In some recent research,
my colleagues and I investigated whether people stereotype winning groups more
than losing groups. In other words, do people perceive the members of winning
groups to be more similar to one another than the members of losing groups? Traditionally, social psychologists have assumed that it is low status groups, low power groups, and minority
groups that bear the brunt of stereotyping with more positive, high status,
high power, majority groups being considered as unique individuals.
In our research, we challenged this prevailing view. We predicted that,
in the context of a competition between groups, winning groups would be
stereotyped more than losing groups because people have an implicit
understanding that uniformity, group cohesiveness, and co-ordination are associated with better
group performance.
To test our prediction, we asked 175 research participants to view the photographs of four women who were ostensibly part of a team of fashion designers. We told half of our participants that the team had won a fashion design competition and the other half that the team had lost the competition. We then asked participants to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements that related to the similarity between the fashion designers (e.g., “Generally, the fashion designers...are similar to each other”).
To test our prediction, we asked 175 research participants to view the photographs of four women who were ostensibly part of a team of fashion designers. We told half of our participants that the team had won a fashion design competition and the other half that the team had lost the competition. We then asked participants to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements that related to the similarity between the fashion designers (e.g., “Generally, the fashion designers...are similar to each other”).
Our statistical analyses showed that participants who were told that the fashion design team had won the competition rated the four women as being significantly more similar to one another (i.e., more homogeneous) than participants who were told that the team had lost. To check that this finding generalized to other groups, we performed a second study that referred to architects who took part in a building design competition. We obtained similar results: Participants rated the members of the winning group as being more similar to one another than the members of the losing group. In addition, they perceived the winning group to be more cohesive, agreeing more strongly with statements such as “I think that the...architects worked well together”.
These
results suggest that it is not just low status groups, low power groups, and minority groups that
can face high levels of stereotyping. In the context of an intergroup
competition, winning groups also appear to be stereotyped. Our use of fashion
designers and architects as target groups, make our results all the more interesting.
People in these professions tend to do well if they generate distinctive and
unique ideas. But even they need to put aside their individuality and pull
together as a coherent team in order to win a competition – or at least that’s
the way our research participants appeared to interpret things.
We’ve shown
that people perceive winning groups to be more homogeneous than losing groups. But an interesting
question for future research is whether people perceive homogeneous groups to
be more like winners than heterogeneous groups. Military forces often put on public displays in
which they demonstrate the uniformity, homogeneity, cohesiveness, and
co-ordination of their soldiers. It’s possible that these displays are
functional because people, including opposing military forces, perceive homogeneous
groups to be potential winners of any military action.
For more information about this research, please see the following journal article:
Badea, C., Brauer, M., & Rubin, M. (2012). The Effects of Winning and Losing on Perceived Group Variability Journal of Experimental Social Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2012.03.006
