When Your People Don’t Favor You: Ingroup Discrimination Through Multiple Lenses, Mechanisms, and Model

In this article, we argue that ingroup discrimination represents a salient experience for many racial and ethnic groups, and yet there are considerable theoretical and empirical gaps in research on this topic. We provide a theoretical exposition regarding the psychological mechanisms underlying ingroup discrimination, while also explicating the boundary conditions of these experiences. These boundary conditions include (1) the contexts in which such psychological mechanisms operate, (2) how ingroup discrimination is experienced and perceived through different lenses, (3) the factors that influence ingroup discrimination, (4) the different manifestations of ingroup discrimination, and (5) a model of ingroup discrimination dynamics. We propose a list of manifestations reflecting the intensity of ingroup discrimination, including but not limited to irritation, tension, overt discrimination, marginalization, rejection, hate, and other covert discrimination. We discuss how ingroup dynamics may further influence the intensity of ingroup discrimination. Further, we discuss various ways to apply our models within research across different fields. We emphasize that ingroup discrimination does not negate, but rather complements, the presence of ingroup cohesion or empathy. These two sides of ingroup relations should not be measured on a unidimensional scale and are not necessarily opposing ends of a single continuum.