Explanations
This bias was found to be unrelated to the number of group and non-group members individuals knew. One might think that people thought members of their own groups were more varied and different simply because they knew them better and thus have more information about ingroups, but this is actually not the case. The out-group homogeneity bias was found between groups such as "men" and "women" who obviously interact frequently
Elsewhere, this difference is attributed to differences in how people store or process in-group versus out-group information. However, this concept has been challenged due to some cases in which in-groups view themselves as homogeneous. Researchers have postulated that such an effect is present when viewing a group as homogeneous helps to promote in-group solidarity. Experiments on the topic found that in-group homogeneity is displayed when people who highly identify with a group are presented with stereotypical information about that group.
Read more about this topic: Out-group Homogeneity
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