Adam Grant Thinks Again
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You Can Discriminate Without Being Sexist or Racist

Adam Grant

Apr 28
8
22

Spoiler alert: if you’re a Survivor fan and you haven’t watched last night’s episode, read no further.

I don’t watch much reality TV, but I make a big exception for Survivor. I watched season 2 in college, my wife got me back into it years ago—and now it’s a family affair. (In the summer of 2020, when camp was cancelled due to COVID, we needed to find something to do. ANYTHING. Since Survivor was cancelled, we decided to play our own version at home. Our kids designed the immunity challenges, donned the gear, and even made their own fake idols. I experienced a new form of pride and joy when our 9-year-old blindsided me on her way to victory.)

On last night’s episode, we saw that the first two contestants voted out to join the jury were Black—and it looked like the other two Black players would be next to join them. When one of the women raised the possibility of bias, a white man defended himself: “I’m not racist!”

Bias doesn’t require hostility. Just as you can show gender bias without being sexist, you can show racial bias without being racist.

Psychologist Marilynn Brewer finds that the majority of discrimination stems not from outgroup hate, but from ingroup love. It’s basic homophily and similarity-attraction: we feel most at ease with people who are like us. You don’t have to be prejudiced against another group to bond more quickly with your own group.

Think about a boys’ club—say, when male executives invite their male mentees on a golf outing. Even if they’re not misogynists, they’re depriving women of the opportunity to network and learn. By favoring their ingroup, they’re disadvantaging the outgroup. If they won’t golf with women, they shouldn’t golf with men either. As psychologist Brian Lowery put it to me, “Providing benefits to people like you excludes people not like you.”

Ingroup favoritism is a form of nepotism. We often fail to recognize it as a bias, and the consequences can be devastating. In a classic simulation, the Nobel laureate economist Thomas Schelling demonstrated that if even some white people prefer to have next door neighbors who are also white, you can end up with a racially segregated neighborhood. It’s not prejudice against other races; it’s just favoritism toward their own. But it’s enough to deny a whole group access to the neighborhood.

That’s my hypothesis about what happened on Survivor. White contestants were in the majority, and however well-intentioned they were, similarity made it a little easier to trust their own group. Their alliances with Black players didn’t end up being quite as strong, and Black players ended up on the chopping block.

When someone suggests that you might be displaying bias, it doesn’t mean they’re accusing you of animosity against another tribe. They might just be implying that even if it’s inadvertent, you’re giving preference to your tribe. Ingroup favoritism exists in every society, and we’ve all been guilty of it. If you can’t see it, you won’t fix it.

The tribe has spoken.

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22 Comments

  • Marilyn E. Jess
    Favoritism, or in group love as you call it, is found in many places--especially in employment, where people hire people like them and exclude others who aren't. I call it unconscious bias. Jennifer Eberhardt's recent book, called Bias, is the best tre…
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    • 2w
  • Emily Elizabeth
    You can finally start to explore your ableism… (chances are if someone is sexist and/or racist they are also ableist)
    • 2w
  • Nancy Chorpenning
    Thank you for covering this! I, too, am a Survivor fan because of the incredible micro-behaviors exhibited among the contestants. Last night was brilliant, and I applaud the two women who found the courage to speak up and out. I was more intolerant of …
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    3
    • 2w
  • Scott McKenna
    At the merge, there were 4 African Americans, 3 Caucasian’s, two Latino Americans, 1 Asian American and 1 Middle Eastern American. Still trying to figure out how that is a white contestant majority? But hey, don’t let the facts get into the way of a…
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    4
    • 2w
  • Candace McFarlane
    Um.....duh.....I get discriminated against daily because of my tattoos and piercings, because I choose to wear my paganism proudly, because I'm bisexual, because of political preference....if you think the only way discrimination happens is race and g…
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    • 2w
  • Graeme Gourlay
    An insightful and well written article. I'll be referencing this in a number of situations I have. I hadn't thought about this matter from the "in-group love" perspective. It explains why discrimination does occur and not from an explicit desire to do so.
    • 2w
  • Raymond Ma
    I struggle with agony towards this dilemma. How do you build trustworthy bonds with others who don't resemble you but they're also facing the same struggle to trust you (if they're aware of group love bias)? What are some suggestions to test the water?
    • 2w
    • Edited
  • Lee Mcmillan
    sounds like Bs to me but hey racism and sexism is often rebranded as something else. Mainly to help alleviate guilt that a lot of people feel for being the way that they are. Hey you like giving special treatment and hanging out with people that look l…
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    • 2w
  • Matthew Marshall
    There is nothing wrong with this. People just naturally like being with those they have something in common. It is not prejudice or discrimination. It's just humans being human
    • 2w
  • Tim Stephens
    Interesting reference to the work of Schelling - same phenomenon happens on your windshield during rain: water beads up due to surface energy on the glass. Adding a surfactant, which likes both surfaces, spreads out the water. What might be a surfactant for humans?
    • 2w
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