People Herding
The research fields of sociology and psychology are less precise than the natural sciences of physics and chemistry. More than the latter two, they provide a lot of information about general tendencies of lesser or greater strength and inclinations in humans at the group and individual levels. The combined field of socio-psychology furnishes similar insights with similar limitations. Because it deals with people, it suffers from the complication of the researcher being a member of the subject species and analyst of it at the same time.
Nevertheless, socio-psychological research has managed to verify many interesting insights, even if they describe general tendencies among humans rather than fast and hard rules. This blog has mentioned the research and writings of Roy Baumeister before, co-author of The Power of Bad and Willpower, and also of Substack writer Rob Henderson, fresh new PhD. Another that I recently got to know was Robert Cialdini, specifically for his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (Revised ed.).
Much of our thinking happens to be lazy, which probably comes as not much of a surprise. This conclusion has resulted from examining how we use shortcuts in the thought process, since trying to think through everything on our own repeatedly is as inefficient and unnecessary as the reinventing-the-wheel cliché. As with other living things, we look for ways to conserve energy, and automating thought and behavior is one way to do so.
Social groups enable us to save the mental energy of thinking. We follow our group. From the family and its shared household to the level of the same city, state, or country, all the way to the social organizations we belong to, groups give us a sense of psychological and emotional attachment. And the affinity for our own group causes us go along with what the group thinks, and often to protect its members from external threats. It is the root of tribalism, and it is more subtle and profound than we often realize.
We can instantly feel an affinity for others from our group when we encounter them away from home. There’s a certain self-other merger behind the tendency, with “we” serving as a more expansive “I” for us psychologically. We are generally more moved to celebrate achievements of members of our tribe. And we are more inspired to prefer choices made even by strangers from our own larger groups as well.
Cialdini’s examples here range from a grim story of a Nazi concentration camp guard sparing the life of an inmate he recognized as from the same hometown, to a Detroit car dealer of Arab extraction becoming a record-breaking car salesman because the large local Arab-American community preferred buying from someone they felt a profound ethnic kinship to. Aside from these anecdotes, researchers have found ways of testing the strength of such tendencies that are persuasive, if not absolute.
You can discern similar patterns of influence when you look at our politics and its tribalism. If you feel deeply invested in one or the other party, you tend to favor your tribe’s beliefs on many diverse issues—even issues about which you may feel ambivalent or not especially passionate. The tribe has done the thinking already, after all. It is efficient to adopt their conclusions rather than having to work out all the details on your own.
The tribal proclivity is one we are born with, wired into our brains by nature, not one we choose. This means it is easier to spot it as a flaw in others, while we ourselves can be subject to it just as much as anyone. Self-reflection and questioning, after all, requires the expenditure of energy. That would be inefficient.
Thank you all for a nice, light read to transition from my Friday workday!
In response to concerns that I have been assassinated or something, I’d like to say that I’m still alive.
Believe me I am still alive.
Anyway, here’s a joke:
“Hi, neighbor Ron.”
“Hey Steve. This is my uncle Ron.”
“He has two cousins, also named Ron.”
“Popular name, huh?”
“It Rons in the family.”