Outgroup favoritism is a social psychological construct intended to capture why some socially disadvantaged groups will express favorable attitudes (and even preferences) toward social, cultural, or ethnic groups other than their own. Considered by many psychologists as part of a variety of system-justifying motives, outgroup favoritism has been widely researched as a potential explanation for why groups—particularly those disadvantaged by the normative social hierarchy—are motivated to support, maintain, and preserve the status quo. Specifically, outgroup favoritism provides a contrast to the idea of ingroup favoritism, which proposes that individuals exhibit a preference for members of their own group over members of the outgroup.
Outgroup favoritism and system justification In a 1994 review of the existing literature on the ideas people employ to legitimize and support ideas, structures, and behaviors, psychologists John T. Jost and Mahzarin Banaji observed that the existing theories of ego-justification (i.e., the utilization of stereotypes as a means to protect the self) and group justification (i.e., the utilization of stereotypes to protect the status of a given social group) could not adequately explain why members of a given ingroup would express negative stereotypes about themselves, often times leveraging these in contexts that disadvantaged their own group. It was out of the attempt to explain the phenomena of outgroup favoritism that led to the development of what would later become system justification theory. According to Jost and Banaji, system justification theory is constructed around the notion that people have three basic needs: 1) a need for certainty and meaning, 2) a need for safety and security, and 3) a need for a shared reality (i.e., epistemic, existential, and relational needs). Taking inspiration from the body of work already examining how people justify their experiences to themselves on the individual and group levels, Jost and Banaji additionally proposed that people meet these three needs on a systemic level. Contrary to the long-standing idea that strong identification with the group on an individual level will generate the opposite (i.e., individuals are motivated to preserve a positive image of their own group), system justification theory is founded upon the idea that people meet their epistemic, existential, and relational needs on a systemic level, sometimes above and beyond the individual and group-levels. Conceptualized within a system justification theory framework, outgroup favoritism is best understood as an expression of how people are motivated to defend/preserve the status quo of a given system even when the normative ideologies and practices run counter to their own interests.
Proof of concept In the 2000-2020s research on this phenomenon tends to fall into three dominant streams. The first of these examines assessments of outgroup favoritism on the group attitude level. Work in this area commonly involves asking members of socially disadvantaged groups the extent to which they would support policies or structures that favor socially advantaged groups. Scholars have examined group-level expressions of out-group favoritism along dimensions ranging from political ideology to economic status to gender. For example, in one of the classic (albeit, somewhat debated) studies, Mark Hoffarth and John Jost analyzed two different samples of sexual minority participants to examine the relationship between implicit stereotypic attitudes about sexual minorities, political orientation, and support for same-sex marriage. Across two samples, researchers found a three-way interaction across the implicit association of sexual minorities with negative stereotypes, conservative political ideology, and support of same-sex marriage. Specifically, they found support for their original hypotheses that political conservatism is strongly associated with the endorsement of negative stereotypes on the implicit level and opposition to same-sex marriage, even amongst sexual minority groups. While the exact interpretation of these findings is still a topic of debate within the system justification literature, this study is one of the most widely cited within the academic community for demonstrating that even groups disadvantaged by the (in this case, legal) structures of the existing status quo will express and employ negative stereotypes about their own group and oppose policies that appear to contradict their own interests.
Proposed mechanisms and correlates The second predominant stream within the literature investigates the potential mechanisms and correlated constructs that might fuel the behaviors characteristic of outgroup-favoritism-based motivations. In this area, scholars have struggled to isolate the mechanisms behind outgroup favoritism specifically from those of system-justifying motives more broadly. Consequently, much of the literature in this area tends to focus on how outgroup favoritism interacts with other components of system justification theory such as negative self-stereotyping, depressed entitlement, and the role of individual beliefs.
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