Outgroup Bias Essay

In my very first lecture in C&E, I learned about the ingroup/outgroup bias that all humans experience. It was explained to me that all humans have a pre-conscious bias to classify other people into either an in-group, where they are accepted, or an out-group, where they aren’t. One of the most prevalent issues we humans classify other humans into either an in-group or out-group is based on race, simply because it is the most immediately recognizable trait of a person. One can’t look at a person and immediately deduce their sexual orientation, political ideology, or religion with the same accuracy that one can deduce their race. Traditionally, immigrants do not share the same race as most of the people of the country they are immigrating to,
which leads to immigrants being classified into many people’s outgroup because of their skin color. The purpose of this essay is to show that the discrepancy on views toward immigration and immigrants is because of fear of immigrants, a fear that is caused by who fits into a person’s in-group and out-group. The evolutionary purpose of an in-group/out-group bias is so that we could quickly identify friend from foe to avoid being eaten by a large predator.
The need for such a sense obviously no longer remains. Surely, many immigrant’s intentions can’t be to inflict harm on citizens of their host country. Yet, despite this, some believe that immigrants have negative intentions while some believe immigrants have positive intentions if both people have the same evolutionary impulses. I believe this is because, today, people seek out news and information that caters to their beliefs. Some may say that this is because of the lack of any impartial media sources but this is untrue, impartial and non-partisan media exists, it’s just that the news that people want to read speaks louder. If one is surrounded by information all his life that leads him to think a certain way, they can’t be blamed for thinking this way. For example, if someone is raised in the rural Midwest for all their life, and they live in a predominantly Caucasian town, and are bombarded with news about attacks by terrorists every day, that person will have been raised to believe that terrorists are the nail and banning them is the hammer. It isn’t their fault, it is because they weren’t shown all sides of the issues. The same could be said of liberal America as
well. In a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, they found that Americans have a “mostly positive or neutral views of Asian and European immigrants. But when it comes to those from Latin America, 58% of Republicans say these immigrants have had a mostly negative impact on society, compared with 23% of Democrats. There is a similar divide on views of Middle Eastern immigrants, with Republicans more than twice as likely as Democrats to view them negatively.” (Krogstad, Jens Manuel. "On views of immigrants, Americans largely split along party lines." Pew Research Center. N.p., 30 Sept. 2015. Web. 11 Feb. 2017.) While this may not prove that an implicit in-group/out-group bias is the cause of many Americans apprehensions about immigrants, it does show that the apprehensions are focused at particular groups of immigrants.