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Why Us vs. Them Is Not Such a Bad Way to See the World
Two new books by psychologists explore the roots of group identity, arguing that it is natural and potentially useful — even in polarized times.
GOOD REASONABLE PEOPLE: The Psychology Behind America’s Dangerous Divide, by Keith Payne
TRIBAL: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together, by Michael Morris
When it comes to how our minds work, people have a lot in common, but instead of bringing us together, our shared traits are doing a remarkably effective job of tearing us apart.
That is the implication of two new books that are impeccably timed for this fractious election season. “Good Reasonable People,” by Keith Payne, and “Tribal,” by Michael Morris, explore the ubiquitous subject of political polarization through the lens of psychology and its connection to group identity. Payne is a social psychologist; Morris is a cultural psychologist. After reading their books, I wouldn’t be surprised if they consider the distinction to be crucial. Both Payne and Morris emphasize how much meaning and comfort we derive from our group identities, whether we consciously think in such terms or not.
It doesn’t take much for people to turn trivial differences into psychologically potent chasms between “us” and “them.” Payne cites a famous experiment by Henri Tajfel, a pioneering figure in social psychology, who found that his students heaped exorbitant significance onto a distinction as meaningless as whether they overestimated or underestimated the number of dots in a picture. The students started favoring the members of their “in group” and disparaging the members of the “out group.”
Payne says that he has repeatedly replicated the effect in his own classes: “Underestimators quickly assume that they are the realistic and cautious group, and hence smarter and better than the overestimators. Overestimators, on the other hand, assume that they are optimistic and positive people, and hence better than the dreary underestimators.”
No wonder, then, that disputes involving actual stakes can harden. Payne knows firsthand how political differences can feel unbridgeable, even (or especially) when we disagree profoundly with someone we love. Payne grew up in a large family in Kentucky. He now identifies as a “secular liberal college professor” but as a teenager laughed along to Rush Limbaugh making fun of feminists “since I didn’t know any feminists.” Payne’s tiny hometown of 400 people was “100 percent white.”
