If you’ve seen high school cliques, then you have a basic understanding of what an ingroup and an outgroup are, as well as ingroup bias. These terms are heavily used in social psychology, but they are rooted in real-world daily events. Imagine that you were part of the theater group in high-school. That theater group is your ingroup, of which you are a member. It is part of your social identity at that school, and much of your time and energy are devoted to activities involving that membership. The outgroups are all other people who aren’t in your club, but they may be in choir, band, sports, or the robotics club. You might rarely communicate with these outgroup individuals and also have stereotypical views of them, such as “kids in the robotics club are weird”, or “jocks are too loud.” Regardless, you tend to like theater club members more than other members if all you know about them is their group membership. You would rather have a conversation with a theater club member than a choir member, or you would rather donate money to your club’s finances than some other club. A great example of ingroup/outgroup dynamics in film is the Breakfast Club. Claire and Bender initially hate each other, because their difference in group identity and status is so large. However, Claire and Andrew get along somewhat because they both belong to a particular ingroup: the "popular" kids.
Now that you have thought about that scenario, you understand social identity theory. Social identity theory was developed by Tajfel and Turner (1986) and it states that the groups to which you belong influence your view of yourself and your value. Ingroups are given preferential treatment, and outgroups are viewed as inferior and treated as such. Most Americans identify as being heterosexual and cisgender, and that is what society normalizes. Therefore, most Americans see LGBTQ+ individuals as members of a stigmatized outgroup.
Buck, Plant, Ratcliff, Zielaskowski and Boerner (2013) hypothesized that because ingroup identity is so crucial to maintaining status and access to resources, that people would be highly threatened by anything that may jeopardize that status. Interacting with members of an outgroup is often enough to tarnish ingroup membership. This phenomenon is called social contagion. Sexuality is often invisible, and difficult to ascertain. This also explains why there is a common heterosexual fear of being perceived as gay. Buck et. al. (2013) therefore predicted that heterosexual people would limit associating with members of the lesbian/gay communities in order to avoid social contagion. Interestingly, they also predicted that anxiety over social contagion would be more likely to lead to avoidance than prejudicial attitudes. They found that their straight participants who were particularly concerned about social contagion were less likely to agree to work with a lesbian/gay classmate, and that this was unrelated to negative prejudicial attitudes. Surprisingly, participants who were not concerned about social contagion were actually less inclined to want to work with a straight classmate. Male participants tended to be higher in both fear of social contagion and prejudicial attitudes. This study shows that some heterosexual individuals may not have negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals but avoid interactions because they dread being categorized the same way and losing the privileges ingroup members are privy to.
Another study by MacInnis and Hodson (2012) also looked at ingroups and outgroups, but they didn’t just focus on heterosexual attitudes towards gay men and lesbians. They also included perceptions of bisexual individuals and asexual individuals. There are definitions of asexuality and bisexuality in the “Terminology” section of this website, but for the sake of this study they defined asexuality as being “People who have no sexual attraction to either sex (and never have), and typically do not engage in sexual activity with others (e.g., a man that has no sexual attraction to men or women; a woman who has no sexual attraction to men or women)” (MacInnis & Hodson, 2012, pg. 730). The purpose of this study was to determine if heterosexual individuals have prejudice and are willing to discriminate towards asexual people, and to what degree this prejudice/discrimination is similar to or different from that directed towards gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals. They came up with seven criterion for prejudice towards minority groups, and tested heterosexual individuals’ responses based on these criteria. The first two criteria predicted generalized “negative” attitudes, and that people who tended to have prejudicial views towards other outgroups would also have prejudicial views towards asexuals. To measure this, the researchers looked at other traits which have been shown in previous research to be associated with higher levels of prejudice. These traits included right-wing political orientation, social dominance (the degree to which they think that certain groups should dominate over others), religious fundamentalism, and their level of identification with their ingroup. Other criteria stated that there would be a connection between negative attitudes towards asexuals and negative attitudes towards other sexual minorities, asexuals would be dehumanized (in terms of human traits and human emotions), contact with asexuals would be minimized, there would be a tendency to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, and these negative attitudes towards asexuals would not be connected in any way towards a dislike of single people (lacking a romantic relationship). They found that their participants (who were all straight) tended to have the most positive attitudes towards other heterosexuals, with colder attitudes towards all sexual minorities, particularly asexuals. They also found that participants who scored higher on right-wing political orientation, social dominance (the degree to which you believe in a social hierarchy and the dominance of your group), religious fundamentalism, and in-group identification also tended to have more negative attitudes towards sexual minorities. Asexuals were dehumanized more than heterosexuals, and gay men/lesbians/bisexual individuals were dehumanized less than heterosexuals. This result is somewhat surprising, but it can be explained by the tendency to stereotypically associate LGBTQ+ individuals with emotional and artistic tendencies, which are uniquely human characteristics. The participants generally reported an unwillingness to meet anyone from a sexual minority group, particularly asexual individuals and bisexual individual. They also reported that they would be less likely to rent an apartment to members of sexual minority groups in general, but least of all bisexuals.
What is so fascinating about this study is not only that it shows the effects of ingroup/outgroup dynamics, but that it also shows that attitudes towards sexual minority groups vary by identity. In some cases asexuals were ranked lowest, and in others bisexuals were. It is also interesting to note that these two identities deviate the most from the binary, compulsory view of sexual identity. Lastly, within the LGBTQ+ community, there are many identities beyond “gay”, “lesbian”, or “bisexual”, which psychologists are only just beginning to study. The other literature for prejudice towards these newer identities is nearly nonexistent or lumped together with other more widely known identities. They are rarely at the forefront, as they are in MacInnis and Hodson’s (2012) work.
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