Baby showers, parties and other events are made up of people obviously. What is not so obvious however is how to foster team competitiveness.
Often times if you’re planning a baby shower or another similar type of event you would need a number of printable baby shower games.
These games are typical at baby showers, they serve to accentuate the theme of the event. For example, if the mother to be was having a monkey theme baby shower than she would probably have her guests play a game like “toss the bananas.”
Many baby shower hosts fall short here because they don’t know how to get people excited about the games. Plus, they are unaware how to make the guests feel united in their new teams. This is where a little understanding of social psychology can go a long way. Using one or two principles you can easily create an environment ideal for competitive games.
In Group Bias Effect
The in group bias is basically a phenomenon where people tend to favor one’s own group. This was most famously illustrated by Muzafer Sherif’s 1954 Robbers Cave Experiment. In this experiment he had two groups of 11-year-old boys separated from each other in summer camp.
During the time these two groups were separated they formed bonds and identified themselves with the group. The two groups of 11-year-old boys were abruptly brought together to play baseball. This further reinforced the bonds they had for their groups and the dislike they had for the other group.
As time went on in the summer camp and the number of encounters increased between the two groups aggression and hostility flared. This led to name-calling and pranks from both groups.
Applications in baby showers and similar events
For our purposes we don’t need the two groups to hate each other. We just want enough group identity so that the baby shower guests can be excited about the games they will play.
To do this we must foster in group bias. Let’s say for example we have a pink and brown baby shower theme. In this case, we would send out invitations letting the guests know what team they would be on in advance (pink or brown). On the day of the baby shower we give guests pink or brown T-shirts depending on their designated group.
You could also use pink or brown badges or hats. You can further create in group bias by separating the teams into male and female if you’re having a coed baby shower.
Ideally guests on the pink team should enter the baby shower venue in one location and guests on the brown team should enter the venue from a different location. We also want to assign each group a different song, for example we could use Cyndi Lauper’s “girls just want to have fun” for the pink team and the Rolling Stone’s “brown sugar” for the Brown team.
The really interesting thing is the game they play doesn’t matter. You can play anything you want and the groups will be super competitive because they all have been indoctrinated into their assigned teams.
For our baby shower event besides playing printable games we also played “put a diaper on the baby” relay race. This is where two teams compete blindfolded to attach a cloth diaper with pins onto a balloon without popping it.
The teams were exceptionally aggressive at playing the game and they worked very hard to make sure they won. Since the group indoctrination period was not very long they did not have any hostile feelings towards each other.
After we finished playing the games we had everyone remove their group identifying T-shirts and explained what we did. Everyone enjoyed it and learned a lot from it.
Baby showers and beyond
As you can clearly see, this idea has many applications. From baby showers to world politics a lot can be learned about group identity and group indoctrination. The in group bias phenomenon can explain many of the world’s prejudices and hostile tendencies.
It is also a powerful tool that we can use in many situations from planning out a baby shower to helping resolve the world’s issues.
Author Bio: Sam Pasi studied the relationships between PTSD and the brain chemical cortisol in university. He also creates diaper cakes for latin baby showers and is a contributor for an authority baby shower site dealing with baby shower decoration ideas.