense of group membership. Experiments using this approach have revealed that even arbitrary and virtually meaningless distinctions between groups can trigger a tendency to favour one's own group at the expense others. Amongst the earliest and most influential studies or experiments in this field were two conducted under the overall direction of Henri Tajfel after his appointment as Professor of Social Psychology at Bristol University, England, in 1967 where English school boys were shown to discrimate, based on a very flimsy and objectively irrelevant sense of group membership, against a perceived out-group. In Tajfel H, Billig M G, Bundy R P & Flament C. Social categorization and intergroup behaviour. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 1:149-77, 1971. [University of Bristol, England, and University of Aix-Marseille, France] Tajfel and his colleagues describe how they set out to investigate the conditions necessary for the establishment of a sense of group membership that would subsequently act to provide a basis for in-group / out-group discriminatory behaviours. Michael Billig later went on record as stating that in this study Henri Tajfel, who was of Polish-Jewish background and who had lost many family members and friends durinmg the years 1939-1945, was investigating "How is genocide possible?" In an original experiment the schoolboy research subjects were randomly told that they were individually "overestimators" or "underestimators" of the number of dots in a display. In a second experiment such categorisation was achieved by, again randomly, telling 48, 14-15 year old, schoolboys that they were individually members of a "Klee" group or of a "Kandinsky" group after expressing their preferences, for a right or left hand painting, during a viewing of a succession of six pairs of un-labeled abstract paintings about which they were only told that one was painted by Paul Klee and the other Wassily Kandinsky. It can be suggested that there was no rationale for any of these schoolboys really feeling that they somehow "belonged" to such arbitrary, and in many ways meaningless, groups. Each boy could not feel that they had any important shared history with other group members who were just his school-fellows. He could not know if other boys he liked or disliked were in his "assigned" group or not. It was found that even under very flimsy and apparently baseless assigned social categorisation into two distinct, and previously "unheard of" social categories, in-group favouritism and out-group derogation occured in the distribution, by the schoolboys as research subjects, of "rewards for participation" in the study. This held true even where there was neither intra-group or inter-group interaction nor any opportunity to directly fulfil self-interests through such allocations or evaluations of such "rewards for participation". The finding in these studies, which have often been replicated by other researchers, show that under even under objectively meaningless social categorisation conditions in-group favoritism and out-group derogation tended to routinely occur. Before these studies by Tajfel and his colleagues, which are regarded as classic findings of Social Psychology as a branch of science, established the Minimal Group Paradigm it had been presumed that pre-existing individual personality or social tensions between groups were necessary to give rise to prejudice or discrimination. It was held by Tajfel and his colleagues that the base condition for a sense of group membership was "categorisation" itself. It is widely known that Plato, pupil of and close friend to Socrates, accepted that Human Beings have a " Tripartite Soul " where individual Human Psychology is composed of three aspects - Wisdom-Rationality, Spirited-Will and Appetite-Desire. What is less widely appreciated is that such major World Faiths as Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism see "Spirituality" as being relative to "Desire" and to "Wrath". Human Nature - Tripartite Soul page . . . . . . . Start of Minimal Group Paradigm Studies Two experiments by Henri Tajfel & colleagues An official website of the United States government The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site. The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. Publications Account settings My Bibliography Collections Citation manager Save citation to file Email citation, add to collections. Create a new collection Add to an existing collection Add to My Bibliography Your saved search, create a file for external citation management software, your rss feed. Search in PubMed Search in NLM Catalog Add to Search The origins of the minimal group paradigm Affiliation. 1 School of Psychology. PMID: 32672993 DOI: 10.1037/hop0000164 The minimal group paradigm, published by Henri Tajfel and his colleagues in the early 1970s, is a widely used experimental technique for studying intergroup perceptions and behavior. In its original form, it involved the assignment of participants to one of two meaningless categories and asking them to make allocations of rewards to other (anonymous) members of those groups. Typically, discrimination in favor of the ingroup is observed in those reward allocations. In this article, I examine the historical origins of this paradigm, noting that it was first mooted by another social psychologist, Jaap Rabbie, in the 1960s, although he is seldom credited with this fact. The intellectual disagreements between Rabbie, Tajfel, and Turner over the nature and interpretation of the paradigm are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved). PubMed Disclaimer Similar articles Minimal but not meaningless: Seemingly arbitrary category labels can imply more than group membership. Hong Y, Ratner KG. Hong Y, et al. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2021 Mar;120(3):576-600. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000255. Epub 2020 Aug 20. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2021. PMID: 32816512 Jacob Max Rabbie (1927-2013). Stroebe W, Zimbardo PG. Stroebe W, et al. Am Psychol. 2014 Jan;69(1):84. doi: 10.1037/a0034366. Am Psychol. 2014. PMID: 24446847 Intergroup emotional exchange: Ingroup guilt and outgroup anger increase resource allocation in trust games. Shore DM, Rychlowska M, van der Schalk J, Parkinson B, Manstead ASR. Shore DM, et al. Emotion. 2019 Jun;19(4):605-616. doi: 10.1037/emo0000463. Epub 2018 Jul 2. Emotion. 2019. PMID: 29963884 The social identity approach to disability: Bridging disability studies and psychological science. Dirth TP, Branscombe NR. Dirth TP, et al. Psychol Bull. 2018 Dec;144(12):1300-1324. doi: 10.1037/bul0000156. Epub 2018 Jul 12. Psychol Bull. 2018. PMID: 29999335 Review. Group-based emotion regulation: A motivated approach. Porat R, Tamir M, Halperin E. Porat R, et al. Emotion. 2020 Feb;20(1):16-20. doi: 10.1037/emo0000639. Emotion. 2020. PMID: 31961172 Review. Public management approaches to an aging workforce: organizational strategies for strategies for adaptability and efficiency. Wang Z, Fu J, Bai W. Wang Z, et al. Front Psychol. 2024 Jul 25;15:1439271. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1439271. eCollection 2024. Front Psychol. 2024. PMID: 39131863 Free PMC article. Social network structure as a suicide prevention target. Cero I, De Choudhury M, Wyman PA. Cero I, et al. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2024 Mar;59(3):555-564. doi: 10.1007/s00127-023-02521-0. Epub 2023 Jun 21. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2024. 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Tajfel et al (1971): Minimal group paradigm experiments (Results:… To provide evidence that merely belonging to one group and being aware another group existed would lead to discriminatory behaviour . 64 boys aged 14 & 15 from a Bristol comprehensive school Came to laboratory in groups of 8 All knew each other well 48 boys from the same school Arranged into 3 groups of 16 Showed 40 sets of dot clusters to the participants - Neutral condition : 4 groups of 8 boys were told that in these types of tasks, people overestimate or underestimate the number of dots , but these did not reflect accuracy - Value condition: another 4 groups of 8 were told that some people are more accurate than others Tajfel told all of them he would look at their scores and allocate them to either the 'overestimater' or 'underestimator' group (creating group identity) However he didn't look at their scores and put them into random groups The boys, without knowing who is in the other group, selected a pair of numbers to give to people who are in the other group. Tajfel was interested in the way the participants allocated the rewards He wanted to see if the same strategies were being used when rewards were being given to members of their own group compared to rewards given to members of the other group He wanted to 'make' discrimination appear based on meaningless tasks The fair strategy for this matrix would be the 12/11 combination. There have been replications of the minimal group paradigm experiments that all conclude social categorisation leads to out-group discrimination Louse Lemyre and Philip Smith (1985) replicated Tajfel's findings, as well as stating that discriminating participants improved self-esteem , showing that personal identity ties in with social identity, and that discrimination enhances both aspects Examines causes of prejudice and discrimination The boys were deceived on the nature of the grouping , as well as reasons behind the experiment Could be considered a biased sample as all participants were male, of similar age and from one school in one part of the country, so results cannot be generalised to females or other age groups Laboratory based experiments encouraged a degree of demand characteristics ; the boys responded in the way that was expected of them Also can be argued that the boys' tendency to ensure rewards for their group could be explained by competition and not favouritism Weatherall (1982) suggests we should not conclude that inter-group conflicts are inevitable , based on her observation of New Zealand Polynesians where they favoured their out-group more than showing bias towards their own group When allocating points to people who were in their in-group, they were fair by giving the 7/8 or 8/7 combination When allocating points to people in their out-group, they were also fair by giving the 7/8 or 8/7 combination When asked to allocate points to people in the in-group and out-group, there were signs of discrimination by giving their in-group 14 and the out-group 1 This is because we do not want people who are not 'the same' to have the same as someone who shares a characteristic with us Overall, a large majority of the boys, in both conditions, gave more money to members of their own group, therefore intergroup discrimination was the strategy was used in making intergroup choices Inter-group discrimination was the deliberate strategy adopted in making inter-group choices In-group/in-group: maximum fairness Out-group/out-group: boys gave more points to in-group than out-group members Tajfel demonstrated in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination based on minimal group identity - Prejudice and discrimination is very easy to trigger - People have to behave in ways considered 'appropriate', we conform to social norms - Two social norms are 'groupies' and 'fairness' Set up a second experiment due to the conditions not being adequate in the first experiment Arranged into 3 groups of 16 and categorised into groups according to their preference of paintings of Klee and Kandinsky, but they didn't know which artists they belonged to Tajfel 'saw' their scores and allocated them into either a 'Klee' or 'Kandinsky' group and asked them to again allocate points to other boys using matrices Sat in separate cubicles and worked through a booklet of 18 matrices They were told that the numbers in the matrices represented units of 1/10 of a penny and they were giving money to other boys They were unaware of the identity of any member in either group Experimenters were looking at three variables: maximum joint profit, largest possible reward to in-group and maximum difference However, a Kandinsky member may have given their in-group member 7 points whilst giving an out-group member 1 point Some boys went for the fairer option (13/13) Overall the most important factor in making their choices was maximising the differences between the two groups Book Reviews Books We Can’t Stop Thinking About Last Things on Earth Film & Television Monthly Editor Playlists Search Curator Support the Curator How To Pitch Prose It was in 1918 that Lev Kuleshov—film theorist, father of the Soviet Montage school of cinema, director of The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), political partisan, teacher—ventured a hypothesis. The hypothesis: the dramatic effect of a film was found not in the content of its shots but rather in the edits that join them together. Kuleshov put his hypothesis to the test. Taking an expressionless long shot of the actor Ivan Mozzhukhin peering into the camera—presumably, because footage of the original experiment has been lost— he broke it into three parts. Then he intercut each practically-identical segment with three other shots—a bowl of steaming soup, an attractive young woman, and a child lying dead in a coffin. When he showed the segments to audiences and polled their reactions, they swore that Mozzhukhin’s expression had changed from piece to piece. When staring at the soup, Mozzhukhin was hungry; at the young woman, lustful; at the child, mournful. “The discovery stunned me,” Kuleshov wrote, “so convinced was I of the enormous power of montage.” The Power of Montage And his amazement was catching. Soviet greats of the silent era, such as Vsevelod Pudovkin, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Dziga Vertov, and Sergei M. Eisenstein, were likewise stunned. It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that the Soviet silent era, its “golden era,” was the flowering of a shared fascination with Kuleshov’s discovery. Kuleshov experimented further. In Art of the Cinema , Kuleshov’s first book, he tells of several other tests, including the creation of a single woman from a hodgepodge of different women. He writes, “By montage alone we were able to depict the girl, just as in nature, because we shot the lips of one woman, the legs of another, the back of a third, and the eyes of a fourth.” It was “a totally new person.” And even though she was a composite, according to Kuleshov, she retained “the complete reality of the material.” Kuleshov tended to exaggerate the implications of these constructs: “it was not important how the shots were taken, but how these shots were assembled.” Alfred Hitchcock, decades apart and worlds away, called it “pure cinema,” when the montage gives rise to meanings that exist nowhere to the eye, but only in the mind. This interplay between montage, perception, and meaning has come to be known as the “Kuleshov Effect.” What Kuleshov actually discovered and what he thought he discovered are not necessarily one and the same. How successful would the Mozzhukhin experiment have been had he not appeared “neutral” but enraged, elated, or better yet, jogging in place? These montage composites are limited by plausibility (a woman has lips, legs, a back, and eyes) and the content of the shots themselves (neutral stares versus, say, directed actions, like, ‘appear as if you are frightened’). Yet Kuleshov was right to emphasize the power that editing has over motion pictures, even to the point of bending the inner “reality” of shots. What stunned Kuleshov was the incredible flexibility of the medium, and, with that in mind, the power it granted him to provide moving pictures with new contextual meanings. Such authority over meaning strikes us as obvious today, but at the time the “photographic” image was held to be a totally faithful, “concrete,” inviolably “true” artifact, free of the shortcomings of subjectivity. This turned out to be false; or, rather, true in a limited sense. What Kuleshov was witnessing was the dissolution of a paradigm—which no doubt felt like the melting away of the thing itself. Thinking about Film Film historian Ronald Levaco called Kuleshov the “first aesthetic theorist of cinema,” a deserved appellation. Yet it’s an oddity of Soviet film that such a theorist, doing strange experiments in an editing room, could have so great of an effect. Indeed, without the total destruction of Russian cinema by a chain of sweeping social disasters—World War I, the October Revolution, the Civil War, Bolshevik rule, and the mass starvation of (conservative estimate) 5 million people—it would have been impossible. The Civil War devastated Russia’s cultural centers, and studio owners fled the Bolsheviks with their cameras and film stock in tow. The instruments of film, incredibly expensive, difficult to operate, and very hard to replace, were gone. “Moscow had 143 theatres operating before World War I,” historian Peter Kenez recounts, “but in the autumn of 1921 not a single one remained in operation.” In 1920, Kuleshov joined Moscow’s All-Union Institute of Cinematography, established in 1919, as an instructor. The Institute was the world’s first film school—a film school without film stock. While Hollywood, during this time, was making film, the Soviets and Kuleshov were thinking about film; and thus developed a thickly theoretical and experimental approach to filmmaking, as was readily apparent as soon as film equipment became available to them. (One wonders, incidentally, what kind of cinema Hollywood would have made had it at least once been destroyed.) Films without Film Kuleshov’s workshops are legendary. Known as the Kuleshov Group, Pudovkin was one of his students; Eisenstein studied under him for three months, but was inspired—“influenced” is a better word—by Kuleshov for a lifetime; sometimes as a rival; later as a dear friend. Kuleshov would direct his students in mock shoots of “films without film,” drilling them over and over again through a series of taxing acting exercises. He would position the actors before empty cameras and they would act out the scenario, pretending that their performances were being recorded, in preparation for the time when the Soviet Union once again had film. Re-Centering Cinema Meanwhile, Kuleshov continued his editing experiments—having no film with which to shoot did not mean there was no film with which to play. Using whatever films they could get their hands on—films left behind from the days of Tsar Nicholas II, foreign films allowed entrance into Soviet territory under Lenin’s New Economic Policy, and others which circulated illegally throughout the Soviet Union—Kuleshov and his cohort would break them down and reassemble them in a variety of configurations. They were especially captivated by the innovative (and supremely racist) films of D.W. Griffith, the American director behind The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance . Kuleshov studied Intolerance obsessively; swapping its parts; changing its order; and re-constituting its meaning and themes (a task made easier by its silence). Like a cinematic Doctor Frankenstein, Kuleshov poked and prodded; re-arranged and re-animated; then did it all again. Breakdown then re-assemble; breakdown then re-assemble.  It was this breathless experimentalism that yielded the Kuleshov Effect. Kuleshov became convinced of the vaporousness of the shot and, naturally, of the inconsequence of the director as a cinematographer. In such a psychological setting, the center of Soviet film shifted from the camera to the editing table; from “production” to “post-production.” From there it unleashed its “golden age.” For all of its deformities—or because of them—Soviet montage remains one of the truly lasting and perpetually fascinating movements in film. The Hammer, the Sickle, and the Editing Table So what of Kuleshov the filmmaker? The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924), his most famous film, was a financial success and one of the first feature length films in the Soviet Union. It’s a key point in cinema history, but not a great work of art. His best film was Po Zakonu (1926), based on a short story by Jack London; it’s very good, but, again, not great. The students of his cinematics—Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Vertov, and especially Eisenstein—made far more compelling things of his theories and principles than he ever did. Yet his theories are implied in almost every aspect of their work. This makes him a minor filmmaker but a major figure in the history of film. Soviet Montage had a short-lived but high glory, lasting from 1924 to 1930, brought to an end by the artistic exhaustion of the theory, squabbles among the movement’s major figures, the rise of sound, and the disapproval of Stalin. Eisenstein, the greatest and most natural filmmaker of the group, explored both the roots and frontiers of Kuleshov’s doctrine—“the content of the shots in itself is not so important as is the joining of two shots of different content and the method of their connection and their alteration”—at once realizing its greatest triumphs while stretching it far beyond the sinews of plausibility. Strike! (1925) and The Battleship Potemkin (1925) are undoubtedly two of the greatest and most unique—because stylistically unrepeatable—films ever made. Eisenstein both fulfilled and exhausted Soviet Montage. By 1930, the “Golden Age” which Kuleshov fathered came to an end. Soviet Montage had marched across the globe, deposited its greatest cinematic achievements, theories, and inventions into the tool chest of—something called—“global cinema” (a prestige genre cooked up by Hollywood and its California-based film schools), and was spent. Back in the Soviet Union, Stalin and his party apparatchiks turned against the movement; and the names of its practitioners, especially Eisenstein’s, became bywords among political aspirants, encapsulating all that is wrong with its misguided adherents, decadent artists lost in sterile theory, too effete to portray the strengths and vigors appropriate to “the people’s” cinema. It was in 1935, though, that Soviet Montage officially died. Under the motto “For a Great Cinema Art,” on January 8 through 13, Stalin convened the All-Union Creative Conference of Cinematographic Workers, with Stalin himself present on the final day to distribute awards for cinematic achievement. Stalin orchestrated the proceedings to denigrate Soviet Montage and to elevate Socialist Realism in its stead as the single aesthetic of “Great Cinema Art.” For five days, Kuleshov’s theories were officially disavowed, but Eisenstein, who had become most popularly associated with the movement, was the named target. Director Leonid Trauberg criticized Eisenstein (and through him the movement) for making “stupid poetry”; director Sergei Yutkevich read aloud a letter from George Sand to Flaubert—which accused Flaubert of too much intellectual study—and pointed its finger at Eisenstein: “You are a fool who roots around in his straw and eats his gold.” Even Dovzhenko, the coward, himself a Soviet montage filmmaker, feeling the heat, took a turn: “If I knew as much as he does I would literally die.” He then threatened Eisenstein, whose lack of production—he had not completed a film in six years—noticeably displeased Stalin: “If you fail to make a film within twelve months at the latest, I beg you never to make one at all. We will have no need of it and neither will you.” Only one man, during these five tense days, came to Eisenstein’s defense: his mentor, rival, and friend, Kuleshov. “You have talked about him here with very warm, tearful smiles as if he were a corpse which you are burying ahead of time.” Kuleshov slapped back: “I must say to him, to one who is very much alive, and to one whom I love and value greatly: Dear Sergei Mikhailovich, no one ever bursts from too much knowledge but from too much envy.” Then he took his leave: “That is all I have to say.” Kuleshov defended the man who explored his theories the most ingeniously and made them known to the world—but the movement he had founded was dead.   In the late 1920s, several years prior to Eisenstein’s public flaying, Kuleshov had found himself, like Eisenstein, the object of intense scrutiny and renunciation by party wannabes. Four of his adoring students, one of whom was Pudovkin, came to his defense: Some of us who had worked in the Kuleshov Group are regarded as having “outstripped” our teacher. It is a shallow observation… We make films—Kuleshov made cinematography. Share this: Previous Next NON-TRIVIALITY OF THE RESULTS OF MILGRAM FIELD EXPERIMENT IN MOSCOW AND NEW YORK SUBWAY December 2017 RUDN Journal of Psychology and Pedagogics 14(3):255-272 14(3):255-272 This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet. Abstract and Figures Discover the world's research 25+ million members 160+ million publication pages 2.3+ billion citations P.M. Bentler Jerry D. Goodman Stanley Milgram ADV EXP SOC PSYCHOL Carl A. Kallgren Raymond R. Reno T M Al'-Batal New York Times V A Petrovskii Recruit researchers Join for free Login Email Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google Welcome back! Please log in. Email · Hint Tip: Most researchers use their institutional email address as their ResearchGate login Password Forgot password? Keep me logged in Log in or Continue with Google No account? Sign up The Most Popular Prioritization Techniques and Methods: MoSCoW, RICE, KANO model, Walking Skeleton, and others 15 min read Business ,   UX Design Published: 16 May, 2019 No comments Share A brief comparison of popular methods of task prioritization MoSCoW method: the simplest and most widespread approach for small products MoSCoW is an acronym that stands for “Must, Should, Could, Won’t.” It’s arguably one of the simplest methods to evaluate the relative importance of each task. Being a part of the Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) techniques, which helps companies adopt business agility practices , it’s also very popular among waterfall-based enterprises. The MoSCoW method requires breaking down all story points into four groups. Must: These features are mandatory. Neglect any of them and the current sprint most likely fails. Should: Features here can be described as great to have, but not top priority. Simply put, they don’t have much impact on delivery success now, though eventually, they must be implemented. Could: These are small-scale improvements that don’t take considerable resources, but they aren’t essential. Their absence won’t affect almost anything, or at least wouldn’t do any harm to the release. Won’t: These items are of the lowest importance. They don’t match stakeholders’ current challenges, needs, and requirements. Thus, they may be easily omitted or rescheduled for future releases. Pros of MoSCoW prioritization Given such operational friendliness, the benefits of MoSCoW prioritization are quite obvious. Simplicity. The MoSCoW method doesn’t require deep understanding or complicated calculations. So, it’s easy for a team to keep in line with the whole prioritization process using a simple language. This promotes mutual understanding between team and stakeholders. Scheduling with MoSCoW is fast and transparent. Agility for scheduling and implementation. Since this prioritization method has no strict time limits, except for the Must-have category, it allows for changing suitable timeframes per feature. That way, a team can adjust feature deliveries or releases on favorable terms. Cons of the MoSCoW approach With such simplicity come some challenges. Lacks a clear consistency of implementation. Though the priorities may be easily set, the MoSCoW method does not introduce any sequencing of tasks and lacks planning. At the end of the day, it might put the entire release at risk. Lack of big picture focus. With MoSCoW suggesting the most-to-least critical requirements or features, the stakeholders still might not see a full picture of priorities. If the focus must be concentrated on key features that are important for a business, MoSCoW may mislead the team. So, the stakeholders have to allocate business goals by themselves. Creates imbalance between the required and slightly desirable. Often, the blurred lines between categories make it hard to decide on features that go into, say, Must and Should lists. That’s why floating tasks between all categories should be approached with great thought and care. When to use MoSCoW The MoSCoW method is simple but it’s not always effective. For instance, if you have a complicated backlog with many time-sensitive releases, consider choosing other methods or complementing MoSCoW with 2 or 3 more comprehensive approaches. On the other hand, it’s quite reasonable to use MoSCoW with small products that don’t have many technical limitations and dependencies. Kano Model: customer-driven prioritization The Kano technique was created by the Japanese researcher Noriaki Kano in the 1980s. In a nutshell, it’s based on different levels of users’ satisfaction with a product’s features and behavior. There’s a large variety of Kano model implementations. The most fundamental and go-to version suggests dividing user backlog points by five criteria: Must-be, Attractive, One-Dimensional, Indifferent, and Reverse. As the method revolves around user satisfaction and is based on user opinion, it requires conducting Kano surveys and user interviews before prioritization practice. Must-be: The customers consider the product functional only if these features are included. One-dimensional: These features have a dual nature. While they aren’t a must for a product to work, they remain extremely desirable to customers. The category is closely related to foreseeing customer needs and expectation. When a product includes what customers would be happy to get, they stay satisfied. But if you fail to deliver them, users are more likely to experience disappointment. Attractive: Features in this section add extra satisfaction, or even enjoyment and gratification. Basically, they are unexpected but nice-to-have features. On the other hand, their absence doesn’t leave customers dissatisfied. Indifferent: The attributes here represent the least possible impact on customers satisfaction. In a nutshell, they have no value. Reverse: The features falling into this category are considered to be the most annoying. Their presence has a rather negative effect on customer satisfaction. Alternatively, when they are not introduced, customers consider it a plus. Pros of the Kano model Highlighting the potential strengths and weaknesses of a product. One of the most valuable features of the Kano model is user feedback. The results of the Kano questionnaire help realize the future product’s advantages and disadvantages. It allows product managers to specify the product/market fit early in development. Ranking product features by their value for customers. The Kano model helps rate the product properties from the value proposition standpoint and tailor it to user needs. Cons of the Kano model Provides no details on resources required. Although the Kano model gives a more comprehensive picture on how to establish the priorities from the customer vantage point, it doesn’t account for time and costs that are necessary for a given release or a particular feature. Time-consuming practice. Since the Kano model originally involves the Kano survey – which may target a lot of potential customers – the efforts to process and estimate the results might be quite significant. It slows down the time-to-market and, consequently, distracts the team from execution. Restricted by customers’ opinion and knowledge. Given that the Kano model appreciates the level of customer satisfaction, it still has pitfalls from the other side: The backlog may introduce a plain wishlist and be limited to expectations of customers who have no technical background. This caveat can lead to unstable releases. To make Kano efficient, you have to discuss the technical concepts separately. When to use the Kano Model If you are a startup striving to generate user feedback for the initial UX design, it will be quite efficient to submit your concept in tandem with the Kano survey. Given that it’s always better to demonstrate than describe, the combination of a prototype and the questionnaire will help distill the value. But if your product entails technical complexity and various hidden blockers, you should balance Kano or completely substitute it with more specific methods. RICE: balanced, but time-consuming method for mature products The RICE method is one of those involving calculations. It provides a rate-scoring model for setting priorities. RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. These are the factors to estimate each feature separately when prioritizing. Reach usually reflects the number of people who will use the feature or be able to use it in a particular time period. It’s assessed with real product metrics such as Daily or Monthly Active Users. E.g. if you’re assessing the improvements to a customer support page, the number of users visiting this page per month will be your reach metric. Impact shows the feature contribution to the overall product promotion. To align them with each other, a multiple-choice scale is recommended: 3 for “massive impact,” 2 for “high,” 1 for “medium,” 0.5 for “low,” and finally 0.25 for “minimal.” Confidence . Based on the knowledge obtained, you estimate how sure you are about the given feature benefit. Here, it is also recommended to use multiple-choice scale: 100 percent for “high confidence,” 80  for “medium,” and 50 for “low.”  Anything below will mean a shot in the dark. Effort shows the time taken by product, design, and engineering teams. This can be calculated in “person-months,” and to round it up to whole numbers usually half a month is taken as a minimum. Upon obtaining rates from each of the categories, the following formula is applied: RICE= Reach*Impact*Confidence/Effort The bigger the rate is, the higher the priority. Pros of RICE Gives a comprehensive picture. The inclusion of such versatile factors helps formulate a fuller vision on the product and estimate its success and further promotion from different points of view. Actionable metrics and numbers. This prioritization technique is mostly based on numbers and KPIs, which is the true evidence of product progression. The numbers can be later estimated to make improvements in further releases. Appreciating the customer value. The used metrics concentrate on user engagement, and can also take into account the level of their satisfaction. That is to say, the RICE method considers user experience very important. Cons of RICE Time-consuming. The approach involves a lot of calculation. To take into account all metrics equally, grade the rates, and do calculations per each backlog item requires a lot of time. Depends on data that you may not have. That said, the RICE method may stretch the release time. When the product or a feature is time-sensitive, but the data hasn’t been calculated yet, you either use another method or move the deadline. Not clear about responsibility. Since the given prioritization method involves grading such factors as impact and confidence, the team faces the challenge of taking responsibility for these decisions. Consequently, it isn’t obvious who is in charge of that. Are these addressed within the whole team, or does a product owner/manager do it alone? The lines here are still blurred. When to use The RICE prioritization is a very efficient technique that allows for taking a comprehensive look at the product from multiple sides. However, it is not applicable in every prioritization case. For instance, rating via RICE looks reasonable when the application has been rolled out and started its product lifecycle . As the method is quite metrics-intensive, you must have at least some data at hand. So, RICE wouldn’t work for MVP for the same reason. Eisenhower matrix: a straightforward way for time-management The technique originated from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s decision-making matrix, which later transformed into a four-quadrant visualization that some teams use to prioritize tasks in backlog. It’s another uncomplicated take on prioritization that you can use straight away without preparations. Eisenhower decision matrix Features of the Eisenhower matrix The technique suggests allocating tasks across four different sections on the diagram. The matrix considers two prioritization dimensions – importance and urgency. High Priority: urgent and important. Medium Priority : important but not urgent. You can additionally divide this quadrant into 2 parts: The requirements on the left side are of a higher priority and must be implemented first. Urgent but not important . The features included are urgent but without a significant impact on a product’s business aspects, so the team must decide whether they are really needed. Similar to the medium priority part, this quadrant is also divided into 2 parts; the requirements on the left side are of a higher priority than those on the right. Low Priority: neither urgent, nor important. Pros of the Eisenhower matrix Plain. A simple structure doesn’t need multi-layered composition. Open. The matrix doesn’t have decision dependencies and multiple results variation. So, the product team doesn’t have to think about some pitfalls when deciding what priority to put first. Business-targeted. The method is business centric. The higher priority is given to those items that are more relevant and useful from a business point of view. Cons of the Eisenhower matrix No evidence base. The Eisenhower decision matrix is completely outside of a data-driven approach. It doesn’t need any calculations, metrics, KPIs, or other actionable insights to concentrate on. As a consequence, some misconceptions or discussions may occur within the product team. May lack the technical aspect. Concentrating on a business aspect of the product, the method may, however, miss the other side – the technical one, which may affect the overall product flow and performance. You can use the Eisenhower matrix for the whole backlog but its simple nature better fits for individual time planning, given that you have a stronger method for the whole product. Otherwise, a delivery team must agree on all requirements, their urgency, and priority. Value vs Complexity/Effort matrix: a lightweight approach to balance tech and value Value vs. Complexity is one of the prioritization principles used by product managers to grade features on the product roadmap . The value vs complexity (or sometimes the effort word is used) method takes a balanced approach to business and tech aspects of development.  Value vs Complexity/Effort Similar to the Eisenhower matrix, the features are allocated across four quadrants with two dimensions: value and complexity. The approach prioritizes low-hanging fruit, meaning that the most value and least complexity tasks go first. Then the matrix suggests building the highest value and the most complex features; it questions the significance of low-value items, recommending ditching complex, low-value tasks. Value. The product team estimates the value of a feature from a long-term perspective. The value criteria are arbitrarily defined by the team rather than dictated by the method. They may be: market demand customer acquisition potential customer retention customer engagement expected revenue etc. Complexity. The product team estimates a feature total cost to the business and represents it as a proxy for complexity or effort necessary to realize it. On the other hand, the team may divide the effort scoring into certain categories, such as operational costs, developer hours, time on the schedule, customer training, risks, and in-house development skills. Pros of the Value vs Complexity/Effort matrix You can use it without detailed calculations. Even though the matrix suggests using specific metrics, it doesn’t dictate any restrictions. If you don’t have time for specifying value and complexity metrics, you still can resort to eyeballing them. Flexibility. As you can arbitrarily define the value, you can do the same with the second dimension. Instead of complexity, you can put risks, costs, time, etc. Cons of the Value vs Complexity matrix Has a subjective nature. Since there’s no well-specified scoring formula, the prioritization method is still quite open to debate. Proves no valuable asset for a big comprehensive product. The use of the given method is quite time-consuming for big product teams with extensive product features. Additionally, it may result in high-cost coordination expenses. It works better within the teams of smaller products and limited timeframes or budgets, especially when you build a product from the ground up. As your application matures, you may run out of low-hanging fruit and the only approach would be to embark on some bigger features. Here’s when this matrix won’t be as effective. Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF): lean but time-consuming way to introduce minimum marketable features Weighted Shortest Job First is an element of the SAFe Lean-Agile framework, which tends to be used in medium-to-big companies. It suggests scoring each feature by dividing the cost of delay by job duration. At its core, WSJF is similar to Value vs Complexity, but provides more detailed guidance. Cost of Delay (CoD). This metric defines how much the company loses if the given feature isn’t implemented. Traditionally, CoD is a sum of three elements: User-business value – How important is the feature to business and customers? Time criticality – Will the user-business value reduce over time? Risk reduction – Does the feature reduce business and technical risks? The values that you put into these variables must start with 1 as the lowest and the others set relative to that. Job duration. The duration is also measured in relative points and defines the time needed for implementation. So, in the end you get this formula: WSJF = CoD/Job duration The higher the rate is, the higher its priority. When the rate is calculated, features are introduced in the following order: Non-comprehensive features with high-added value. Complex features with high-added value. Non-comprehensive features of lesser-added value. Complex features with lesser-added value. Pros of Weighted Shortest Job First Gives accuracy and consistency. With more detailed calculation, stakeholders can expect higher consistency and predictability of results. Focuses on increasing the ROI with limited human resources. WSJF is quite beneficial for teams with limited human resources. Cons of Weighted Shortest Job First Time-consuming calculations. Since the WSJF has many metrics per each backlog item, the product team is supposed to spend significant time to prioritize each task. Limits complex tasks. If the stakeholders have a sustainable business idea, but the WSJF calculations show it’s not so urgent, they will have to postpone it, making the method a bit restrictive in implementing long-term business ideas. Relative scales. Even though we mentioned that WSJF enables accuracy and consistency, it only works if the relative scales are set up right. Since it’s hard to align all metrics and assumptions to achieve balance, the method has room for errors. WSJF is a great technique to assess and introduce minimum marketable features. However, you should not always rely on WSJF. For example, there are always features in the product that are supposed to be implemented by default and without any discussion. Walking Skeleton: the best way to prioritize MVP stories The Walking Skeleton prioritization method appeared in the early 2000s. It was advocated by Dr. Alistair Cockburn, an expert in Agile software development.  The Walking Skeleton is used in prioritizing features in MVP and defines which of them are absolutely critical for the product to work. Walking Skeleton may be smaller than the actual MVP but it puts the necessary features first The method doesn’t imply requirements falling into certain categories. However, it has distinct features that focus on user stories. Key features first. When using the Walking Skeleton, a delivery team ranks the necessary user stories first. The system must function. Due to the focus on the implementation of the essential points, the key functionality forms a fully operational product, without any additions. Reflects the business concept of a future product. The Walking Skeleton advocates showing business value. That is why the story maps are lined up to display the core system elements within the restricted technical basis. Completed with tests. Since the Walking Skeleton involves the whole production pipeline, including delivery and deployment, the testing is applied as well. Pros of Walking Skeleton Fast prioritization. One of the key benefits of Walking Skeleton prioritization for stakeholders is that defining the core features won’t take much time. Key functionality only. When estimating the business value of a future product, it’s often hard to focus on the core element, as there’s always a temptation to make it as comprehensive as possible. The Walking Skeleton helps avoid this situation, putting the operating MVP with the greatest validity first. Fast market validation. Arguably one of the most significant advantages for the Walking Skeleton is that its prioritization results help to quickly get the feedback from users. Therefore, the stakeholders assess the product-market fit and the business idea as a whole. In further releases, they can suit it up. Cons of Walking Skeleton Lacks important functionality. While the basic working framework is included, the Walking Skeleton will not involve other additional though still important features. It might play a critical role at some point. Late first release. Although the Walking Skeleton is a rather quick prioritization technique, the first release won't be fast as you still must ship a functioning product. The risk to cut corners. When trying to roll out the basic version of a product as fast as possible, the stakeholders may try to refuse the basic functional features to accelerate the release. That is why when prioritizing the backlog, the team should focus on keeping the basics without omitting them in favor of fast delivery. Otherwise, the very first – and viable – product version is at risk of turning into a prototype that is not ready for the market. Walking Skeleton is extremely useful when releasing a Minimum Viable Product . Being good in tandem, these two can provide tangible results. However, Walking Skeleton is not the one to rely on when delivering a more sustainable and complex product with numerous extra features or additional business value. For the latter, the stakeholders should consider something more comprehensive and detailed. As you may have noticed, it’s a bad idea to think that any prioritization approach is suitable for every single product or company. In a nutshell, there are few different sets of methods that fall within the particular categories of products. For instance, if you’re building an MVP, consider combining the Walking Skeleton and Kano model. The Kano model is also a perfect match for building a prototype and gathering feedback on the UX from the target audience. MoSCoW and Eisenhower’s decisions matrix are the best fit for prioritizing backlog requirements when building small products with some preliminary agreements. Equally efficient here is Value vs Complexity/Effort. Working on a ready-made product with already existing lifecycle, consider RICE. Of course, we haven’t covered many prioritization methods. For instance, many teams still rely on the HiPPO method (Highest-Paid Person Opinion). With it being stigmatized, in some cases it works, given that the team lacks expertise and ultimate understanding of a product. Tell us what you use. Are there methods that we missed? Please share. 354 IMAGES Social Identity Theory: Introduction to the Minimal Group Studies PPT Schematic of experiment set up and minimal group assignment. In each Tajfel et al (1971): Minimal group paradigm experiments (Results:… Creating the Minimal Group Paradigm (Video) Creating the Minimal Group Paradigm (Video) COMMENTS Minimal group paradigm The minimal group paradigm is a method employed in social psychology. [1] [2] [3] Although it may be used for a variety of purposes, it is best known as a method for investigating the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups.Experiments using this approach have revealed that even arbitrary distinctions between groups, such as preferences for certain paintings, [4 ... Key Studies: Minimal Group Paradigm (SIT The minimal group paradigm is the typical design used in experiments that inspired and support SIT. The basic idea is that participants (adults and children have been used in studies) are randomly divided into groups. They are then asked to award rewards, prizes or even money to other participants in specially designed booklets. Minimal Group Paradigm The minimal group paradigm is a procedure that researchers use to create new social groups in the laboratory. The goal is to categorize individuals into groups based on minimal criteria that are relatively trivial or arbitrary. For example, the classic procedure involves asking participants to rate paintings made by two artists with similar ... What is Minimal Group Paradigm? The experiments performed under this paradigm showed that people are prone to 'group-like' behavior even when the group distinctions are entirely meaningless. Exploring the Minimal Group Paradigm The Basic Procedure. In a typical MGP experiment, participants are divided into groups based on trivial criteria. Social Identity Theory And The Minimal Group Paradigm Tajfel and colleagues came up with a neat solution for testing their idea, which is referred to as the minimal group paradigm. From this experiment and others like it Henry Tajfel developed social identity theory. Participants, who were 14 and 15 year-old boys, were brought into the lab and shown slides of paintings by Klee and Kandinsky. The origins of the minimal group paradigm. The minimal group paradigm, published by Henri Tajfel and his colleagues in the early 1970s, is a widely used experimental technique for studying intergroup perceptions and behavior. In its original form, it involved the assignment of participants to one of two meaningless categories and asking them to make allocations of rewards to other (anonymous) members of those groups. The Minimal Group Paradigm and its Minimal Psychology: Tajfel and Turner's (1979, 1986) social identity theory, the minimal group paradigm with which the theory is associated and two core findings stemming from that paradigm are the focus of this paper. The development of the social identity concept is reviewed, and particular detail is devoted to the empirical basis of the theory, given that the ... The Minimal Group Paradigm and its maximal impact in ... One of the most influential paradigms in research on intergroup relations is the Minimal Group Paradigm. Initially motivated by an interest in understanding the basic determinants of social discrimination, this paradigm investigates the impact of social categorization on intergroup relations in the absence of realistic conflicts of interests, and for social categories that are arbitrary and novel. Creating the Minimal Group Paradigm The minimal group paradigm is widely used in social psychology to study the most basic elements of intergroup relations. ... Figure 2: Typical payout matrices used in this experiment. Each matrix consists of two rows, reflecting monetary tradeoffs that affect other in-group or out-group members. Matrix types (A, B, and C) are indicated on the ... The minimal group paradigm: Categorization into two versus three groups The minimal group paradigm (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy and Flament, 1971) has been influential in the study of intergroup relations. Thus far, most minimal group experiments have divided the subjects either into two groups, or have categorized them on two separate dichotomous dimensions in cross-categorization experiments. Minimal Group Experiments Abstract. The 'minimal group paradigm' is an experimental method in which people are assigned to arbitrary groups, and then required to allocate rewards to members of their group or another group. The surprising result of these studies is that ingroup favoritism is elicited under these conditions, suggesting that merely placing people into ... Minimal Group Paradigm Study experiments Henri Tajfel Two experiments by Henri Tajfel & colleagues. The Minimal Group Paradigm is a methodology employed in social psychology to investigate the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. This paradigm, where a number of assumptions, concepts, values or practices were accepted in order to better allow a view of reality in ... Minimal Group Procedures and Outcomes Research using the Minimal Group Paradigm has demonstrated the power of arbitrary group membership to produce prejudice and discrimination on a variety of measures. Despite the continued prominence of this paradigm in the social and behavioral sciences, the relative efficacy of minimal group induction procedures and methodological variations in producing intergroup biases remains largely ... Minimal Group Paradigm Studies experiments Henri Tajfel Minimal Group Paradigm Studies. Two experiments by Henri Tajfel & colleagues. The Minimal Group Paradigm is a methodology employed in social psychology to investigate the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. This paradigm, where a number of assumptions, concepts, values or practices were accepted in order to ... The origins of the minimal group paradigm The minimal group paradigm, published by Henri Tajfel and his colleagues in the early 1970s, is a widely used experimental technique for studying intergroup perceptions and behavior. In its original form, it involved the assignment of participants to one of two meaningless categories and asking them to make allocations of rewards to other ... Henri Tajfel and the "Minimal Group Paradigm" with Matt Williams Henri Tajfel and colleagues originally developed the minimal group paradigm in the early 1970s as part of their attempt to understand the psychological basis... PDF Key$study:$Tajfel$(1970)$Minimal$group$paradigm Background The aim of Tajfel's research was to investigate if intergroup discrimination would take place based on being put into different groups with consequent categorisation into in-‐groups and out-‐groups in a situation where people had just met. Tajfel hypothesised that it would and that categorisation and discrimination operate automatically ... Tajfel et al (1971): Minimal group paradigm experiments There have been replications of the minimal group paradigm experiments that all conclude social categorisation leads to out-group discrimination ; Louse Lemyre and Philip Smith (1985) replicated Tajfel's findings, as well as stating that discriminating participants improved self-esteem, showing that personal identity ties in with social identity, and that discrimination enhances both aspects PDF Scientometrics, 15(1-2): p.7-12, 1989 the section of mathematical theory of experiment in the interfaculty laboratory of statistical methods (headed by academician A. N. Kolmogorov). Later Nalimov said that the atmosphere within the laboratory with its freedom of scientific research greatly promoted the research in scientometrics and other branches ofscience. Kuleshov's Effect: The Man behind Soviet Montage Film historian Ronald Levaco called Kuleshov the "first aesthetic theorist of cinema," a deserved appellation. Yet it's an oddity of Soviet film that such a theorist, doing strange experiments in an editing room, could have so great of an effect. Indeed, without the total destruction of Russian cinema by a chain of sweeping social ... (Pdf) Non-triviality of The Results of Milgram Field Experiment in In a group of 8 real Moscow experiments the result (53.9%) of the theoretically minimal in passengers' response to the experimental situation (a young male experimenter and a The minimal group paradigm: Categorization into two versus three groups The minimal group paradigm (Tajfel, Billig, Bundy and Flament, 1971) has been influential in the study of intergroup relations. Thus far, most minimal group experiments have divided the subjects either into two groups, or have categorized them on two separate dichotomous dimensions in cross-categorization experiments. Most Popular Prioritization Techniques and Methods The Most Popular Prioritization Techniques and Methods: MoSCoW, RICE, KANO model, Walking Skeleton, and others. A product backlog is one of the key artefacts used in software development and specifically in Agile-based frameworks. It's used as a source of story points or tasks to complete in the next sprint. essay homework paper phd review speech study thesis