ent in which they demonstrated this inter-group discrimination. They found that, in groups of four people, for there to be any inter-group judgements, or biases, possibly a feeling of interdependence was needed in addition to classification itself, even in the most meaningless categorisation of groups. A more recent experiment that they conducted found that, with larger group numbers, in-group - out-group discrimination was present.Tajfel (1981) studied the 'meaning' of a group, and found that simply belonging to a group, of no meaning, is enough to lead to stereotyping. Simply belonging to a group meant that subjects were put into one of two categories, that had no group characteristics attached to them (i.e. interaction, beliefs, previous background). Such a design has become known as the Minimal Group Paradigm. The subjects in this particular experiment were assigned to one of the two categories by their preferences of a group of paintings by two artists, and done so anonymously. Using code numbers (which specified what group each subject was in) and a set of matrices, the subjects were asked to allocate money to different people. They found that more money was given to subjects of the same group than the other group. With no information except group membership, this must have been the only cause for such discrimination, maximising the differences between the two groups.According to Allport's earlier definition of stereotyping, such a pre judgement must be resistant to change. Such resistance may be put down to the processes of thinking leading to biases (Howitt, et al., 1989), as seen in the experiment above. For us to believe that our prejudgements are correct, what we perceive to be is what we see. For example, Duncan (1976) showed that how we perceive the social world can be affected by our categorisations, such as , in this case, racial stereotypes. The study found that, because black people were stereotyped as aggressive people...
