Outgroup derogation
Also known as: Out-group derogation
Boosting your own group by putting another group down.
What it means
The tendency to evaluate, describe, and treat out-group members negatively, going beyond mere in-group favoritism to active disparagement of those outside the group. Whereas in-group bias often involves simply giving more to one's own group while remaining neutral toward others, derogation involves hostility, dehumanization, and the assignment of negative traits to the out-group. It is more likely under conditions of realistic or symbolic threat, intergroup competition, identity insecurity, and when group boundaries are made salient. The asymmetry between common in-group love and conditional out-group hate is an important finding, since the two are psychologically separable and not automatic partners. It is central to prejudice, discrimination, scapegoating, and intergroup violence.
Examples
A struggling group, feeling its status threatened, begins ascribing laziness and dishonesty to a rival group to shore up its own image.
Two schools sharing a bus route ignore each other for years, until the county final. Within a week the chants are no longer about football but about what sort of people go there.
Volunteers at a local charity give generously without a bad word for any other cause — until a rival is framed as taking 'our' funding, and the sneering about their motives starts within days.
First described in Tied to Sumner (1906) and Tajfel & Turner (1979).