Minimal Group Paradigm

The minimal group paradigm is an experimental procedure, introduced by Henri Tajfel and colleagues in 1971, that strips intergroup conflict down to its barest possible cause: mere categorization. Participants are sorted into two groups on a trivial or random basis (for example, an alleged preference for one painter over another, or a coin toss), never meet other members, gain nothing personally, and then allocate points between anonymous in-group and out-group members using structured reward matrices. The striking and repeatedly replicated finding is that people favor their own group even when the category is meaningless and favoritism brings them no material gain. The paradigm became the empirical cornerstone of social identity theory, demonstrating that the cognitive act of dividing the social world into 'us' and 'them' is itself sufficient to produce discrimination.