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

124 点作者 mike_esspe将近 11 年前

15 条评论

chipsy将近 11 年前

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.

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tokenadult将近 11 年前

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] <a href="http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/html/Mindwise.html" rel="nofollow">http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/html/Mindwise...</a>

Sharlin将近 11 年前

Some related concepts:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group_favoritism</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_conflict</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-group_homogeneity</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ingroup_identity" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_ingroup_identity</a>And a couple of interesting experiments:<a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/</a><a href="http://www.news.wisc.edu/598" rel="nofollow">http://www.news.wisc.edu/598</a>

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chrononaut将近 11 年前

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.[0] <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063669/" rel="nofollow">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1063669/</a>

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secfirstmd将近 11 年前

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.

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shurcooL将近 11 年前

This is why I like to consider myself to belong to the group of humans and dislike further specialization based on gender, where you're born, etc.We're on the same team.

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Houshalter将近 11 年前

The Robbers Cave Experiment is really interesting: <a href="http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/" rel="nofollow">http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/</a>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.

pistle将近 11 年前

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.<a href="http://foodporn.com" rel="nofollow">http://foodporn.com</a>I want waffles...

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pygy_将近 11 年前

tl;dr: oxytocin is a double-edged sword.<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.full" rel="nofollow">http://www.pnas.org/content/108/4/1262.full</a># Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism## AbstractHuman 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.

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forgingahead将近 11 年前

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.

rasz_pl将近 11 年前

"You Are Not So Smart" podcast had a whole episode about this subject (Robbers Cave Experiment):"The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight"<a href="http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymmetric-insight/" rel="nofollow">http://youarenotsosmart.com/2011/08/21/the-illusion-of-asymm...</a>

GazNewt将近 11 年前

You don't say

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dang将近 11 年前

Title changed to a bit of the first paragraph that appears more informative.

interstitial将近 11 年前

Belonging to HN makes people more likely to think they know everything and every solution is software based.

dingdangdong将近 11 年前

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.

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