We categorize people (Social categorization) to help us understand the social environment. We find out things about ourselves by knowing what categories we belong to. We define appropriate behavior by reference to the norms of groups we belong to, but you can only do this if you can tell who belongs to your group

Adoption of the identity of the group that has been categorized (Social identity)

Tajfel's aim was to investigate whether in-group discrimination would occur in a situation where the groups categorized using social categorization had just met.

To put the boys into groups, Tajfel created a pre experiment visual judgement where a cluster of dots were shown on the screen and they were told to count them. One group of boys were tould they over estimated and the other was told they under estimated.

64 School boys aged 14-15 from state schools in the UK. They all previously knew each other.

The boys were not told they were put into groups randomly, and the dot test was to deceive them.

The boys were asked to give rewards of real money to the other group, despite not knowing the identity of the boys. However, they were told whether the boy was an in-group participant or an out-group participant. They were able to choose the amount of money allocated to the boy.

Tajfel found that the large majority of boys gave more money to the members of their own groups than to members of the other group.

This study is not GENERALISABLE as the sample of the study is androcentric and ethnocentric, it is a sample of fully males from the UK. It does not fit the target audience and the results cannot be generalized to anyone outside the sample

This study is RELIABLE as it is a lab experiment, and the procedure of the experiment can be repeated.

This study can be APPLIED to real life situations, where groups favor their own over an opposite group, for example how the rich will only get richer and not choose to give money to poorer people.

This study is not VALID as the study is artificial, it does not reflect real life natural behavior's and therefore could create demand characteristics, the participants knowing that it is an experiment and changing their characteristics to what they believe may help the experiment, and the sample is ethnocentric, meaning there may be culture or race bias along with gender bias.

This study is not very ETHICAL as the participants were deceived about the grouping of the experiment.