The aim of the present research was to show that collective rituals have the potential to promote not only ingroup favoritism but also outgroup discrimination. In two studies, I used a minimal group setup and had participants engage in a lab-created ritual over the course of seven days. Afterwards, participants came into the lab and performed the actions in their ‘minimal’ group. In Study 1, I found that participants who performed the ad-hoc ritual distrusted outgroup members significantly more than did the control participants. Study 2 extended these findings by looking at ritual intensity as a factor of intergroup bias. Results showed, again, that participants in the two experimental conditions – elaborate and simple ritual – showed greater outgroup discrimination compared to the control, though the data showed no difference in biases between the two experimental conditions. I also found that tolerance to ambiguity moderated the effect of condition on intergroup bias.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/42863 |
| Date | 27 November 2013 |
| Creators | Hobson, Nicholas |
| Contributors | Inzlicht, Michael |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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