“They’re all the Same!”...But for Several Different Reasons

People often get confused between members of the same social group because “they all look the same!” In a recent review, Constantina Badea and I looked at the various reasons for this group homogeneity effect.

 
One reason is that group members actually do look the same as one another: Try identifying the culprit in a line-up of the Queen’s Guards!

Another reason is that people, especially Westerners, are motivated to perceive people in their own groups as individuals. This perceived in-group heterogeneity lets you express your individuality and distance yourself from your group's negative aspects.

It also matters what kind of group is being judged. There is a tendency to judge people in small groups, low status groups, and low power groups as being relatively similar to one another.

Finally, it matters what dimensions are being used to judge the groups. Group members tend to be rated as being similar to one another when they are judged on stereotypical dimensions as opposed to nonstereotypical or counterstereotypical dimensions (e.g., men judged on the dimension “adventurous” rather than "sensitive").

So, whether or not “they all look the same” depends on their actual variability, whether you are one of them, how numerous and powerful they are, and what kind of dimensions you’re judging them on.

For further information, please see the following journal article: Rubin, M., & Badea, C. (2012). They're All the Same!. . . but for Several Different Reasons: A Review of the Multicausal Nature of Perceived Group Variability Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21 (6), 367-372 DOI: 10.1177/0963721412457363

A self-archived version of this paper is available here.

Please click here for a collection of research papers investigating perceived group variability.

And the Winners Are...All the Same! Why Winning Groups Are Stereotyped

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”).

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