Over a number of
postings, this blog has shared with readers the thoughts of various writers on
those factors that contribute to the existence and strength of tribal thinking. The purpose has been to shed
light for the benefit of civics educators and other interested parties of the
detrimental effects a polarized political landscape has on the promotion of
good citizenship. This posting continues
that effort. It attempts to turn the
attention of readers to a related natural, psychological tendency humans
have.
It
turns out, humans have a strong natural bias that encourages tribalism. An early writer who presented a cogent
argument regarding this human disposition is cognitive linguist, George Lakoff.[1] He points out that it is natural and
functional for people to conceptualize – that is, to form categories – in their
attempts to make sense of reality.
Without that ability, the mind would be overcome by all the factual bits
of information a person encounters.
Categorizing
allows one to make “information boxes” in which perceived information can be
organized. But following the tradition
set down by Aristotle, people seek definite definitions for those categories or
concepts, and this is problematic. Why? Reality is not that conducive to being
defined in such a definite way or to such a definite degree. Lakoff, in effect, complains that this
practice leads to thinking and speaking pattern that assumes sharp distinctions
within and among the meanings of those categories and usually those
distinctions are not justified.
The
problem is that reality is simply not so simple. And no area of interest is this truer than
when one considers human behaviors, roles, expectations, attitudes, knowledge,
or values. In previous postings, this
blog has argued that the inability of the social sciences to replicate the
successes of the natural sciences has to do with the number of variables
affecting human behavior. One of those
postings made the comparison to trying to predict the weather.
Adding
to the number of factors involved is the practical limitation posed by this
overwhelming challenge to define those factors, variables, or concepts – what
do those boxes mean? Take any category,
say one dealing with roles, and see if one can clearly, unambiguously define
it? For example, “boss” or “manager” can
be simply defined as one who supervises those under his/her authoritative
responsibility. But can a boss be a
mentor, a father/mother figure, a friend, an enemy, a rival, or ride to work?
And
as that person fulfills one or more of these functions, does that affect
his/her bossing behavior? Add to that
the methodological practice in the sciences to reduce analysis of those
variables under study, one can see how this abstraction can be problematic.
[Idealizations] are never visible in
pure form, but are no less real for all that.
No one has ever actually sighted a triangle without thickness, a
frictionless plane, a point mass, an ideal gas, or an infinite, randomly
interbreeding population. That is not
because they are useless figments but because they are masked by the complexity
and finiteness of the world and by many layers of noise. The concept of “mother” [or “boss”] is
perfectly well defined within a number of idealized theories.[2]
So, as one can see, this
ailment hinders all sciences and is part and parcel of reductionism.
Of course, this is not an argument to do away with
scientific methods or conceptualizing, but to hold them with some reservation
or nuance. And further, short of the
higher standards of scientific thinking, in everyday thinking that people
practice, this problem is further magnified.
That is, the human tendency to put things – really ideas of things –
into boxes has its shortcomings especially as humans tend to fall in love with
those boxes. Afterall, that’s how they
see things.
On
another level, one can call them stereotypes and those can be based on a
variety of types. Of most relevance to
the topic of polarization is racism, but there are other types. There is sexism, xenophobia, agism, and now
there is even “maskism.” Oh, if one
wears a mask during the pandemic, one must be a Commie. This tendency feeds the beliefs underlying
the motivational forces that leads one to be on one side of the polarizing
divide or the other.
Steven
Pinker identifies this stereotyping as a “bug” in one’s cognitive or mental
software. And here is a common line of
thinking that bolsters the unreasonable results that such thinking generates. One might observe a correlation – when X
happens, Y happens – and, therefore, either X causes Y or the other way around.
Yes,
there can even be statistical verification for the results that a stereotype
promotes. Negative examples of this can
be cited, but to make the point, a positive example is better. It turns out that people from high income
families are much more likely to attain higher educational degrees.[3] X can be income and Y can be education. Therefore, being well-off causes a person to
develop those attributes that lead to acquiring higher levels of education.
Is
one justified to form the conclusion that since Mr. X is from a higher income
family, he, therefore, will attain a higher degree? No, that would be unreasonable (yet
rational). It is attributing a group
characteristic to an individual. It also
conflates various factors that interact to cause the cited result that might
not exist in a person or a subgroup within the overall population of those who
represent one or the other factor or both.
Now,
one can apply these unreasonable qualities to any stereotype and if one
considers the above nuances, ignoring them can generate beliefs that have led
to tragic consequences. If one reviews
the arguments of hate groups, this is the type of thinking that leads them to
believe in the negative characteristics they attribute to minorities and
further are used to justify their hateful activities usually aimed at
individuals. It undermines swaths of
people from being able to be accorded their rightful level of integrity.
On
this point, Pinker writes,
But sadly, some stereotypes may be
based on good statistics about real people. … Ordinary people’s estimates of
these differences are fairly accurate, and in some cases, people with more
contact with a minority group … have more pessimistic, and unfortunately more
accurate, estimates of the frequency of negative traits such as illegitimacy
and welfare dependency. … [A]ctuarially sound but morally repugnant decisions
about individual cases [are made]. This
behavior is racist [for example] not because it is irrational (in the sense of
statistically inaccurate) but because it flouts the moral principle that it is
wrong to judge an individual using the statistics of a racial or ethnic group.[4]
And more than likely, the
true causes of any positive or negative attributes are misidentified by using
the most obvious correlations. Wealth,
in itself, does not “cause” intellectual prowess, but it does afford the
attaining of those factors that do. Race
or foreign ethnicity does not cause crime, but poverty and its related
conditions do and unfortunately too many members of minority groups are denied
the opportunities that lead to acquiring higher income levels.
So, in sum, humans tend to categorize – it makes life
easier, at least in the immediate situation.
Unfortunately, these categories tend to be poorly defined. People also grow emotionally attached to
those categories especially if they are attained during formative years and are
associated with other symbolic elements of one’s life like family, ethnic
group, geographic area, educational institutions, sports teams, etc.
Using those categories, in the form of concepts or factors
and variables, one can form cause and effect relationships, but since they tend
to be poorly defined, they also are the source of poor theorizing, i.e.,
inaccurate cause and effect statements.
And even if there is statistical verification of some correlational
relationship, one can be led to inaccurate conclusions that promote
unjustifiable treatment of fellow Americans or of foreign populations,
especially as the relationships are applied to individuals and subgroups.
[1]
George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, IL, 1987).
[2]
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New
York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company,
1997), 312 (Kindle version).
[3]
Nick Morrison, “Higher Education Gap between Rich and Poor Reaches 10-Year
High,” Forbes (December 17, 2019), accessed August 6, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2019/12/17/higher-education-gap-between-rich-and-poor-reaches-10-year-high/#6c8b09fc749a
.
[4]
Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, 313
(emphasis in the original).
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