This is why "divide and conquer" is such an effective, commonplace strategy for an aspiring powermonger. Take two groups that are different but not in a remarked upon fashion. Invent a reason for the side that is not you to be a "them." Then organize your own side as an "us" combating the perceived injustice. Now you have an instant follower group at your command, ready to saddle up and commit heinous crimes for you. Explains all sorts of conflicts - ethnic, religious, ideological, nationalistic...
Now every time I see people who organize an "us", I start looking for the "them" to appear. And then I write off the leader as someone up to no good.
And what happens to those who are neither an "us" nor a "them"? They become a "me"? I prefer being a "me" but that also takes one down the path of possibly not believing in much and, following that logic, of becoming a cynic of all "us vs them" paradigms.
We can also look at the digital world and the "together, alone" concept. With globalization and pop culture, the internet and fewer and fewer entities in charge of our food/entertainment/etc, we become a "me similar to an us".
You don't always have the option of not picking a group, see "you're with us or against us". Each group will demand that you identify with them or treat you as a member of the other group.
No, they are the only people like that. They are the real bad guys here. You must just be a closet one of them! You know we can't trust anyone on their side. Ever!
That's not how divide and conquer works. Divide and conquer works by turning two groups against one another and not joining the fight. Instead, you wait for them do the most resource intensive damage first, then swoop in and conquer both once they've made each other sufficiently weak.
Seeing the discussion here, I'll recommend to the Hacker News readers who haven't heard about it yet the new book Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want,[1] which reviews research on topics like this and a lot of other mysteries of the human mind. It's a book based on current experimental research in psychology, but it has had some good editing to be a readable, interesting popular book that will reliably prompt you to think about aspects of your thinking you perhaps have not thought about recently. (I'm reading the book right now, which is why this comes to mind.) I think reading Mindwise just might help you understand yourself better, understand your significant other better, understand your co-workers better, and understand the group dynamics on Hacker News better, and anyway it's fun to read.
As old as the family, the village. Forgive Western bias, but here's Aristotle:
...that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the "tribeless, lawless, hearthless one," whom Homer denounces—the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war; he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.
More subtly: the notion of American "rugged individualism," and the group with which many (right-leaning) "indiviudalists" unironically self-identify.
On HN, I suspect there's high participation the group of rational, logical thinkers who consider themselves superior to the fears and insecurities that compel the typical "joiner."
On HN, I suspect there's high participation the group of rational, logical thinkers who consider themselves superior to the fears and insecurities that compel the typical "joiner."
> Four experiments confirmed that women's automatic in-group bias is remarkably stronger than men's and investigated explanations for this sex difference, derived from potential sources of implicit attitudes (L. A. Rudman, 2004).
This reminds me of the German-produced movie 'Die Welle', or 'The Wave'.[0] It demonstrates the creation and execution of some of these dynamics and how individuals may be susceptible to strong leaders even though their ideals and morals differ. It can be found on Netflix and I recommend it to anyone who found the article interesting.
I saw this in school as a 17 year old and it has never left me, I keep recommending this movie to people. Especially with the re-surgence of the nationalist movement in Europe (and elsewhere) this is as relevant as it ever was.
I second the film recommendation. It's a very well made, and very heavy film. In addition, to anyone hearing about it for the first time, it's based on the real life social experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave
Kind of an old story. Studied this year's ago in reference to terrorism. The concept of "ingroup love and outgroup hate" is a large part of terrorism radicalisation.
Also in many ways it's a big chunk of regular military training (though not as extreme) - from boot camp onwards it's "We hate platoon two, we hate battalion three, we hate non-infantry units etc and we are gonna beat them at XYZ."
I have often thought that when people give theories (many I agree with) on the reasons behind the long term drop in crime (better policing, abortion, removing lead paint from houses, change in availability of goods etc) one that they miss out is the change in social nature. My sense is that social connections are now weaker, with more individualism and less scope for in/out group love/hate thus less reason for group related violence - stabbing outside a bar, murder in retribution for attack on your ingroup etc.
That's a fascinating thought. Perhaps a slightly more optimistic view is not we are all individuals, but we start to see more and more people as in our tribe?
Perhaps we are more starting to see ourselves as humans?
Yes I also think this is a part of it. As the world becomes more internationalist and multi-cultural, it makes it harder to dehumanise please who we now have the chance to communicate with in an instant, read about, travel to their country etc
One of Hofstede's observations is that developed countries tend to be more individualistic, treating others as individuals rather than in-group or out-group. There are other correlated features on his individualism-collectivism dimension, such as the nature and purpose of education. The paper "Dimensionalizing Cultures" covers this in depth.
I don't think that tribalism is going away, but it is becoming less geographical. You used to be able to identify groups by location, but that is getting a lot more fractured by global communication networks.
This is also interesting from a defense perspective as it means that area-weapons get less effective when the people you are trying to attack are no longer conveniently located in one spot. Things like nukes, for instance, are completely ineffective if your target is scattered throughout another population. I suspect that one of the main outrages of war in the 21st century will be from saturating an area with close-quarter drones with instructions to target a section of a population, rather than the bombing of whole cities.
This reads as a non-sequitur to me. How is dehumanizing the enemy, which is an explicit aspect of military training, not a form of institutionalized outgroup hate?
I think you misread my comment. That is exactly what it is. I meant not as extreme in comparison to terrorism where it's perfectly acceptable to kill civilians etc.
It's just as extreme, and within the terms of the ethic being taught civilians are still fair game in military engagements. Even recent history has plenty of proof of this.
I agree. This is a mindset I had ingrained in me since childhood (probably as a result of watching too much of Capt. Picard).
It's funny how many things around you stop making sense with this mindset. Racism and patriotism obviously come to mind, but there are many, many more, including most of the political discourse on the local scale.
Your brain handles ingroup/outgroup behavior automatically. These are not conscious behavioral choices. As far as your brain is concerned, we're not on the same team.
How you choose to act given that understanding of your biology is of course up to you.
Yes and no. If you try to avoid labeling yourself as a "member of group X" you'll find that you can avoid a lot of ingroup/outgroup behavior situations. It isn't always easy or possible, but it's something striving for. Pick your groups wisely.
Interestingly enough, that's an opinion shared by a small group of people with similar likes and dislikes. The rest of humanity isn't on the same team as you.
Can you recall any instances of out-group violence committed by your tribe?
I have found the whole concept of "in-group vs out-group" to be very useful in explaining a great deal of human behavior. Humans evolved as hunter-gather tribes and all of our social instincts are from that. We have empathy for our friends and family, but it has an off switch labelled "enemy" or even "stranger". More than that, we are actually compelled to hate the out-group, or follow the in-group, far more than we would otherwise do.
The reason politics sucks is that everyone is trying to identify with a tribe more than they are rationally debating policies. The reason racism, ethnic conflicts, and even wars happen is we consider the other side a rival tribe that is a threat to us.
I'm not sure I see the article and study as saying much or discovering anything new.
The phenomena is obvious.
The motivations, at a rational, cognitive level are also obvious though.
Within a group, there is comfort, love, protection, identity, etc.
Others, outside the group, are a threat to all that endorphin-releasing meeting of needs and/or desires.
Of course there are physical (psycho-chemical) reinforcements to the behavior. I would have been surprised to NOT find brain activity of the sort.
We are social creatures through natural selection and, despite modernity's recontextualizing of what our clans look like, we should very well expect a very plastic ability of individuals to storm+norm+form groups which then are "protected" by degrading the power of those not in the group.
Would it be a terrible analogy to say this echo's the brain's feedback loop for sugary foods? We are wired to gorge on sugar when we find it. Food marketers apply psychological levers based around how that feedback loop is molded by our modern, human existence.
Human ethnocentrism—the tendency to view one's group as centrally important and superior to other groups—creates intergroup bias that fuels prejudice, xenophobia, and intergroup violence.
Grounded in the idea that ethnocentrism also facilitates within-group trust, cooperation, and coordination, we conjecture that ethnocentrism may be modulated by brain oxytocin, a peptide shown to promote cooperation among in-group members.
In double-blind, placebo-controlled designs, males self-administered oxytocin or placebo and privately performed computer-guided tasks to gauge different manifestations of ethnocentric in-group favoritism as well as out-group derogation.
Experiments 1 and 2 used the Implicit Association Test to assess in-group favoritism and out-group derogation.
Experiment 3 used the infrahumanization task to assess the extent to which humans ascribe secondary, uniquely human emotions to their in-group and to an out-group.
Experiments 4 and 5 confronted participants with the option to save the life of a larger collective by sacrificing one individual, nominated as in-group or as out-group.
Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation.
These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.
From an adaptivity point of view, makes sense that oxytocin would strengthen social bonds that exist for other reasons ("kin" or simacrula thereof), not create bonds with everyone.
The problem with articles like this is that it is so easy to make claims like this without explaining the reason for the converse, ie, the status quo. Why do people belong to groups in the first place?
Without mentioning that, we very easily end up in a place where we have an article espousing a world view ("Belonging to a group is bad") that is very appealing to a demographic (Hacker News readers) who are very susceptible to those views since their natural state is to mimic the implicit outcome of the article. Specifically, HN readers are generally engineers and programmers, who are more likely to be introverts, and so less likely to easily fit in with groups, so this article validates their existing status (proven by the comments -- "I'm enlightened! I don't belong to a group!")
There are very good benefits to being part of a group, not limited to things like containing the excesses and rampant desires of the individual, so it's a shame articles like this don't try to present a balanced viewpoint.
Luckily we have never seen that behaviour here on HN, hey?
I would say that the holier than thou, more righteous than thou, more PC than thou attitudes here on HN all fall foul of how the main core 'regulars' treat anyone else with a different point of view.
Want to know why they call it a hell-ban? Because HN is curating it's own view of hell and banning others help reinforce their own self made wallowing.
Are you open to the idea that "anyone else with a different point of view" might also be treating the "main core 'regulars'" on Hacker News as an outgroup that they don't really see as fellow human beings with thoughts and emotions and their own understanding of the world?
Now every time I see people who organize an "us", I start looking for the "them" to appear. And then I write off the leader as someone up to no good.