In-groups, Out-groups and Reference Groups

Discrimination in employment, housing and admission is out-group treatment.

Selective enforcement follows the same lines: the same conduct is read as a lapse in an in-group member and as a character trait in an out-group member. This is where the mechanism of prejudice meets the conflict perspective's point in [The Conflict Perspective].

Jury and bench composition, wherever it arises, is a question about whose in-group is judging whom.

Reference groups

Merton's account

A reference group is the group a person uses as a standard of comparison for evaluating themselves. Its power is that it need not be a group the person belongs to.

Merton's classic finding, from research on American soldiers, is the one to cite because it is counter-intuitive and it makes the concept indispensable. Soldiers in units with high promotion rates were less satisfied with promotion than soldiers in units with low rates. On any simple account this is absurd. It becomes intelligible once you see that satisfaction is not a function of the objective position but of the comparison: where many are promoted, a man not promoted compares himself with those who were and feels aggrieved; where few are, he compares himself with the many who were not and feels ordinary. Merton called this relative deprivation.

The functions of a reference group

• Normative, when it sets the standards a person tries to live up to.
• Comparative, when it provides the yardstick against which a person measures their own position.
• Anticipatory socialisation, when a person adopts the values and manners of a group they hope to join, before they join it. A first-year law student who begins to dress, speak and read like an advocate is doing this, and Merton's point is that it makes entry easier if they succeed and leaves them stranded between two groups if they fail.

Relative deprivation, and why it explains discontent

The concept explains a pattern that puzzles governments: discontent frequently rises when conditions improve. If a group's circumstances get better but the group it compares itself with improves faster, deprivation increases although the absolute position has risen.

This is one of the most useful ideas in the whole module for a law student, because it explains why a benefit conferred on one group can produce grievance in another that has lost nothing, and why the perceived fairness of a scheme depends on the comparison it invites rather than on its own terms.

The three compared

The distinction students miss. An in-group is about belonging; a reference group is about evaluating. They coincide often but not always, and the interesting cases are those in which they diverge: a person from a poor household who takes a professional class as their reference group, or a member of a community who has adopted the standards of another and is judged disloyal by their own.

A worked example

Sameer joins a set of chambers after graduating from a college that was not the usual recruiting ground for it.

His in-group at the start is his college batch. He says we about them, and he explains a batchmate's failure as bad luck.

The chambers are an out-group he wishes to enter. He notices that its members are described in his batch's conversation as a type rather than as individuals, and he begins to notice the same being done to him.

The chambers are also his reference group, before he belongs. He changes what he wears, learns which reports are cited, stops using the phrases his batch uses. This is anticipatory socialisation, and it will help him if he is taken in.

Relative deprivation arrives at the end of the year. His stipend has risen, and he is unhappier than he was, because he now compares himself with juniors in the same chambers rather than with his batchmates. His absolute position improved and his satisfaction fell, which is Merton's finding exactly.

Criticism

1. The in-group and out-group division is treated as universal, and while the tendency is very widespread, its intensity varies enormously by society and situation, so it explains less by itself than it appears to.
2. The reference group concept is elastic. A person has many, they change with the question asked, and identifying which one is operating is often done after the fact, which weakens its predictive power.
3. Relative deprivation risks circularity. If discontent is explained by whatever comparison would produce it, the explanation is not testable unless the comparison group is identified independently.
4. The concepts describe rather than explain. They tell us that hostility follows group division; they do not say when division will produce hostility and when it will not.

Quick revision

1. Sumner: in-group, we-feeling, loyalty, cooperation; out-group, they-feeling, hostility, stereotyping. Attached idea: ethnocentrism.
2. In-group and out-group are relative and situational; a person has many.
3. The asymmetry of explanation, excusing our own and typifying theirs, is the engine of prejudice.
4. Merton: a reference group supplies the standards a person judges themselves by, whether or not they belong to it.
5. Its three functions: normative, comparative, and anticipatory socialisation.
6. Relative deprivation: satisfaction depends on the comparison, not the objective position. Soldiers in high-promotion units were less satisfied with promotion.
7. In-group is about belonging; reference group is about evaluating.

Test yourself

1. Distinguish an in-group from an out-group and give the characteristics of each. An in-group is one the individual belongs to and identifies with, marked by we-feeling, loyalty, mutual help, conformity to shared norms and a tendency to see members as individuals. An out-group is one they do not belong to, marked by they-feeling, indifference or hostility, competition, and a tendency to see members as interchangeable instances of a type, which is stereotyping.

2. What is ethnocentrism? Sumner's term for the tendency to regard one's own group as the centre of things and to evaluate all other groups by reference to its standards, so that other ways of living appear not merely different but inferior. It strengthens in-group solidarity and is a standing source of hostility to out-groups.

3. Define a reference group and give its three functions. A group whose standards, values and perspectives an individual uses as a frame of reference for evaluating their own situation and conduct, whether or not they are a member. Its functions are normative, setting standards to live up to; comparative, supplying a yardstick for self-evaluation; and anticipatory socialisation, whereby a person adopts the ways of a group they hope to join before joining it.

4. Explain relative deprivation with Merton's example. Deprivation felt by comparison rather than in absolute terms. Merton found that soldiers in units with high promotion rates were less satisfied with promotion than those in units where promotion was rare, because the unpromoted man in a fast-promoting unit compares himself with those who advanced and feels aggrieved, while in a slow unit he compares himself with the many who did not and feels ordinary.

5. Why does the distinction between in-group and reference group matter? Because belonging and evaluating are different things. A person may belong to one group while judging themselves by the standards of another, which explains both the ambition of those who adopt a group they hope to enter and the friction they meet from the group they came from, who read the adopted standards as disloyalty.