Innate chauvinism
How love for "our own" turns into hatred for "strangers"
Anton Katsaf, Reminder
The famous neuroscientist and primate researcher Robert Sapolsky wrote the essay This Is Your Brain On Nationalism back in 2019. But now it sounds especially relevant. Reminder retells the most important of this text.
He didn't give himself a chance. The first mistake was that he went in search of food alone. If he hadn't been alone, things might have turned out differently. The second, fatal mistake was that he went too far up the valley into this dangerous woodland. Here he could run into others at any moment — from the ridge above the valley. And so it turned out. At first there were two of them, and he tried to resist. But four more crept up behind him, and he was trapped. They left him there to bleed, and when he died, they came back and tore up his body.
After that, there were almost 20 more similar murders. They stopped only after there was no one left in the valley, and others were able to become its sovereign masters.
The heroes of this bloody saga, first told by primatologist John Mitani, are not people, but chimpanzees from a national park in Uganda. For decades, males from the same pack methodically killed males who lived in the neighborhood, stole their females and seized their territory.
Such wars among chimpanzees happen in other places. In 2014, scientists estimated that chimpanzees have a 30 times higher risk of being killed by their neighbors than by their own. Usually the attacks are carried out by groups of eight males. Primate life is cruel. And if we consider that 98% of people are chimpanzees according to the set of genes, is it any wonder that we also divide the world into "our own" and "strangers" and solve this dilemma with the help of wars.
Of course, such parallels are sinful simplification. Genetically, humans are just as close to bonobos (a very similar species to chimpanzees), among which violence is rare. And although we kill each other not only because of territory, but also because of such abstractions as ideology, religion and economic influence, we have no equal in the ability to control our behavior and change. Let's remember the Scandinavians. For seventeen centuries they terrorized Europe, and now they have become the personification of peacefulness and tolerance. And yet, the best and worst manifestations of our nature are always the sum of elements, in which there is everything: neural activity a second before the act, and the legacy of millions of years of evolution, and a complex interweaving of social factors.
To understand the dynamics of our group identity, including chauvinism — the most dangerous and destructive form of intra-group mental distortion, we need to understand the biological and cognitive background of this phenomenon. It doesn't look too rosy. Our brain distinguishes a member of our group from an outsider in a split second and encourages kindness to the first and hostility to the second. This bias is triggered automatically, on an unconscious level, and manifests itself at a very early age. The separation itself can vary arbitrarily. Today you are a "stranger", and tomorrow you are already "your own". But this is a small consolation.
People are able to curb their instincts and build a society in which intergroup rivalry is translated into less destructive formats than war. But the basic psychological predisposition to tribal thinking still remains. Even for those who understand that belonging to a nation, race, religion or a sports team fan club is as much an accident as a coin toss.
Tribal thinking
Our tendency to think in terms of "we are them" has deep roots. Numerous reliable studies have shown that the brain distinguishes "its own" from "strangers" automatically and at lightning speed. Put any person in a CT scanner and quickly scroll through a series of frames with different faces in front of his eyes. In an average white person, at the sight of a swarthy face, the amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for fear and aggression, is activated in less than one tenth of a second. In most cases, after one or two seconds, the prefrontal cortex - the regulator of impulses and emotions — will intervene and force the amygdala to calm down: "Don't think like that, you're not like that!" But the first reaction is usually fear, even if you understand everything with your mind. And this is not a deviation, but the norm.
At the sight of a human, primate-specific fusiform cells designed for facial recognition are activated in the cerebral cortex. But if it is the face of a person of another race, their activity is lower. When people are shown how a needle is inserted into someone else's hand, the anterior cingulate cortex, responsible for empathy, instantly becomes excited. But if the skin color on the hand is not the same as that of the observer, the excitement is weaker. Not all faces and not all sufferings are the same for us.
It is obvious that many such stereotypes are formed under the influence of the environment. But the cognitive structures on which they are based are laid down from birth.
Even infants show more sympathy for those adults who speak their parents' language. They not only react more positively to the faces of people of the same race, but also remember them better. At the age of three, children already give clear preferences to people of the same sex and with the same skin color. And this is not because they were born racists or "absorbed" racist and gender biases under the direct or indirect influence of parents, although we are very susceptible to such environmental influences from the earliest years. In fact, children just like what they know better. That's why over time they begin to copy from their parents the manner of dividing into their own and others by ethnicity and language. Sometimes even the darkest motives are hidden behind affection and mutual assistance.
Take, for example, oxytocin, which is often called the "hug hormone". In mammals, it plays a key role in the formation of a mother-cub bond and seals family ties in monogamous relationships. In humans, it stimulates prosocial behavior. Thanks to oxytocin, we become more generous, trusting, responsive and emotional.
However, recent studies show that under the influence of oxytocin, we behave this way only with those who belong to our group. For example, with work colleagues or teammates. In relation to "others", he sets us up for aggression and xenophobia. In general, such a spread is atypical for hormones; usually their effect remains unchanged, only its severity varies. Oxytocin is a special case. It deepens the mental gap between "us" and "them".
In everything related to belonging to a group, people seem to be not so far from chimpanzees killing each other in the forests of Uganda. At the heart of our attachments is also a preference for the familiar and familiar. Something new or someone unfamiliar causes us at least distrust and apprehension or even hostility. Yes, we are able to rethink and take control of these impulses. But this is just an attempt to compensate for the first reaction.
Pseudo - birth
There is definitely one difference between humans and chimpanzees. And it is very important. Although the division of others into "friends" and "strangers" is sewn into our biology, we do not have stable criteria for determining an outsider. In animals, differences between groups and within a group are determined by the degree of biological kinship. Evolutionary biologists call this kin selection. For example, rodents distinguish brothers and sisters from strangers by smell — this is a clear, stable and genetically determined criterion. Gangs of killer chimpanzees mostly consist of blood or cousins who grew up together. People are also capable of violence on the basis of kinship, but our group mentality most often does not depend on biological kinship. Modern human communities are based on cultural selection, which creates pseudo—parentage - that is, it allows us to feel kinship with those who are not genetically related to us.
Often, special rituals and symbols are involved in the process of creating a pseudo-birth. So, military traditions are aimed at turning a crowd of unfamiliar young guys into "brothers in arms." And student communities involve freshmen in women's clubs, where they all become "sisters". Along with pseudo—birth, people also accept its markers - from flags and emblems to hipster beards and turbans. On a pragmatic level, they allow elementary identification of their cultural relatives in a crowd of strangers. At the level of psychology, they send a powerful signal of tribal affiliation.
In fact, these markers are as random as cultural kinship itself. This is best seen in the example of immigrants from immigrant families. If at one time my grandfather had not had time to jump into the last car of the train from Moscow, perhaps I would now be a Russian professor with a cigarette in his mouth, and not a Californian in flip-flops on bare feet. But the fact that our group identity is arbitrary does not make it less significant in both a good and a bad sense.
A good example is patriotism. In its best expression, it encourages us to pay taxes for the common good and take care of "compatriots" in need, that is, people we don't know who live in the same country. Historically, this solidarity has been reinforced by clear cultural markers of pseudo-parentage. But in the new conditions, these markers often become false landmarks. Instead of the figures that once inspired our grandparents, right-wing populists and manipulators often become symbols of cultural identity. And then civilized patriotism easily turns into zoological chauvinism. And his victims are dehumanized and equated with animals. So at one time, Jews in the Third Reich became "rats", and Tutsis in Rwanda became "cockroaches". The process of transformation simplifies the fact that the same insular region of the brain is responsible for disgust (for example, for rotten foods) as for moral disgust.
Today, such toxic patriotism is experiencing a rebirth. And it seems that it is possible to stop this revival with a simple appeal to common sense. If everyone realized that this idea is far-fetched, it would become obvious how ridiculous it is. No, don't flatter yourself. It is impossible to convince people of what they are not initially convinced of.
In reality, understanding that our group identities are random does not weaken these bonds. In the 1970s, psychologist Henry Tagefel called this phenomenon the "minimal group paradigm." You recruit strangers and by drawing lots, quite arbitrarily, distribute them into two groups. People in both groups know perfectly well that they were separated by accident, without any logic. And yet, after just a couple of minutes, they begin to show more generosity and trust to the members of their group. The tendency to contrast "us" and "them" is strong, even when the arbitrariness of the separation is quite obvious. What can we say about those cases when this opposition is woven into the context of a sense of duty and loyalty to the motherland.
Perhaps it would be more productive not to fight our natural tendency to group identity, but to try to use it for good. Imagine patriotism based not on military might and a sense of ethnic solidity, but on a willingness to take care of their elders and raise their children so that they show maximum empathy. It is clear that this is better than patriotism, built on myths about victims and dreams of revenge. But as long as the tendency to take the familiar for the good sits in our minds, we will manage to arrange a war even because of who of us is nobler and kinder.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru