Jose Daniel Badilla

Dr. McLaughlin
November 14, 2014
Multimedia Writing and Rhetoric

The Ingroup and the Outgroup

Life is really simple, Confucius once said, we just insist on making it

complicated. There is an infinite amount of social boundaries in this world that distort
ones perception of others and inhibit the formation of relationships that could benefit
creation as a whole. First of all, there are racial boundaries, which may discourage those
of different races and cultures to communicate effectively, sometimes due to language
constraints, sometimes due to racial biases. There are also political boundaries, where
people with different political views could potentially limit themselves to discussing a
timely topic due to the fact that theyre arbitrarily choosing to position themselves at
opposing sides of the political spectrum. Perhaps, the most interesting factor that these
social boundaries have in common is that they are all fabricated by each individuals
perception. This may lead one to wonder, if people were to disregard their differences,
and instead appreciate their similarities, how would the world be different?
Unfortunately, the world lacks compassion for itself. Everyday, the average
person will wake up, fabricate the belief that he can take on the world, and plunge into

his everyday routine with the hopes that one day his faith will help him overcome the
hardships of life. In order to have faith in himself, however, man has found the need to
place his faith in an abstract, unconditional friendship, or God. The belief that ones
services are destined for a deity rather than humanity, however, can defeat the purpose of
religion.
The problem with religion is that it generates yet another bias between the
ingroup and the outgroup. In theory, religion is a perfect foundation for those who
wish to give, but in reality it attracts many individuals who have only their partys
interest in mind. Besides creating an unnecessary psychological barrier, it prevents one
from fully understanding and appreciating the point of view of others. This is quite
interesting really, because many people find comfort in the confines of a community
where a common religion is practiced. What really is comfort but fright of that which lies
beyond the boundaries of what were used to? The religious ingroup tends to favour
itself, and it is just as important to identify the presence of bias as it is to pinpoint what
causes it. By analyzing a study conducted to test the prosociality of religious individuals
toward their respective religious ingroups versus the outgroup, I will prove that religion
can generate bias and will isolate the factor that causes it.
On their article regarding religious prosociality, Olga Stavrova and Pascal Siegers
discuss the nature of individuals prosociality due to religious orientation and, through
various studies, prove whether or not they depend on their countrys social enforcement
of religiosity (Stavrova & Siegers).

A very interesting finding of these studies signaled that there are two different
types of religiously motivated individuals: those that are intrinsically motivated, and
those that use religion for ulterior motives. Intrinsically motivated religious individuals
are defined as those that are just good and live their religion, and extrinsically
motivated religious individuals are defined as egoistic and self-serving, recurring to
religion only when convenient (Stavrova & Siegers). Studies showed that intrinsic
religious motivation correlates positively with prosocial scopes of personality, which
supports the idea that although religion may be seen as favorable, it can radiate a negative
purpose when used for ones selfish benefits. This article is crucial to understanding the
premise behind the experiment I will shortly discuss; it seems that religious individuals
are either perceived as altruistic benefactors of society, or as exclusive egoists that favour
their religious ingroup over all.
Upon learning that the words God and religion triggered different cognitive areas
of the brain, social psychologists Jason Lee Preston & Ryan S. Ritter conducted two
studies in 2013 that sought to prove that people execute good deeds differently when
primed with God and Religion. They found that the subjects primed with God acted in the
best interest of society as a whole, while those primed with religion acted in the best
interest for their religious ingroup. (Preston & Ritter 2013).
This experiment was carried out particularly well, as it recorded peoples
responses regarding their devotion to God and their religious leader. A particularly
interesting result showed that people, independently of religion, exhibit ingroup

favoritism when they share a common identity. After being primed with religion, various
American subjects were tasked to donate to the American Red Cross or the Mexican Red
Cross. The results proved that it is in human nature to always favor the ingroup,
regardless of religion, which is why most people donated to the American Red Cross
(Preston & Ritter 2013). It is important to understand the trends of ingroup favoritism
because it helps identify its prevalence in religious individuals and people tend to favour
the ingroup regardless of their religious orientation.
Recurring to ingroup favoritism goes against the real fundamentals of most major
world religions. Cognitively speaking, people generate the bias around religion, but not
around God. When primed with God, people tend to want to help the outgroup as much
as the ingroup, possibly because everyone has a different spiritual approach to life, but is
striving for the same transcendental goal.
Along with Preston and Ritters studies, Stavrova and Siegerss article has shown
that institutionalized religion serves evolutionary purposes, Evolutionary scientists have
identified how many aspects of customary religion foster cooperation and therefore
group survival (Stavrova & Siegers). Essentially, religion has served as an evolutionary
adaption that has allowed those in the ingroup to serve and provide for each other. This
proves that the evolutionary trend of cooperating with the ingroup for survival extends to
every aspect of society, including religion.
Furthermore, Preston and Ritter replicated the design of the first study to
investigate the rationales for different prosocial goals by asking the subjects to explain

why God/religious leader would want them to help a certain group (Preston & Ritter,
1474). The subjects were asked to explicitly state whether they were religious or not, and
then they were presented with two different families with differing religious beliefs, and
were asked whom they thought God and their religious leader would want them to help
out. Using statistical analysis, the results suggested a significant difference between God
and the religious leader as a moral audience (Preston & Ritter). While most people
responded that their religious leader would prefer them to help the ingroup family, they
believed that God would prefer them to help out the outgroup (or the family that did not
share the same beliefs as the subject). When asked why the majority of people would
prefer helping the outgroup, there was a general consensus from the religious subjects
that their main motivation to help the outgroup was conversion, or to show them
salvation through God. In other words, people seemed to embrace the outgroup mainly
due to the fact that they could potentially bring them into their ingroup. This shows
another trend of human behaviour; when primed with God and religion, people either
tend to favour the ingroup (religion), or help the outgroup in the hopes that members
from the latter will join the ingroup (God).
The results established that God and religion are associated with different
objectives of prosociality regarding the ingroup and the outgroup. While God was
associated with themes of conversion (i.e. love for all, universal acceptance), religion
was associated with community, similarity and subjective favoritism. In the third and
final study conducted by Preston and Ritter, participants were once again primed with the

two conditions and asked to play a Prisoners Dilemma with a member of the ingroup or
the outgroup. This game presents a useful paradigm to determine pro and antisocial
behaviour because it presents each player with an opportunity to betray each other. Based
on results from previous experiments, there is enough evidence to show that priming
ingroup concepts may improve ingroup cooperation; for example, Chinese participants
cooperate more with ingroup members when primed with Chinese symbols (Wong &
Hong, 2005). The current study, however, structured its version of Prisoners Dilemma in
a way that allowed players to benefit financially from defecting against the other player,
so as to provide a selfish extrinsic motivation to desert the other player (Preston & Ritter,
1478). Subjects primed with religion showed enhanced cooperation with the ingroup,
while subjects primed with God exhibited increased cooperation when the other player
pertained to the outgroup.
One of the most interesting findings of these three studies conducted by Preston
and Ritter was that the trends following the ingroup and outgroup, when primed with
religion and God respectively, emerged even among participants who reported no belief
in God or religious affiliation (Preston & Ritter, 1479). One would wonder, then, why the
idea of God and religion affects the way someone with no religious affiliation asks. This
demonstrates that, regardless of religion, people are prone to act the same way given their
concern for the ingroup and outgroup. These experiments, along with a study conducted
in 2012, show that even if atheists hold no belief of their own, they still share society

with a larger religious population, and therefore share the cultural associations with
religion and belief (Rounding, Lee, Jacobson, & Ji, 2012).
Furthermore, these studies also demonstrate that God and religion are distinct
aspects of religious cognition. One of the most interesting findings of this study indicates
how religion and God serve as two different platforms on which to build prosocial
behaviour and how these influences are manifested in modern day society. It seems as if
the concept of God truly sparks an initiative in the cognitive processes of theists and
atheists alike, proving that the concept of God is infinitely times more complex than the
concept of religion. One could draw from the previously discussed studies that religion
serves much more as an evolutionary adaptation that man often recurs to in order to feel a
sense of belongingness and safety. Therefore, this proves the idea that religious
individuals are biased regarding situations having to do with trusting and helping those in
the outgroup, particularly when primed or exposed to a figure of religious authority. This
may alarm some people because it shows the subconscious authority that religious leaders
can have over religious individuals and their actions.
Moreover, if people exhibit traits of favoritism depending on their religious
ingroup, does a more radically different outgroup elicit less trust and willingness to help
from those in the ingroup? According to a study conducted by Maria Brambilla and her
colleagues, in which the prosociality of self-identified Catholics in Italy was determined
with respect to the general public and the Muslim outgroup (Brambilla, Manzi, Regalia &
Verkuyten, 2013). Using statistical analysis, the results proved that peoples acceptance

and tolearance regarding the outgroup decreases as the difference between the ingroup
and the outgroup increases. Mathematically speaking, there is an inverse relationship
between these two factors. The Muslim outgroup presented in the experiment did not
only differ in religious values, but also in country of origin, and the increased distrust in
this specific group indicates that the same evolutionary reflex of sticking with the ingroup
is emphasized when the outgroup seems more drastically different, given that the subjects
in this experiment felt, in some way, threatened by the idea of being involved with the
members foreign to their land and religious beliefs.
Therefore, by appreciating the different responses elicited by priming subjects of
differing religious backgrounds with concepts of God and religion, taking into account
their willingness to aid the ingroup versus the outgroup, and by identifying the cause for
reduced cooperation between members of divergent national and religious identities,
there is enough evidence to suggest that there is a clear bias between the religious
ingroup and the outgroup. Although, in theory, most major world religions promote
prosociality, in reality they often attract many individuals who prefer to have their partys
best interest in mind, even if it means disregarding and, to a certain degree, distrusting the
outgroup simply because of a different religious label. We have learned however, that
this is not exclusive to religion, as people tend to favour the group that most closely
resembles their own in a subconscious evolutionary attempt to provide for themselves
and each other more effectively. Sometimes, however, Jesus cant take the wheel, but
someone else can, and you have to trust that person, regardless his or her background, to
do so.

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