{
  "id": "out-group.outside",
  "term": "out-group",
  "sense": "outside",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 16,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Those a collective self reads as outside its boundary, whose walls it does not keep.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "collective-self.shared",
      "read.information",
      "outside.spatial",
      "boundary.limit",
      "wall.range-end",
      "keep.maintenance"
    ],
    "interaction": "Once a collective self draws its boundary, it keeps up the walls of those inside and stops keeping those outside; the out-group is defined by that withdrawn maintenance as much as by any trait.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "exclusion as withdrawn maintenance",
      "a boundary that sets two groups at once"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "In Muzafer Sherif's 1954 Robbers Cave experiment, two groups of boys, the Rattlers and the Eagles, soon treated each other as enemies, raiding each other's cabins, and the Eagles burned the Rattlers' flag.",
      "domain": "psychology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "in-group.inside",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the other side of the same line"
    },
    {
      "id": "neglect.omission",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "neglect lets maintenance lapse; an out-group is never owed it"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "bharat-vs-india.names",
    "deep-state.hidden",
    "elite.few",
    "establishment.settled",
    "fifth-column.inside",
    "foreign-interference.outside",
    "heartland.core",
    "law-abiding-citizens.deserving",
    "north-south-divide.regional",
    "not-one-of-us.unlike",
    "one-percent.few",
    "ordinary-people.core",
    "our-way-of-life.pattern",
    "outsiders-coming-in.crossing",
    "real-people.narrowed",
    "second-class-citizens.lesser",
    "self-sufficient.autarkic",
    "silent-majority.unheard",
    "take-back-our-country.regain",
    "us-versus-them.split"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "out group",
    "out groups",
    "outgroup",
    "outgroups"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-29",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-out-group.outside"
}