Case file
In-Group Favoritism
- Filed under
- Not Enough Meaning
- Also recorded as
- ingroup bias, ingroup preference
The charge
In-group favoritism is preferring, trusting, or rewarding people seen as part of your own group.
How it operates
Shared identity triggers warmth, reciprocity, and assumptions of competence that make standards uneven.
Logged incidents
- Incident 01
A manager staffs the best project with people from their old company.
- Incident 02
A VC favors founders from their own network or school.
- Incident 03
A hiring panel gives borderline insiders the benefit of the doubt.
What to watch for
Ask: Would I judge this person the same way if they were not one of us?
Recommended action
Use blind reviews, structured rubrics, and decision panels with diverse membership.
Known associates
- Out-Group Homogeneity BiasOut-group homogeneity bias is seeing people outside your group as more similar to each other than they really…
- Cross-Race EffectCross-race effect is the tendency to be worse at distinguishing faces of races one has had less experience…
- Halo EffectHalo effect is when one positive trait or first impression spills over into unrelated judgments about the…
- Cheerleader EffectCheerleader effect is the tendency for people to seem more attractive or appealing when seen in a group than…
- Positivity EffectPositivity effect is giving relatively more weight to positive information or memories than negative ones,…
- Not Invented HereNot invented here is rejecting outside ideas or solutions mainly because they came from outside the group.
Source of record