User:MKP24/In-group favoritism

Various neural correlates are impacted by group membership, which can shed light to the development of biases toward in-group members. The brain plays a critical role in how individuals classify themselves and others into groups based on personal attributes, as explained by social identity theory.

Research shows that the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) region displays increased activity when individuals engage in group categorization. This increased activity in this brain region is activated because people tend to focus on the positive qualities of their group. This increased brain activity has been linked to social identity which is a portion of one’s personality that comes from being a member of a specific group. This part of the brain is also activated when we think about personal qualities. People tend to want to feel good about themselves and base their personality on the groups they are part of. People then focus on the positives of their group which leads to people favoring their group and seeing it better than other groups. If people do this, then they will also feel good about themselves because they perceive themselves as being part of a high-status group.

More specifically, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex becomes active when individuals categorize themselves into groups with whom they already share prior experience with based on their race, ethnicity, or gender. This region of the brain is activated due to emotional social reasoning where self-referential processing leads individuals to view the in-group as closer to the self than the out-group. Emotional social reasoning is also significant with groups of prior experience because the categorizations have been developed over a longer duration leading to the development of emotions. Alternatively, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex is activated when individuals categorize themselves into groups with whom they have no prior experience such as randomly being divided into teams to compete in a task. In this case, individuals must use abstract social reasoning, a part of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, to form self-guided ideas for categorical identification. It is important to note that with newly formed groups, individuals do not have an emotional component which is why the ventral medial prefrontal cortex is not activated.