Are You Part of the In-Group?

And how to overcome your prejudice against the out-group.

The title is a bit of a red herring, I’ll admit — as I’ll explain, we’re all part of in-groups. Troubles arise when our fabricated stereotypes of out-groups cause individuals to suffer. The good news is that we can overcome such prejudice.

I’ve talked about reference groups — in another article — as a group of people we compare ourselves against. We often find ourselves in groups, since we humans are social beings, as they say. We live in families, we attend school, we join a sports team or club, we work with others, and we join leisure time groups, like a music band. We could also be part of groups that usually don’t come together physically as an entire group, like when you’re a member of a political party, or as part of an unofficial group of fans of a certain movie star. We are part of many different groups and sometimes we are part of smaller groups inside a larger group. You might, for example, be part of the coaches group in the organization you work at.

When we identify with a certain group, psychologists call that our social identity — as opposed to our personal identity, which relates to us as a separate individual. The group we identify with is called the in-group, while the group we don’t belong to is considered the out-group. Because…