Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group • Hacker News Board

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#21

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:02 PM UTC

jiggy2011 wrote: post #19

personlurking wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#22

Post by lifeisstillgood » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:11 PM UTC

secfirstmd wrote: post #20

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 t…

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?

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#23

Post by dingdangdong » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:19 PM UTC

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.

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#24

Post by Bulkington » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:24 PM UTC

Sharlin wrote: post #8

Some related concepts: 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: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/ http://www.news.wisc.edu/598

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.

Or, of course, the Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/

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."

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#25

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:40 PM UTC

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.

[1] http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/html/Mindwise...

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#26

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:42 PM UTC

dingdangdong wrote: post #23

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?

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#27

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 12:54 PM UTC

The Robbers Cave Experiment is really interesting: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/

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.

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#28

Post by lotsofmangos » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

secfirstmd wrote: post #20

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 t…

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.

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#29

Post by pygy_ » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 1:51 PM UTC

tl;dr: oxytocin is a double-edged sword.

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.

Re: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group

#30

Post by hythloday » Sat, Jun 14, 2014, 2:36 PM UTC

Bulkington wrote: post #24

Sharlin wrote: post #8

Some related concepts: 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: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/ http://www.news.wisc.edu/598

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…

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."

If this was irony, it was splendidly done.