Shankar Vedantam

So what type of abstract art they liked.

And these young people didn't know these artists at all.

And in fact, it didn't matter who they actually liked.

He just flipped a coin and gave them false feedback anyways.

And what he found is that the moment that you're part of a team or part of a group, you will give more money to members of your in-group and less money to the out-group, even if you never interact or meet those people, even if you never expect that they'll meet you.

And the thing he also found is that what people really care about is maximizing the difference in money they give to the in-group and out-group.

So they'll actually give in-group members less,

If it means giving out group members even way less.

Yes.

And this is something, you know, that you might be skeptical when you hear these results.

And I was too.

And then I ran studies like this, you know, in Canada and the U.S.

at many universities and online.

And I've seen this same pattern over and over again.

The moment that people are assigned to a team or a group, even though they often can know it's a coin flip that's determining this, means that they like those people more.

They want to be friends with them.

It shapes their automatic evaluations of those individuals.

And we ran a study where NYU students thought they were interacting in economic decisions with members of NYU, which is members of their own in-group, or Columbia, which is a high-status school across New York City.

And what they did was they would give more money to NYU students and Columbia students.

But what was even more interesting is when they saw NYU students win money, they actually had a brain response that suggested that they were feeling as if they had won the money.