By: Brian Redmond, PhD
Right now, a lot of people are feeling under attack from others in the world because of our divided politics and world views. I’ve seen a lot of hateful and derogatory language online that I’m sure a lot of you have as well. In a conversation that I was having with a colleague it dawned on me as to why we have this “us” versus “them” mentality (in reality it is us versus us). People have the need to disassociate themselves from one side or the other to protect their own identities.
Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) states that people are part of groups. Those groups give them status and esteem. And the more that people gain status and esteem from the group the more likely they are to identify with the group and gain part of their own identity from that group. That social identity can in turn cause conflict between groups when there is competition over resources (psychological or physical). That leads to what are known to as in-groups and out-groups.
In-groups are groups that we perceive that we are a part of. If we see these groups as valuable, they provide us with some of our identity. Wearing one’s favorite sports team’s hat or clothing is a behavioral example of that social identity. This social identity in turn can cause us to be biased towards our groups. Ask any sports fan why their team is their favorite. What type of response did you get? I’m sure that it was completely objective (sarcasm, if my words didn’t already convey it). This is known as in-group bias. When that valuable group gives us esteem or statues, we are likely to favor members of the group. Tajfel and Turner (1979) found this in even arbitrarily set groups where members of a group rewarded each other more than competitors. But we also see this in the real world where alumni of a particular school are more likely to get hired by other alumni.
Out-groups on the other hand are groups that we don’t see ourselves as part of. They don’t technically provide us identity are the “foreigners”. Unlike in-groups where we get a lot of information about the members and the group, we tend not to gather a lot of information about our out-groups. We actually tend to lump all out-groups into one homogenous “foreigners” category and assume that they are worse people than the ones in our in-groups. And if there is any competition for resources, we are likely to produce conflict with the out-group. One form of that conflict is known as out-group derogation. This is making the other group look bad so that we ourselves look good. That enhances the esteem and status that our in-group can provide thereby strengthening our social identity.
Our identity really is a key experience to being human. It is so much of who we are that we rarely examine it. But we are motivated to protect it as protecting the identity is protecting the self the same what the physical conflict is protecting the self against and aggressor. It really is about psychological protection though. The flipside of this though is that when people see bad actions (such as the Sandusky scandal) they are motivated to go on the offensive (out-group derogation) as to throw a wall between themselves and that action. The attacks really are aimed at protecting one’s identity.
My take is that civility, discussion and education are the cures to this problem. With regards to in-groups and out-groups, the way that has been shown to reduce tension is to create shared goals between the groups. This allows for interaction and learning about each other to reach that goal. That in turn creates a larger in-group where everyone can understand each other better and get to the complexity of the problem to reach a mutually beneficial solution. In the past, this was why politicians and other leaders would use the language that targeted all Americans rather than their “base”.
So what we should be asking of our politicians and leaders is not how they are going to help “us” on our side but rather how they are going to help “all “Us” meaning all sides. In other words, how are they going prevent us versus us.
References
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In The social psychology of intergroup relations. W.G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.). Monterey, CA: Brooks-Cole.