Marilynn Brewer
Ohio State University
The earlier presentations by Dr. Panofsky and Dr. Drucker, with their emphasis on the global interdependence that we have created through technology, are important as a context for my discussion of human nature and individual psychology. At the end, I hope it will be clear why it is very important to bring together those two levels of analysis: the individual human nature and the social-technology conceptual frameworks.
I am not the kind of psychologist who deals with the psychology of lunatics. I am a psychologist who is interested in the normal, social psychological processes of normal human beings as social animals. Earlier, Dr. Panofsky raised the questions: how can it be that concern for national prestige can take precedence over concerns about the physical dangers of mass destruction, and what is it about us as individuals that makes that possible on a national level?
I will take this opportunity to go into a little personal intellectual history, including the influences that have set me on my course of research. Since I first started graduate work, the kind of social psychological issues that I have been interested in are represented by the concept of “ethnocentrism,” as it was coined by William Graham Sumner in his book Folkways in 1906. Embedded in Sumner’s discussions of ethnocentrism are a number of explicit ideas about human nature and social organization.
One is the idea that, universally, human beings are organized in group contexts in which there is a differentiation between the in-group and the out-group. This differentiation is characteristic of all human society, and all human beings recognize the distinction between the “us,” the me-group, the in-group, and the “them,” the out-group. A second embedded hypothesis is about the meaning of ethnocentrism, seeing the world in such a way that one’s own point of view in the in-group is seen as the correct reference point for evaluation of all other points of view.
Third, there is an assumed bipolarity here, a negative reciprocity between in-group attitudes, perceptions, and beliefs and the in-group perception of out-groups, such that positivity toward the in-group is accompanied by negativity toward out-groups. At least implicit in Sumner’s ideas of ethnocentrism is the concept that the stronger the in-group preference and positivity, the more negative the attitude toward out-groups. Sumner starts from the position that in-group and out-group attitudes are negatively related.
In the 1960s, social psychologist Donald Campbell and anthropologist Robert Levine took this point froms Sumner and launched a large crosscultural study. This study was designed to test and get some empirical verification of whether these principles were universal or whether there were disconfirming cases in societies coming from different contexts. This was a large, multicultural project that was done in cooperation with ethnographers and informants who could report on their societies prior to European contact. The study was designed to test this schematic of the ethnocentrism syndrome, the idea that there was indeed a distinction between in-groups and out-groups, that the “we” would be accompanied by positive evaluations of virtuousness, strength, trustworthiness, morality, and that the perception of out-groups would be the contrary.
This idea was put to the test in open-ended ethnographic interviews, with informants in groups from East and West Africa, New Guinea, northern Canada, Nepal, Tibet, and the Philippines. The idea was to get a diverse sampling of the stateless societies of the world. The results found evidence that our informants confirmed the concept of an in-group, that is, some kind of a bounded social unit that went beyond the face-to-face village. Apart from the face-to-face interactions that characterize a sense of local groupness, all these cultures had a symbolic identification with a larger social group that went beyond the face-to-face community. This in-group was distinguished from the symbolic representation of other groups.
Secondly, the positive side of in-group attitudes was well-founded in that the in-group relative to the out-group was perceived as more trustworthy, loyal, and cooperative; this kind of evaluating was universal. The universality of in-group positivity held up under a number of different kinds of tests.
But, contrary to the third principle, out-group negativity did not seem to be universal. Instead, the orientation toward out-groups varied from disinterest all the way through to intense hate. However, this variability has relatively little to do with how strong and cohesive and positive the in-group evaluation was. So in-group positivity did not seem necessarily correlated with extensive out-group hostility.
Being involved in field studies of ethnocentrism in graduate school was clearly a shaping force in focusing a career. I was also influenced by another development in social psychology that happened very close in time. As the ethnocentrism study was winding down, a social psychology research group in England was developing what came to be called the “minimal intergroup paradigm” or the “minimal intergroup situation.” In their laboratory, they demonstrated that merely categorizing—taking an otherwise homogeneous group of people, undifferentiated, and giving them some arbitrary distinction, some minimal distinction that was psychologically meaningful, some dichotomy in that context—that mere categorization itself was enough to set in motion, on a primitive level, many of the symptoms of ethnocentrism. In particular, they found a willingness to believe more positive things about members of one’s own group compared to members of the other category and the willingness to benefit members of one’s own group at the expense of members of the other category. This was all in the absence of any intragroup interaction and in the absence of any direct interpersonal knowledge of who were members of one’s own group and who were not. Simply the symbolic knowledge of the shared category identity was sufficient to produce psychological differentiation between individuals who shared a category identification and those who did not.
These minimal intergroup experiments gave rise to social identity theory as developed by Tajfeland Turner and the Bristol psychology group. I am not going to talk about social identity theory other than to use the concept of social identity. For me, the fascinating thing that came out of the minimal intergroup experiments was that the very different methodological approaches of field studies in cross-cultural contexts and laboratory experiments produced very similar findings. We are talking about the fundamental importance of social differentiation into categories, the psychological effects of the overlay of categorization of in-group/out-group membership, and the primacy of the motivation of in-group preference in guiding discrimination. From both experiments and our cross-cultural work, discrimination is driven at least in the first place by the desire to benefit in-group members, seen particularly in the preferencing of in-group members to those of the out-group, and not necessarily in the desire to harm the out-group.
In the early 1970s, these two factors led me to a career of studying the in-group side of ethnocentrism in intergroup behavior, including conflict and discrimination, we must first understand why and how individuals exhibit undue favoritism and loyalty to their own groups in the first place. In other words, why do we find ourselves so susceptible to group identification, defining ourselves in terms of group membership?
As I worked on these kinds of puzzles, I came to the conclusion that there were two steps needed to have a comprehensive theory of in-group formation and identification. First, we need to understand the functions that group formation and intergroup boundaries have served in our evolutionary history and survival as a species; second, we need to understand the psychological mechanisms at the individual level that motivate the same intergroup identification and differentiation.
Following the first step, and at this point I will be very speculative, it is important to recognize that group living represents the fundamental survival strategy that characterizes the human species. In the course of our evolutionary history, we have abandoned most of the physical characteristics and instincts that are required for successful survival and reproduction of individual organisms in favor of advantages that require cooperative interdependence with others in order to survive in a broad range of physical environments. In other words, as a species we have selected cooperation
rather than strength and social learning rather than instinct.
The result is that, as a species, human beings have obligatory interdependence. Interdependence and social exchange are not niceties that we can weigh the costs and benefits of, but rather for our long-term survival we must be willing to rely on others for information, aid, and shared resources, and we must be willing to give information and aid, and share resources, in order to survive. It is this willingness, not only to receive the cooperation of and benefits from others but also to give the same, that in a sense defines the limits of cooperative interdependence. It is like the classic prisoner’s dilemma, simply the decision whether or not to trust, to cooperate, whether to give a benefit to another under uncertain conditions of whether or not one will get cooperation or benefits in return. This dilemma extends back to the individual level where a decision not to trust dominates over the decision to trust. Yet, if everyone made that decision about the risk of cooperation and trust, the entire system would collapse without the benefits of trust and cooperation. Somehow, for the issue to be resolved, the individual calculus needs in some sense to take into account, or to have built in, a degree of altruistic concern for the benefits of others and for group welfare as a whole, in order for a group-living survival strategy to succeed. On the one hand, we have developed organized structures that require a built-in cooperative altruistic concern for others. But, on the other hand, indiscriminate cooperation is also not functional for these reasons. If obligatory interdependence is extended too far, if we are interdependent with any member of the species, the benefits of cooperation are spread thin, and individuals as a whole will find themselves giving more than receiving. This strategy also would be unlikely to support survival in the long run.
I am suggesting that the presence of group differentiation and clear group boundaries provides a compromise between individual selfishness and interpersonal sharing. This is a product of two competing survival mechanisms. In effect, defined in-groups are bounded communities of mutual obligation and trust, which define the boundaries of mutual cooperation. This limits the extent to which the benefits and the costs of cooperation can be expected.
So there is a kind of rational theoretical calculus here at the species level. But we have to go further to understand the psychological mechanisms that motivate the individual to support participation in the bounded community. This is where my own theories enter in. I propose, in my own theory of social identity, that social identification with specific bounded groups is the product of two opposing motivations in individual need systems.
We might graph the strength of a drive, the degree of activation of a need, against the dimension of self-categorization, or the extent to which one defines oneself as part of or as included in a larger unit than the individual self. Low inclusion implies a highly differentiated sense of self, in which one feels included only in the immediate family or something like that. Higher and higher levels of inclusion mean thinking of oneself as a part of larger and larger social groupings. We have a sensitivity, a monitoring system that keeps track of the extent to which we feel included in groups larger than ourselves. There is one motivational system where low inclusion and feeling differentiated and isolated sets up a high degree of anxiety, stress, and a seeking of change, assimilation, and immersion in larger groups. This is a uni-directional drive. The drive itself is for higher and higher degrees of inclusion, and activation of the need drops as feelings of inclusion extend farther beyond the self.
If this were the only drive to be accounted for, we would be in a sense a universal school of fish, where everyone would share immersion in the total human species. However, we have an opposing drive that operates in response to the same inclusiveness in an opposite direction, a drive that gets activated as inclusion and the “anonymity” of the individual become greater. At some point, the degree of inclusion and sense of the degree to which one is included kick in a need to seek independence, differentiation, and a more separate identity. This drive is also built-in for us.
Therefore, we have competing needs responding to the same cognitive representations of the self as a part of a group, and the idea of the theory is that identification with groups is the product of the dynamic equilibrium between these two needs. The two hold each other in check. As inclusiveness increases, the differentiation motive kicks in, creating a reaction of experiencing anxiety about being too immersed and of seeking greater individuation. But, as that differentiation increases, the need for inclusion is aroused, also experienced as a state of anxiety, a fear of exclusion and isolation, and a seeking for more assimilation.
In this theory there is an optimal point at which identification with or attaching one’s self to a distinctive group can meet both needs at the same time. The need for assimilation and inclusion is satisfied by being part of the particularly defined group, but the sense of differentiation is met by intergroup comparisons. Inclusion is satisfied by the in-group; differentiation is met by intergroup contrasts and comparisons. For groups to engage in this kind of social identification to find satisfaction, it is important that there are clear group boundaries that both define one’s inclusion and exclusion.
I want to emphasize that psychological equilibrium is determined by the match between the group rules of inclusion and exclusion and the relative strength of the particular individual’s needs for assimilation and differentiation. I emphasize that one cannot define groups themselves as “optimal.” Optimal social identity reflects a psychological equilibrium interacting with the properties of particular groups. However, some types of groups will be more likely than other groups to have the kinds of properties that make people feel fully included and yet clearly differentiated from others. No group identity is primordial in this model. Social identity is malleable. Groups at different levels of inclusiveness and degrees of boundedness can compete for member identification and loyalties and have complex foci.
I am not going to get to intergroup conflict here, but I hope to set the groundwork for making the discussion of conflict informed by psychology. To move on to the implications of the theory, when optimal identity is the key, the consequences for the individual—the activation of social identity—are a set of cognitive, motivational, and affective transformations of the self relative to others, bringing us to share a common social identity. This is a snapshot of social identity theory. The cognitive act of defining ourselves as sharing social identity is enough to engage motivational and affective consequences, all of which support and maintain mutual trust and cooperation.
Within the boundaries of the shared identity, the orientation is one of trust and cooperation, obligation to help and benefit. The other side of this coin is that those presumed obligations stop at the boundaries of the group. We have a disposition for in-groups, where all these processes are brought into play that are important for cooperation, and then another disposition where there is an absence of those processes when one goes beyond in-group boundaries. We are talking about the presence of social cooperation versus its absence. This leaves us one step short of talking about the presence of hostility and conflict.
The implication here is that in-group identification and favoritism does not directly imply hostility or hate for out-groups. But it is the absence of trust or any sense of obligation or any orientation toward mutual benefit that is a precondition of intergroup conflict. It is a readiness to know the worst, a perception that there might be a conflict of interest, a perceived interaction between groups on competitive terms rather than cooperative ones that is a psychological precondition that makes conflict possible and even likely.
The evolutionary concepts underlying this model of group identification mean that the psychological mechanisms that create and support in-group formation, cooperation, and loyalty are derived from a historical context in which the optimal size of interdependent groups was relatively small. Isolation from out-groups was possible, probably even desirable for the optimal exploitation of the natural resources in the environment. We have to realize that this kind of inherited psychology now plays itself out in the modern world, a context in which the reality of global interdependence far exceeds the limited capacity for social identification with groups. In-groups involve limitations on trust and cooperation, but we are in a world where intergroup cooperation is required to avoid costly conflicts and maximize use of resources.
Ironically, the very presence of positive interdependence, the very fact that members of different groups need each other because of the interconnectedness we have created, this need for cooperation actually exacerbates intergroup tension by making lack of trust a salient issue. When groups are isolated, trust is not a relevant issue. But as soon as you actually become interdependent, the need for mutual trust, and the question of whether one trusts, has arisen.
When we are talking about intragroup processes, as long as there is a defined boundary of shared identity, then the presence of similarities, the presence of external contingencies and interdependent reward structures, are all positive forces. They are mutually positively reinforcing, in a positive feedback loop. But exactly the opposite is set in motion when the situation is defined as intergroup rather than intragroup. The more similarities, the more positive interdependence, the more a negative feedback loop is set in motion.
This model is one of interaction between objective interdependence and subjective group identification. If we have an interdependent, cooperative reward structure, a need for cooperation, and a common identity, then we have a positive attraction, positively multiplying the cooperation. On the other hand, if we have a cooperative, interdependent reward structure in the absence of a common identity, as it were, an in-group/out-group state, the overall effect is negative. In the presence of intergroup differentiation, the presence of interdependence actually multiplies the negative effects. The potential for conflict is easily triggered.
I would like to walk through some of the proposed solutions to this negative multiplicative model that have arisen in the social sciences. One solution, and I think of this as a kind of political science wisdom, is separatism- the idea of avoiding conflict and confrontation by isolating groups politically or even physically. It is a solution based on the assumption that distrust is a byproduct of realistic conflict rather than an extension of the boundaries themselves. It does not eliminate the conditions of conflict. However, by creating institutions that segregate resources and political power, it eliminates the need for trust but simultaneously reinforces the categorizations that gave rise to distrust in the first place. This is a problematic solution because it denies the unavoidable objective interdependency that has been created in the world. Removing sources of conflict in the short run perpetuates the sense of distrust and the potential for conflict in the long run.
This solution also underestimates the potential for further differentiation. You isolate large groups from each other, which changes the context for distinctiveness, for meeting the needs of distinctiveness and differentiation. Therefore, there is a potential for any group of any size to continue to differentiate into smaller groups, and then competing factions are increased. A wall of separation changes the context for optimal distinctiveness, which results in smaller subgroups and competition at a different level. Separation is probably not the answer.
A second solution, which is the most commonly known social psychological wisdom, is the idea of reducing the salience and meaningfulness of in-group/out-group distinctions in favor of larger, common, higher-order goals and identity. This common-identity model takes people who were previously differentiated into their X and Y categories and makes salient a superordinate identity that includes both X’s and Y’s, which can stretch the level of inclusiveness and meet the need for social identity. The problem with this solution is the assumption that the degree of inclusiveness with which people invest their identification with a group is infinitely plastic and expandable. This, I think, is a false notion. There is an inherent limitation on what can be psychologically optimal, feeling one’s inclusion in a larger group but still retaining one’s differentiation.
I think both the model and theory, and our own experience with nation-building and the sense of the supernational organizations, generate a world pessimism. There are inherent limits on the degree of the inclusiveness that is possible in engaging optimal worldwide identification.
A third solution is that we can capitalize on capacities for dual identification- for maintaining the distinctions that give us substantive identities but having them embedded in a larger group in which both subgroups can thrive. One can certainly imagine conditions in which subgroup identities and larger-group identity are mutually reinforcing, in things like regional offices of large national organizations, where one keeps loyalty to the region but can also see that the purposes of the larger national group are compatible. But, in the real world of politics, there are many more situations in which the demand for collective benefits on the subgroup level and the collective goals of the larger-group level are not going to be compatible, or they may even be mutually exclusive. To benefit the in-group may harm the out-group though both are part of the same larger collective. Then the question of which of these dual identities will take precedence in this kind of dilemma is determined by motivational, psychological, and social processes, so it is likely that the subgroup identity will take precedence over the larger identity. Again, there is a certain idealistic optimism about the possibility of new identity, in which subgroup identity is embedded, in order to solve the cooperation problem.
The solution seems to be to break away from the notion that individuals are embedded in subgroups that are embedded in larger groups. This kind of wisdom has risen from both anthropological and sociological studies in the past. Although individuals strongly identify with groups that are distinctive and relatively small, most individuals in most complex social systems do not belong to just one distinctive small group. Their optimal identities are actually multiple, different optimal identities, most of which are context-specific, probably isolated psychologically from each other because they are played out and activated in different contexts.
The idea that individuals have multiple social identities is a kind of raw material for a different way to think about how we might raise the level of inclusiveness. In a complex social system, different subgroup identities are likely to be cross-cutting. The sets of persons in one’s in-group in one social differentiation, gender for instance, and the distinction of who is included and who is excluded on that dimension, is quite different from the sets of persons distinguished in one’s in-group in another differentiation, such as one’s professional or ethnic identity. The distinctions of one dimension cross-cut those of another.
The idea of a structural arrangement in society that provides for cross-cutting ways of differentiating ourselves may also play itself out in terms of psychological identity. It may be capitalized on in order to increase the probability that, when identity issues are in conflict, an individual will cleave to the highest level of inclusion of self-definition that still incorporates all their identities, making choices compatible with that identity.
This is the beginning of what is now my research agenda, part of the motivation for the study of multiple loyalties, which is a project that I have been working on for the last few years. But as I went through some of these ideas, I found out, as I think one always does in the social sciences, that we were not the first to think about this. Recently, I came across a quote from Lewis A. Coser (The Functions of Social Conflict, 1956) that expressed the same logic that we are grappling with here, the extent to which cross-cutting cleavages actually reduce the potential for conflict:
| In flexible social structures, multiple conflicts crisscross each other and thereby prevent basic cleavages along one axis. The multiple group affiliations of individuals makes them participate in various group conflicts so that their total personalities are not involved in any single one of them. Thus segmental participation in a multiplicity of conflicts constitutes a balancing mechanism within the structure. (pp. 153-4) |
If one’s whole sense of self does not depend entirely on one group identity, then the ability to mobilize that single identity without thinking about the implication for the other identities that one has becomes less. You are less able to mobilize people for conflict when cross-cutting cleavages are present. This is a prospect that we are trying to explore. The question is still open of whether, at the individual level, being a part of multiple cross-cutting groups actually provides a susceptibility to conflict and polarization. We are looking for whether there are such psychological mechanisms in a multiple group-identity context.
One example of how this might operate is in the work on dismantling nuclear weapons. One way of framing this is as cooperation between two separate nations—Russia and the United States. In that frame, people of both countries see themselves as vulnerable; there is a lot of awareness of the distrust dilemma and so forth. Yet, if one instead frames this as cooperation among physicists and engineers in two different locations, the professional identity cross-cuts the national boundary. When it is framed in these identity terms, the barriers to cooperation are removed. This perspective might move us along a little bit faster on that road.
 |
 |
 |