This Australian commercial for Toyota Corolla (found here) includes a homogenous, racialized out-group. More after the video:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ckb-wUHj9WU[/youtube]
The term “out-group homogeneity” refers to the way in which members of an in-group tend to overestimate the extent to which members of an out-group are all alike. I suppose we don’t know what good kitty’s friends look like (do they all look exactly like him?), but we certainly have the presentation of an out-group that is both categorically different from good kitty and homogeneously so.
I would also like to suggest that that out-group is racialized. They didn’t use just any kind of cat to represent bad kitties, but a dark-colored cat. (If I know my cats, the bad “guys” in this video are Russian Blues.)
Comments 4
Gwen — November 12, 2008
They're too dark to be Russian Blues--at least on my monitor, they look black, not smokey grey-ish.
Eleanor — November 12, 2008
I think this is the cutest thing I've ever seen, that's what I think.
Michelle — November 15, 2008
Since they are called "Ninja Cats," it seems more likely that the cats are black and wearing black because they are supposed to be Ninjas . . .
Sociological Images » The Minimal Group Paradigm — May 25, 2009
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