The minimal group paradigm (MGP) is a popular method of testing intergroup phenomena. Originally created to facilitate discovery of conditions necessary and sufficient to produce ingroup favoritism, early MGP results suggested that simply grouping people was sufficient to cause discrimination. More recent research has uncovered factors that cause MGP-based discrimination to disappear. The present experiment examined outgroup accountability as explicatory of these variations. It was found that requiring justification for allocations attenuated discrimination. Outgroup accountability-based attenuation was especially evident when the allocator was of majority (vs. minority) status, as expected on the basis of aversive racism considerations. Allocators of minority status tended to discriminate more when made accountable to the outgroup. Implications of these results for theories of social identity and aversive racism are discussed.
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