In-Groups, Out-Groups and Middle-Groups
In China and the United States 

L. J. Allred, R..C. Chia, K. L. Wuensch, J.J. Ren
East Carolina University

D. M. Miao
The Fourth Military Medical University, Xian, China

Introduction

     There is a short history of about 30 years of using scientific methods to study the psychological aspects of Chinese. Consequently, not much is known, and what is known usually applies to Chinese as a group. In other words, we know more about the global, cultural characteristics of Chinese than we do about their individual psychological characteristics. More recently there have been some attempts to examine the finer differences both among Chinese, and between Chinese and Americans. For example, Ho & Chiu (1994) found that “...overall Chinese culture is indeed more collectivist than individualist. However, within Chinese culture both individualist and collectivist values are endorsed...” (p. 154). Their study demonstrated that a Chinese individualist or collectivist orientation depends on the relationship the person has with other people, and cannot be predicted from global cultural attitudes.
     Chia, Cheng & Chuang (1998) pointed out that while Chinese are more externally oriented than Americans, the Chinese sense of internal control has multiple sources rather than the single source of “self” for westerners. Even close in-group members outside of the self are viewed as sources of external control in the western perspective, but they may be sources of indirect internal control for Chinese. While internality and externality are two poles on the same dimension and represent a zero sum game for westerners, they may operate as independent sources of internal control for Chinese and not be as a zero sum game.
     The current study is an attempt to delineate further the differences within the Chinese culture in social interactions with in-group and out-group members. Differences between Chinese and Americans in these social relationships are then examined.
     Both sociological and psychological studies have well documented that our social interactions with others depend on our relationships with them. Two layers of personal relationship, in-group and out-group, have been generally identified (Bogardus, 1950; Bond & Hewstone, 1988; Tajfel, 1981; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). The in-groups consist of those perceived to be part of “us” while the out-groups are perceived as “them,” and we are motivated to maintain more positive attitudes toward in-group members than toward out-group members. Universally, members of one’s immediate family belong to our in-group, and enemies, real or potential, are out-group members. However, the boundaries between in- and out-groups differ from culture to culture (Triandis, 1980).
     Different researchers have also suggested that the conceptualization and differentiation of in-group and out-group is affected by the degree of individualism or collectivism present in a culture (Bond, 1986; Bond & Hewstone, 1988; Hsu, 1988; Hui & Triandis, 1986; Triandis, 1986, 1995). We propose that the nature, the boundary, and the dynamics of in-group and out-group membership differ between Chinese and Americans. To better understand these dynamics, we propose adding a new concept of middle group. This is the group that exists between the in-group and out-group. Members in this middle group are not consistently perceived and treated as in- or out-group, but may move into either group as a function of the situation and/or culture. The implication of the earlier research of Triandis, Bontempo, Villareal, Asai & Lucca (1988) supports our concept of a middle group. These researchers stated that people from collectivist cultures do not necessarily treat those who are not in-group members as part of an out-group, thus implying a middle group. The concept of a middle group also appears in individualistic cultures. In the US, when one meets person A for the first time, A is not immediately categorized into an in-group or out-group, except in infrequent situations where people have strong pre-existing prejudice about some characteristic of A (e.g., race or gender). Person A is treated in a less categorizing manner; and only when one learns more about A does one develop a more positive or negative attitude toward A. This middle-of-the road approach extends beyond people we meet for the first time to people we are acquainted with but who do not play a significant role in our social lives (such as mail carriers, store clerks, bank tellers); they are clearly not part of our in-group, but we would not interact with them in the same way that we interact with individuals we identify as being out-group members. We have a less clearly defined attitude towards them; thus, there is a large middle group for Americans.
     Figure 1 represents our proposed differences between Chinese and Americans in the size of in-, middle-, and out-groups. The figure illustrates the relatively large middle group for Americans, with larger in- and out-groups for Chinese. In addition, the existence of multiple layers of in-group members is shown for Chinese. In the following section we will provide the rationale for three specific hypotheses: Compared to Americans, Chinese have 1) a larger in-group and a larger out-group; 2) a smaller middle group; and 3) more extreme responses toward in-group and out-group members.

Collectivist vs. Individualist Culture

     There is ample research to suggest that China is a collectivist culture and the United States is an individualist culture (Ho & Chiu, 1994; Hofstede, 1980; Hui & Triandis, 1986; Triandis, 1980). In a collectivist culture, one sees oneself as part of a larger self, or group. It is this in-group rather than the self, that is the root and center of one’s thinking, and the welfare of the in-group frequently takes precedence over one’s own (Triandis et al., 1985). We propose that the Chinese in-group includes several circles of individuals ranging from immediate family members, to cousins, and sometimes even to people from the same hometown. Furthermore, this pattern of social relationships among members of a Chinese in-group has attributes that are perpetual and invariant across situations. Among Chinese, the in-group is a harmonious, cooperative group, and members benefit from the close associations with each other, so it is desirable to have a larger in-group. As a result, one’s in-group is not limited to family and close friends. When there is no natural blood tie for an in-group relationship, Chinese may often give gifts and favors to create positive relationships in order to enlarge the in-group. Thus, the Chinese in-group tends to be large.
     From the Judeo-Christian perspective, human beings are created in the image of God, which has been argued to provide one basis for American individualism (Hill & Stuermann, 1961; Morris, 1972). One strives for independence and is responsible for his/her successes and failures, and individuality is encouraged and valued. From the western philosophical and psychological viewpoint of human nature, individual self-concept is more essential than group affiliation, personal goals are more important than group goals, and individual welfare is placed above the welfare of the group. Thus, the social world is less crucial to an individual’s sense of well being, resulting in a smaller in-group.

Lack of Formal System of Laws

   China has a continuous recorded history of almost 5,000 years; for all but the last 90 years China has been under autocratic imperialistic rule. Under this system of autocratic rule, edicts were issued by officials at all levels, from the emperor all the way down to local authorities, often at the whim of the rulers. While in some dynasties there was occasional public reference to laws, the great majority of the people would not actually know what the laws were. Whether, and how, the law was applied in a specific case depended on the person who was empowered to enforce the law, rather than an objective interpretation of the law; thus the people were dependent upon the law enforcer rather than the law itself. It became more important to know the person than to know the law. In addition, Confucian teaching holds a standard that is often above and beyond the minimum required by existing laws (Fang, 1980). When Confucian teaching is being followed, there simply may not be any need for a strong legal system. Since 1947 and 1949, Taiwan and China have respectively set up their own constitutions. For the first time, the laws have been made public to the entire countries. However, while the laws are in place on paper, they have not taken root in the mentality of the Chinese people. Personal relationships continue to interfere with actual implementation of law, often rendering the legal system to be inconsistent or untrustworthy. When the legal system does not work well, people feel law cannot guarantee their rights, and they continue to turn to in-group members for help and protection. The need for a large in-group therefore continues to be advantageous for individual Chinese (Chia, Allred, Long, & Fang, 1997; Yang, 1986). Ho (1998) also observed that Chinese have an obligation-preoccupied orientation while Americans have a rights-preoccupied orientation.
     The strength of the legal system is also one basis for the larger middle group for Americans. The foundation of the United States is her constitution. Persons born and raised in the US have a great respect for the basic individual rights guaranteed by the constitution and some belief that justice can be obtained through the legal system. While breakdowns of the legal system do occur, in general the average American believes that the legal system will protect his or her individual rights. There is then relatively little or no need to nurture a large personal in-group.

Lack of Resources

     China has always been a poor and rural country. In a traditional rural area, there must be strong solidarity within the village against outsiders in order to compete for limited resources. Chinese also have large family systems, and at times there must be alliances among some relatives against other relatives to compete for resources and affection. These sociological factors have the psychological effect of leading to a perception of “fei-yo-ji-di,” loosely translated as “anyone who is not my friend is my enemy.” As a result, Chinese tend to perceive many potential enemies. For Americans, the economical, environmental and sociological factors are different and competition for resources is reduced, so there is less systematic perception of friend vs. enemy. With a strong legal system and a strong economy, Americans can afford to interact with others in a neutral manner on the basis of rationality and law, without automatically characterizing someone as friend or enemy. Chinese, on the other hand, will usually determine whether a person is a potential in-group or out-group member before any meaningful interaction can take place, leading to a smaller and less stable neutral group than Americans.

Method

Participants
     Participants were 88 men and 65 women who were students at a national university in Xian, and 59 men and 96 women from a state university in eastern North Carolina. Their ages ranged from 18 to 25; all the Chinese were Han, and all Americans were Euro-Americans. The limits on age and race were set to obtain more homogeneous within-group samples. The absolute socioeconomic standard of Americans would be much higher than that of the Chinese. However, at the Chinese university, all tuition and living expenses are waived, thus students from all socio-economic levels can attend. The university in North Carolina has very low tuition, thus it also attracts students from all socio-economic levels. In this sense then, there is some comparability in the range of SES levels of our two samples.
Instruments
     In 1995, Chia developed a set of scenarios simultaneously in Chinese and English, which she called the Social Response Scale (Chia et al., 1997). Back translation was used to assure language appropriateness. The scale consists of 30 scenarios that describe social encounters with another person (including actual or perceived harm from the other person, helping others, requests for favors, etc.). The social encounters were designed to elicit positive or negative reactions to individuals on the basis of social relationship. For each scenario, five levels of relationship were identified (from close in-group members like siblings, through middle- group members like strangers, to distant out-group members or enemies, such as someone who mugged you last week). For example, consider the scenario that “someone ran into your car.” The reaction can range from very positive, such as, “I will consider this my unlucky day and pay for the repair myself,” to very negative, such as “I will ask for a large sum of money including damage to my mental health.” Reactions were scored from 1 (most positive) to 5 (most negative). The participant was asked to choose one of these five ordered reactions for each of the five levels of social relationship. Responses were then summed across scenarios for each of the five relationship levels. Thus, the scale yielded five subscores for each participant, with lower subscores indicating more positive reactions to persons in that relationship level.
Procedure
     Participants were recruited from psychology classes on the two campuses. They completed the Social Response Scale, as well as a survey asking for demographic information, using the appropriate language version. American students were given extra credit for a class, Chinese students were given small gifts, as is their customary way of recruiting participants.

Results

     Reliability coefficients for each scale for each culture are presented in Table 1. As can be seen, reliabilities are very good for both cultures, ranging from a low of .74 for the Second Cousin scale for Americans to .93 for the Potential Enemy scale for Americans.
     An analysis of variance was performed using culture (2), gender (2) and relationship (within-group, 5) as the classification variables, and the degree of positiveness/negativeness of the social responses as the criterion variable (see Table 2). A .05 criterion of significance was employed for all tests of significance. The only significant effects were due to relationship (h2 = .72), and the Relationship x Culture interaction (h2 = .004).
     Simple effects analysis showed that type of relationship significantly affected social responses for both American students, F (4, 612) = 787.81, ε = .389, p < .001, h2 = .73, and even more strongly for Chinese students, F (4, 604) = 1,222.35, ε = .558, p < .001,h2 = .80 . We also examined the simple effects of culture at each level of social relationship (See Table 3). The social response of Chinese participants was significantly more positive than that of American participants for both first kin (g = .3, a small to medium sized difference) and fellow townspersons (g = .72, a large difference). All other cultural comparisons fell short of statistical significance.

Discussion

     The largest effect we found in this study was the effect of level of social relationship. Regardless of culture, regardless of gender, there was a positive monotonic relationship between degree of positive response and closeness of social relationship. This was consistent with previous studies (Bogardus, 1950; Burnstein, Crandall, Kitayama, 1994; Ma & Leung, 1991; Naito, Ibusuki, Lin & Rhee, 1991). However, the fact that this one factor accounted for so much (75%) of the total variance was an infrequently seen surprise. In this respect, people from different cultures are more similar than different, and the more positive feeling toward closer members seems to be universal and gender-free.
     When we examine cultural differences on the third relationship (hometown folk), Chinese treated people in this category much more positively than Americans. This may mean that Americans do have more neutral attitudes toward this middle group, while Chinese would treat fellow townspersons as in-group members. In this sense, there seems to be support for our hypotheses that Chinese have a larger in-group (1) and that Americans have larger a middle-group (2). This finding is consistent with earlier studies that suggested that Chinese and Americans draw boundaries differently for in-group and out-group (Triandis, 1980).
     Although the cultural differences were for some relationships small, Chinese gave more positive ratings than Americans to groups 1, 2 and 3, but more negative ratings to groups 4 and 5. In other words, Chinese were more positive toward in-group members and more negative toward out-group members than Americans, suggesting that Chinese tend to have more intense emotions toward in-group and out-group members, supporting our third hypothesis.
     While the results indicated a tendency for Chinese to feel more negatively toward the fourth and fifth groups, the cultural differences were not statistically significant. One possible reason could be due to social norms that foster a specific type of response bias. Even if Chinese indeed “feel” more negatively toward out-group members, they may not state this in hypothetical situations on a survey. After all, the Confucian ideal is to be kind and tolerant, and Chinese have to put up that front. Furthermore, there may be a tendency for Chinese to avoid extremes, particularly negative extremes, when responding to questionnaires.
     In conclusion, our findings point to the universal nature of responding more altruistically to members of one’s in-group. Findings also provide some support for our hypothesis that Chinese tend to have both a larger in-group and out-group, i.e., they tend to look at social relationship in terms of either in-group or out-group. Furthermore, they have more intense positive and negative attitudes toward members of these groups. On the other hand, Americans have a larger middle-group, and have less intense attitudes toward members of in-group and out-group. In a world that is becoming more modernized, where global contacts are becoming inevitable, it would seem that Chinese cannot afford to divide most people into in-group and out-group members. For humans to act objectively, Chinese may need to get used to the “legal” system that guarantees a degree of fairness and justice, to develop more trust in non in-group members, and to expand their middle-group where more objectivity and rationale behavior are more likely to occur.

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Author Note

Linda Allred passed away in December of 2005 and is greatly missed by her colleagues. Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to Dr. Rosina Chia, Dept. of Psychology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858-4353, email ChiaRo@ECU.edu. A preliminary report on this research was presented at the National Technology and Social Science Conference, Las Vegas, NV, April, 2005.

Table 1.
Coefficient Alpha Reliability Coefficients by Relationship Level (Subscale) for Americans and Chinese.

Table 2.
Culture x Gender x Relationship ANOVA Summary Table.

Table 3.
Cultural Differences in Social Response at Each Level of Relationship.

Note: Lower means indicate a more positive social response. Hedges’ g is the standardized difference between cultures. Within-culture comparisons indicated that each mean was significantly different from adjacent means.
* p < .01

 

AMERICANS

CHINESE

Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of differences between Chinese and American in-groups,
middle-groups, and out-groups.