Out-group Homogeneity - Empirical Support

Empirical Support

In an experiment, researchers revealed that people of other races do seem to look more alike than members of one's own race. When white students were shown faces of a few white and a few black individuals, they later more accurately recognized white faces they had seen and often falsely recognized black faces not seen before. The opposite results were found when subjects consisted of black individuals.

Another example of this phenomenon comes from a study where researchers asked 90 sorority members to judge the degree of within-group similarity for their own and 2 other groups. It was found that every participant judged their own sorority members to be more dissimilar than the members of the other groups.

Read more about this topic:  Out-group Homogeneity

Famous quotes containing the words empirical and/or support:

    To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, about what is actual and observable.... It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature, by means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.
    Bas Van Fraassen (b. 1941)

    At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)