ingroup outgroup
Definition
Ingroup outgroup refers to the psychological distinction between the group one belongs to and groups one does not, a distinction that shapes how transgressions by leaders and members are evaluated and forgiven. In research on the 2024 UK general election, voters across four major parties were significantly more willing to forgive trust violations committed by their own party leader than by leaders of rival parties, producing a large ingroup bias effect (partial eta-squared = .26). Pre-election trust predicted greater forgiveness of outgroup leaders but showed no significant relationship with forgiveness of ingroup leaders, indicating that ingroup leniency operates through identity maintenance pressures rather than through assessments of genuine trustworthiness. National identification, conceived as a superordinate identity encompassing both ingroup and outgroup, was positively associated with forgiveness of outgroup leaders, whereas party identification was negatively associated with it.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
Related Terms
- leadership (1 shared article)
- forgiveness (1 shared article)
- transgression credit (1 shared article)
- trust violation (1 shared article)
Applications
Ingroup Outgroup and Transgression Credit
Transgression credit is the willingness to forgive deviant leadership, and it is distributed asymmetrically along ingroup and outgroup lines. Voters in the 2024 UK election consistently granted transgression credit to their own party leaders, forgiving them significantly more than outgroup leaders, with this leniency extending across Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, and Reform UK supporters alike. The one exception was Reform UK's Nigel Farage, whose anti-establishment positioning appeared to limit the post-election forgiveness typically conferred on ingroup leaders.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
Ingroup Outgroup and Party Identification
Stronger party identification was negatively associated with forgiveness of outgroup leaders, consistent with the expectation that high identifiers apply greater scrutiny to those outside their group. This pattern, observed in the longitudinal 2024 UK election study, contrasts with the role of superordinate national identification, which worked in the opposite direction by increasing outgroup leader forgiveness.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
Ingroup Outgroup and Political Trust
Pre-election trust functioned as a predictor of outgroup leader forgiveness (β = .35 to .38, p < .001) but had no statistically significant relationship with ingroup leader forgiveness (β = .02, p = .698). This asymmetry suggests that when evaluating one's own leader, identity-based pressures override the trust-as-buffer mechanism that governs judgments of outgroup leaders.
Sources: Lalot & Abrams (2025)
