Those who make transgressions against their in-group sometimes make amends just by being antisocial towards out-groups
In-group obligation is shown by people feeling more need to make amends for transgressions against an Us than against a Them. For the former, people usually make amends to the wronged individual and act more prosocially to the group overall. But people often make in-group amends by being more antisocial to another group. Moreover, in such scenarios, the guiltier the person feels about their in-group violation, the worse they are to Thems.
Thus, sometimes you help Us by directly helping Us, sometimes by hurting Them. This raises a broad issue about in-group parochialism: is the goal that your group do well, or simply better than Them? If the former, maximizing absolute levels of in-group well-being is the goal, and the levels of rewards to Them is irrelevant; if the latter, the goal is maximizing the gap between Us and Them. Both occur. Doing better rather than doing well makes sense in zero-sum games where, say, only one team can win, and where winning with scores of 1–0, 10–0, and 10–9 are equivalent. Moreover, for sectarian sports fans, there is similar mesolimbic pathway activation when the home team wins or when a hated rival loses to a third party. This is schadenfreude, gloating, where their pain is your gain.
It’s problematic when non–zero sum games are viewed as zero-sum (winner-take-all). It’s not a great mind-set to think you’ve won World War III if afterward Us have two mud huts and three fire sticks and They have only one of each. A horrific version of this thinking occurred late during World War I, when the Allies knew they had more resources (i.e., soldiers) than Germany. Therefore, the British commander, Douglas Haig, declared a strategy of “ceaseless attrition,” where Britain went on the offensive, no matter how many of his men were killed—as long as the Germans lost at least as many. So in-group parochialism is often more concerned about Us beating Them than with Us simply doing well. This is the essence of tolerating inequality in the name of loyalty. Consistent with that, priming loyalty strengthens in-group favoritism and identification, while priming equality does the opposite.
References
- Sapolsky, Robert. (2017). Behave Chapter 11. Us Versus Them (p. 448). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Social Psychology / Sociology Status:☀️