Social and Critical Psychology

Minimal Group Allocation Laboratory

You will be sorted into an arbitrary category on the basis of nothing, and then asked to divide symbolic points between two anonymous strangers, six times. Afterwards you can run the same six choices in a world where your category already holds four times as much, and in one where it holds a quarter.

Fictional categories - Kestrels and Wrens exist only here, and the points buy nothing

Learning objective

By the end you should be able to say why choosing maximum difference over maximum ingroup gain is the finding that matters, and what an allocation pattern cannot explain.

About 25 minutes. Nothing you choose is saved or sent anywhere.

A caution before you start

The categories here are invented and empty. That is the design: it is what lets the paradigm ask whether categorisation alone is enough to produce differential allocation. It is also the reason the result cannot be lifted out of the laboratory. Real groups have histories, unequal starting positions, material interests and things that have actually been done to them, none of which is present when the categories are Kestrels and Wrens - and the third condition in this laboratory exists to make that absence visible rather than to fix it.

How to use this

Commit to an answer to the question below.
Answer the sorting question and be assigned to a category.
Make six allocations. Each row tells you exactly what each option gives to each person.
Change the world - your category ahead, or behind - and make the same six choices again.
Compare the three profiles, then judge the five claims.

This part needs JavaScript

The laboratory records your allocations and builds the strategy profile in your browser, so it cannot run with JavaScript switched off. The debrief and the limitations are readable without it.

Key terms

Minimal group: Groups formed on a basis with no history, no contact between them, and nothing at stake beyond the allocation itself.
Ingroup and outgroup: The group you were assigned to, and the other one. Here you never allocate anything to yourself.
Maximising the difference: Choosing the option that opens the largest gap between the groups, which is not always the option that gives your own group most.
Positive distinctiveness: Value drawn from one's group comparing favourably with another, rather than from what the group actually has.

First, the sorting

The classic paradigm sorts people on something trivial and then tells them the basis was trivial. So does this one.

Your allocation profile

The three worlds

For each starting position: the strategy profile and the gap between the two categories afterwards
Starting position	Fair	Joint total	Own group most	Largest gap	Gap afterwards

The finding is about difference, not about gain

If people simply wanted their own category to do well, they would take the option that gives it most. The reason the paradigm mattered is that a reliable minority does not: they take fewer points for their own side in order to be further ahead of the other. Nothing in self-interest explains that, because nobody gains anything - the allocator cannot allocate to themselves, the points buy nothing, and no one will ever know who decided what.

Positive distinctiveness

Social identity theory's account is that a category one belongs to becomes part of how one is placed in the world, and that placement is comparative: what a group is, is partly what it is rather than. Being ahead is therefore worth something that simply having more is not. That is a claim about the comparative structure of identity rather than about hostility, and the paradigm is evidence for it precisely because there is nothing else in the situation for the behaviour to be about.

Fairness is not defeated

In the original studies and almost certainly in your own profile, fairness is the single most-used strategy. The finding was never that people are biased rather than fair; it was that a pull towards differentiation shows up reliably even when categorisation is the only thing present. A demonstration in which everyone allocated unfairly would be a different and much less interesting result.

Where the third condition comes in

Choosing the largest gap when both categories start level creates an inequality. Choosing it when your category already holds four times as much maintains and widens one. The point-scoring is identical and the act is not, and no measure of allocation strategy will tell the two apart. That is the limit of the paradigm, not a criticism of it: it was designed to establish a minimum condition, and a minimum condition is not an explanation of anything that happens under maximum conditions.

What it does not reach

Real intergroup relations involve categories with histories, material interests, unequal access to institutions, and memories of what has been done. A Kestrel has none of these. The honest summary is narrow and still worth having: mere categorisation is sufficient to produce differential allocation, and therefore no account of discrimination that requires prior hostility, competition or contact can be complete. Sufficient for a laboratory effect is a long way from adequate to a society.

What this does not demonstrate

It does not explain prejudice. Prejudice involves beliefs, feelings, histories and institutions. This shows an allocation pattern between two empty categories, which is one narrow input to a much larger account.
It does not explain structural inequality. Inequalities in pay, housing, policing or health follow from arrangements that persist whatever any individual allocates. Nothing here bears on how those arrangements are produced or maintained.
Your own choices are not a measurement of you. Six allocations between two invented categories tell nobody anything about how you treat anybody. Nothing is stored, and the tool produces no score for any person.
The paradigm has been criticised. The response options constrain what can be expressed; participants may read the task as being about what the experimenter wants; and allocating in an otherwise empty situation may simply be the only way of doing anything at all. These are live arguments, not settled ones.
The three worlds are stipulated. Telling you that your category already holds 400 points is not the same as belonging to an advantaged group, which involves knowing why, for how long, and at whose expense.

First, a judgement

The laboratory

Six allocations, three worlds