by mike_esspe on 6/14/14, 5:33 AM with 47 comments
by chipsy on 6/14/14, 6:43 AM
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.
by tokenadult on 6/14/14, 12:40 PM
[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/html/Mindwise...
by Sharlin on 6/14/14, 7:42 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ingroup_identity
And a couple of interesting experiments:
by chrononaut on 6/14/14, 6:29 AM
by secfirstmd on 6/14/14, 11:30 AM
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.
by shurcooL on 6/14/14, 7:24 AM
We're on the same team.
by Houshalter on 6/14/14, 12:54 PM
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.
by pistle on 6/15/14, 3:35 AM
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.
I want waffles...
by pygy_ on 6/14/14, 1:51 PM
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.full
# Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism
## Abstract
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.
by forgingahead on 6/15/14, 6:49 AM
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.
by rasz_pl on 6/14/14, 7:20 PM
"The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight"
http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymm...
by GazNewt on 6/14/14, 10:10 AM
by dang on 6/14/14, 6:14 AM
by interstitial on 6/14/14, 4:53 PM
by dingdangdong on 6/14/14, 12:19 PM
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.