Christian Piccolini and Shannon Martinez Before Leaving a Neo-Nazi Group
(Credit: Christian Piccolini)
Raped at 14 and feeling unaccepted at home, Shannon Martinez sought others as angry as she was. At 16 she found them in skinheads. “Wow, these are my people,” she recalled. “They always had each other’s backs and had a really sort of close-knit bond and friendship.” “We would hang racist literature, yelling racial epithets at people of color.” After several years of such acts, she had the good fortune to move in with a family who helped her gain the strength to leave the group. Today she volunteers with Life After Hate, an organization that helps people leave white supremacy behind, founded by Christian Piccolini, another neo-Nazi who also found the strength to change.
While hate groups are at the fringes of society, the desire to be part of a group is human. In our political lives groups provide social support, allow us to express our views, organize to bring about change and choose our leaders. They can advance democracy, but they can also threaten it.
Joining Groups is Natural
We’re social beings who like to connect with people like us. In the political world, powerful evidence for what psychologists call homophily exists not only in the way people join political movements but even in where they live. Author Bill Bishop (The Big Sort) demonstrated that in recent decades people have been moving to communities whose residents share their political orientation. This, he argues, is one reason Congressional districts have become less competitive, peopled largely by those sharing the same party preference.
Cognitive scientist Joshua Greene, in Moral Tribes, argues that while the first step in maturation is defining "me" as different than "you," we then form social groups with the "you's" we're most connected with. We differentiate these groups from everyone else, who become "thems". Anthropologist Robert Dunbar suggests the largest group we can get to know on a personal basis is about 150 people, the limit of our brain's capacity to manage social relationships. Beyond this limit, tribalism can result from how we relate to "them." In an intriguing study of the power of kinship, for example, subjects were asked whether they would save a person or a dog in the path of an onrushing bus. The closer in kinship, the more likely the person would be saved. For a sibling, only 1 percent saved the dog; for a distant cousin, 16 percent and for a foreigner 26 percent.
Oxytocin, dubbed the “love hormone”, is released in the brain to help form and sustain relationships that are part of “us.” As neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky notes (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst), it makes us more forgiving and charitable with those in our group. It also appears to suppress the fear response of the brain’s amygdala. Yet it can make us more distrusting when dealing with "them." When men in an experiment were asked to chose who they would put in a lifeboat with limited space, those given oxytocin were less likely to select those whose names sounded like they came from a foreign country.
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What’s the best group you ever belonged to and why was it so good?
The Joys and Dangers of Political Groups
Groups of people with ideas about political change have fostered much progress in America, but not all groups act for the public good. On November 4, 2020, William Stepanyan, who is Armenian-American, sent a text announcing he planned to go “hunting for [T]urks” because of what he said they’d done to Armenians. Feeling part of one group (Armenians) and treating people of Turkish descent as “them,” he drove to a family-owned restaurant, flung chairs at victims inside and shouted slurs about Turkish people. Four of the five victims were of Turkish descent. Several were injured and he was arrested on hate crime charges.
(Credit: Kelly Sikkerman - unsplash.com)
This “us” vs. “them” tendency in partisan politics can also be dangerous. In a 2019 survey, over 80 percent of Republicans and Democrats characterized members of the opposite party as "brainwashed" and "hateful." Less than a quarter said adherents of the other party were "honest," "reasonable" or "caring." In a July 2019 Pew Research poll, 62 percent agreed that "the ability of Democrats and Republicans to work together" is a "very big problem." As noted by legal scholar Cass Sunstein in #Republic, “[I]n 1960, just 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said that they would feel “displeased” if their child married outside their political party. By 2010, those numbers had reached 49 and 33 percent, respectively, far higher than the percentage of people who would be “displeased” if their child married someone with a different skin color.”
“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
― Minister Joseph Fort Newton
Such tribalism impedes reason. Yale’s Geoffrey Cohen explored how self-described liberals and conservatives reacted to two welfare policy proposals. One offered benefits much better and the other much worse than currently existed. Unsurprisingly, liberals preferred the more generous and conservatives the less generous option. Then, with new groups of partisans, he presented the same proposals but labeled the more generous one as Republican and the less generous one as Democratic. Conservatives preferred the more generous and liberals the less generous one, denying party preference impacted their decision, and each party’s adherents believed only the other would choose based on party loyalty.
As Jonathan Rauch notes in The Constitution of Knowledge, “partisan identification affects our memory, our unconscious judgments, even our perceptions.” It impacts where we get our news and how open we are to hearing “the other side.” The impact can be so marked that even objective evidence makes no difference. As late as 2016, 72 percent of Republicans still doubted whether Barack Obama was an American citizen, compared to 80 percent of Democrats who held no doubts.
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On what public issues do polls suggest Republicans and Democrats agree?
Unchecked, political groups pose dangers. The 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer reported 64 percent of Trump voters and 58 percent of Biden voters agreed that “the degree of political and ideological polarization in this country has gotten so extreme that I believe the U.S. is in the midst of a cold civil war.”
How do Groups Go Off the Rails?
Washington, D.C. Street Painted “Defund Police”
(Credit: Kayle Kaupanger - unsplash.com)
Some groups form intending to do bad things, but even groups of people with good intentions can end up doing things bad for democracy. Understanding how any group can go astray is essential to resist the pressure to go along with such groups.
Polarization: Following deaths of unarmed African Americans at the hands of police in 2020, protests began. Imagine a person who hears about these deaths, is not sure what to think but gets a Facebook video of George Floyd’s last moments as he was suffocated in police custody. Clicking “like” on the video signals Facebook’s algorithm to send more such content. Before long, the person is receiving many posts about suspected police brutality and decides to join a group supporting “defund the police.” Group members share more such content and gradually get more enraged. Street protests follow. While the goal of reducing needless deaths due to law enforcement is laudable, no one in the group is sharing or inviting input from police advocates or looking at the impact of their “defund” demands. Our imaginary person, originally uninformed and unclear, is now part of a polarized group, one that sees only one side of a complex issue.
Cass Sunstein has written extensively about group polarization. In politics, he notes several things can lead to this. As in the police example, when people lean to the right or left of center on an issue, even slightly, and then join a group of like-minded people, the information they get from group members (which rarely presents contrasting views) pushes them further to the extreme of their initial direction. Polarization also increases when members begin to know each other because people want to be liked and so avoid disagreements. Those who might offer a different view may leave the group (or get pushed out). Research by John Jost and colleagues finds that the emotional center of the brain gets activated as people keep getting evidence that confirms a pre-existing belief. The release of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with pleasure, then sparks the search for even more confirming evidence.
A group’s movement toward extreme positions, sometimes called the “risky shift” phenomenon, was observed in a 2005 study by David Schkade and colleagues of ten six-person groups asked to deliberate on three public issues such as “Should the United States sign an international treaty to control global warming?” Participants who identified as liberals or conservatives stated their opinion, anonymously, before and after 15 minutes of conversation with like-minded partisans. Results showed that both groups became more extreme in their views as a result of intragroup discussion.
Out-Group Bias: Polarization can lead to bias against outsiders. Sapolsky reports on two studies. In one, conducted at an English football (soccer) match, a confederate of the researcher slips in the stands, apparently hurting his ankle. If he wore the home team’s sweatshirt, he received more help than if he wore the opposing team’s jersey or a plain shirt. In the second study, morning commuters at train stations in predominantly white suburbs filled out questionnaires about their political views. At half the stations, a pair of young, modestly-dressed Mexicans appeared each morning for two weeks. They chatted quietly in Spanish then boarded the train. After the two weeks, the commuters filled out questionnaires again. Responses showed that commuters at the stations with Mexican passengers had become more supportive of decreasing legal immigration and making English the nation’s official language and less supportive of amnesty.
How Polarized Groups Make Thinking Mistakes
Polarized groups are prone to thinking flaws. Some of these include:
False Consensus Effect: Because contrary views and information are unwelcome in polarized groups, members may believe what they hear in the group is widely shared by all members. They go along even if they have doubts. The result: everyone assumes a consensus that doesn’t exist.
Social Loafing: Being part of a group can lead some to let others do their thinking. Robert McNamara, the new Secretary of Defense at the start of the Kennedy Administration, admitted he let this happen when the disastrous (Bay of Pigs) decision to invade Cuba was made in early 1961: “The truth is I did not understand the plan very well and did not know the facts. I had let myself become a passive bystander.”
Groupthink: The Bay of Pigs invasion and, many argue, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 were products of groupthink: the tendency of groups to exert powerful pressure to close off thinking and disagreement. Described by psychologist Irving Janis, the symptoms of groupthink (see below) are easier to spot from outside a group than inside it.
Decreased Openness to Change: When confirmed in our views, changing is difficult. In a 2016 study of political liberals by Jonas Kaplan and colleagues, participants were given political and nonpolitical statements, such as “abortion should be legal” and “taking a daily vitamin improves one’s health.” Participants who agreed with each statement were then given counterarguments. They had little trouble changing their minds on nonpolitical statements but refused doing so on political ones. Brain imaging revealed that the areas of the brain that deal with fear, disgust and self-image were more engaged for the latter.
Groups Exert Pressure on Members to Go Along
Group pressure can make it hard to disagree with or leave a group:
The Power of Authority: Group leaders can exert considerable power on members to follow their lead. In response to the COVID pandemic, public health officials urged Americans to wear face masks. Yet public opinion polls showed a sharp partisan divide in support for this. In a July 2020 poll, 86 percent of Democrats said they wear a mask “every time” when in public, compared to only 48 percent of Republicans. President Trump had been very vocal on the subject, refusing to urge Americans to wear masks with such comments as “So it’s voluntary; you don’t have to do it. They [the CDC] suggested for a period of time. But this is voluntary. I don’t think I’m going to be doing it.”
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Why do people join cults and follow their leaders?
In 1960s studies by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram he found that a man wearing a white lab coat (the sign of authority) could get a subject in an experiment to administer an increasing series of what he thought were electric shocks, up to 450 volts, to another person who made mistakes in a learning task. The “authority figure” simply said “The experiment requires you must continue” when the subject expressed concern about the pain he was causing.
Line Comparison Task in Solomon Asch Experiment
(Credit: Wikipedia.com)
The Pressure to Conform: In 1951, psychologist Solomon Asch put eight participants in a room and asked them to pick from a choice of three lines the one whose length matched a given line (see above). Unknown to the test subject, the other seven participants were confederates of Asch. They spoke first, and all picked the same wrong line. What would the test subject do when confronted by the unanimous consensus of others? In 37 percent of the trials, participants conformed to the majority's incorrect judgment. Debriefed later and seeing their mistakes, many participants blamed themselves rather than the pressure to conform. A contemporary experiment by Gregory Berns and colleagues, using brain scans, concluded that the perceptual areas of the brain are activated under group conformity – people go along because they actually come to perceive what the group does.
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” ― John F. Kennedy
Harvard scholar Cass Sunstein analyzed decisions of three-judge appeals court panels hearing cases in such areas as affirmative action, sexual harassment and disability discrimination. He found that whether judges were appointed by a Democratic or Republican president, they were swayed by the ideological position of the other two judges. For example, a judge appointed by a Republican was more conservative if the other two judges were also Republican but more liberal when the other two judges were appointed by Democrats. The reverse was also true.
(Credit: Cass Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent, p. 175)
The Fear of Ostracism: A clue to where the pressure to conform comes from appears in the work of social neuroscientist Naomi Eisenberger. She had participants play "cyberball," a computer game in which three people toss a ball to each other. The subject sat in front of a computer screen and was told two others were doing the same in other rooms. The "two others" was actually a computer program. For a while, the ball got tossed among all three, but then the subject was excluded. Using fMRI scans, she found brain regions associated with physical pain and disgust were activated when they were excluded from the ball toss. People whose status in a group is threatened feel the pain of social ostracism. No one wants to be excluded from a group they’ve joined – and that’s why they often literally feel “it hurts” to be left out.
So What? Now What?
Thinking citizens must avoid these group thinking traps:
Group polarization: moving toward extreme positions as members share information
False consensus effect: assuming everyone in the group agrees without checking
Social Loafing: letting others in a group do our thinking for us
Groupthink: thinking and disagreement are closed off by group pressure
Conformity pressure: going along because we don’t want to buck the group
Status pressure: choosing to go along for fear of being ostracized
In-group vs. out-group bias: favoring “us” over “them” in how we think and act
Several action steps can reduce pressures to go along with a group:
Avoid group polarization and groupthink: On the political left and right, many groups consist of people in “echo chambers.” They reinforce each other and never get or want outside views. Such closed-minded groups slide into groupthink if they become overconfident of their correctness and intolerant of dissent even from within.
An experiment by Samuel Sommers demonstrated the power of more diverse and open-minded group dynamics. Two groups were asked to be a jury in deliberating the guilt or innocence of a black man accused of sexual abuse. Each group watched a 30-minute film of the actual courtroom proceedings and was asked to reach a verdict. One group had six all white and the other had four white and two black jurors. The diverse jury, compared to the all-white jury, deliberated longer, discussed more case facts, made fewer inaccurate statements and its members were less confident they were right.
Use questions like these to assess whether your group is in danger of polarization and groupthink. A “no” answer should give you pause. Does the group:
o Have members that reflect the demographic, issue and experience diversity needed to do its work?
o Examine and invite a variety of information and views, including from its opponents?
o Listen carefully and acknowledge the contributions of members who differ from the majority opinion?
o Encourage all members to visibly contribute – to avoid social loafing?
o Test its perceptions and assumptions and revisit its conclusions from time to time?
o Test whether the prevailing view of the group is shared by every member - by polling each member individually not just asking “does everyone agree?” – to avoid false consensus?
o Generate and consider multiple ways to proceed?
o Avoid premature closure on its conclusions and action plans?
Avoid the pressure to conform: “Everyone else agrees!” is a common refrain to suppress dissent. But an experiment by Christine Schroeder and Deborah Prentice with Princeton University students suggests that perceptions that everyone else agrees may be wrong. Freshmen were divided into two groups for a discussion about campus alcohol practices. Each group watched a short video showing typical scenes of drinking on campus. Residential Advisors then facilitated discussions. In one group, students talked about how they might individually handle drinking situations. The other group was first told about pluralistic ignorance – the situation in which individuals would reject a norm but go along with it because they think everyone else does. Then they also had a discussion. Pre-post questionnaires after some time had passed showed that those exposed to pluralistic ignorance - where evidence of conformity was questioned - reported drinking significantly less than the control group.
Solomon Asch found similar behavior in his study. When just one of his confederates gave a different answer about the correct matched line length, the study subject gave the correct answer, freed from the assumption that he was the only non-conformist.
Actions to avoid the pressure to conform include:
o Look for information about how those outside the group view the situation as a way to avoid assuming you’re the only one who thinks differently.
o Privately poll members of the group to see if pluralistic ignorance has taken hold. You may find you have allies sharing your own doubts.
o Delay committing to a group’s seeming consensus. Disagreeing with the group may foster fear of social ostracism. Yet Naomi Eisenberger found a delay enabled the logical part of the prefrontal cortex to weigh in, tamping down emotional hurt by putting things in perspective.
o Assume you will have to justify your decision to an independent person outside the group. How would you do so?
Avoiding “Us vs. Them” thinking: Greg Smith, a conservative, supporter of Donald Trump who believed COVID was intentionally released by China and Kouhyar Mostashfi, a liberal software engineer would never have approached each other across the partisan divide. Yet they participated in a project called Braver Angels which brings people like them together not to change their minds but to forge connections as Americans. “Had I not known [Greg] in the context of Braver Angels, I would not talk to him for five minutes in a million years,” Mostashfi said. “I love that man. I would protect that man,” Smith said. “We have just grown to accept each other for who we are.” Braver Angels uses two approaches. On involves just sharing and listening; the other is a form of structured debate. The Braver Angels pledge includes three principles: (1) “As individuals, we try to understand the other side’s point of view, even if we don’t agree with it;” (2) “In our communities, we engage those we disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together;” and (3) “In politics, we support principles that bring us together rather than divide us.”
Outside a formal program like Braver Angels, research offers steps we can take individually to decrease the “us” vs. them” behavior of polarized groups:
o Take the perspective of one of “them” – research shows that when we look at things from the perspective of an older person, age bias diminishes. Similarly, when men are asked to imagine a strong woman with positive characteristics, gender bias diminishes.
o Hold off acting on instinctive reactions. Princeton professor Susan Fiske found that the amygdala’s almost instantaneous subconscious emotional reaction to “them” can be overcome when we give the brain’s logical center time to over-ride the initial negative response.
o Avoid labels. Calling someone a “Far-Left Democrat” or “Far-Right Conservative” puts them in a box that tells us little about what that person actually thinks yet carries emotional baggage defining how we treat them.
o Find a shared core value and try to engage around it. In another version of the stumbling football fan experiment described above, people were asked first to write a short essay on how much they had in common with other soccer fans. In that case, 70 percent helped the stumbling fan who wore a jersey of the other team.
All of these action steps have one message in common: As a citizen dealing with public issues, you are the one that can and must control whether you go along with what a group asks you to believe and/or do. In Question #14, we’ll look at a related issue: do we need to accept and go along with what political ads ask of us?