Evaluation of Tajfels study of minimal groups

Tajfel’s study has been criticised because it is very artificial (not ecologically valid).  Would the simple act of categorisation be sufficient to create discrimination in a more ecologically valid situation?  In everyday life categorisation does often come with some degree of competition.

Importantly Tajfel’s study has also been criticised because it contains demand characteristics.  The experiment aimed to demonstrate that competition was not a sufficient factor in the creation of intergroup discrimination.  Tajfel demonstrated that merely categorising people into in-groups and out-groups is sufficient to create intergroup discrimination.  However it has been suggested that if schoolboys are divided into groups, by adults, they will automatically interpret these groups as ‘teams’ and think in terms of competition.

Tajfel has also been criticised for the way he interpreted his results.  Brown (1988), for example, suggests that the behaviour of the boys can be seen in terms of fairness as much as discrimination.   Although the boys showed bias towards their own group, this bias was not very extreme and seemed to be moderated by a sense of fairness.

A major strength of the procedure was the high level of control Tajfel managed to employ.  For example, there was no face-to-face interaction between group members; the boys only knew of other in-group/out-group members by a code number; although the boys did not realise this, they were in fact assigned randomly to the e two groups; the boys could only award points to others (either in-groupers or out-groupers) and never to themselves and that they could not know what others would do or in any way influence how others behaved