Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We look into some social theory and how it impacts us today
Every week we introduce you to an event in American History, policy, and media, then discuss how that historical event impacts the socio-political issues America faces today. We give you The Dig on US History and offer political commentary and opinion, as well as discussion of current news from Progressive perspectives.
DoA is an apparent propaganda arm of The Deep State. Probably financed in some way by George Soros, The Clinton Foundation, Jay-Z, maybe even Joe Rogan.
Get the Dig with Big Hass, Dutch, Attorney Anna and Mikey as we explore current events in the good ol' USA, with a few pop-culture sprinkles along the way. We interview great guests covering all sides of tough topics from policy to systemic racism to the social messages in film and sports, as well as constitutional issues protected within the Bill of Rights and the history of injustice in America, no matter who's fault it is. You might even get a little smoke in your eye!
When you don't know your history, you're doomed to repeat it. Facts don't care about your feelings, right? Criticizing America when she is wrong does not mean you hate America, it means you love her enough to want her to be better.
Join us weekly and check out the live stream on YouTube and Twitch. Find the youtube at www.youtube.com/DigOnAmerica or Follow us on Twitter @DigOnAmerica or online at www.DigOnAmerica.com
This Independent Podcast is brought to you by Big Heads Media. A new home for Progressive Values!
Now my 8th grade social studies teacher Mr Humble taught me things that turns out, after doing my own research, wasn’t exactly the whole story. And this week, we will dive into the topic of Social Identity Theory, and how it relates to in and out group bias.
First of all, what is a group? Social identity theory defines a group as a collection of people who categorize themselves as belonging to the same social category and internalize that category's identity-defining attributes to define and / or evaluate themselves. The theory was proposed by social psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s and the 1980s.
Social identity refers to the ways that people's self-concepts are based on their membership in social groups. Examples include sports teams, religions, nationalities, occupations, sexual orientation, ethnic groups, and gender. (As discussed earlier in the chapter, psychologists’ identification with a particular theoretical approach can also constitute a social identity.) Social identity theory addresses the ways that social identities affect people's attitudes and behaviors regarding their ingroup and the outgroup. Social identities are most influential when individuals consider membership in a particular group to be central to their self-concept and they feel strong emotional ties to the group. Affiliation with a group confers self-esteem, which helps to sustain the social identity.
Tajfel breaks down the social identity theory into three parts. Categorization, Identification, and Comparison. In the comparison stage, we compare our group and ourselves to the other group, or those in it. Which can be problematic, but it’s not always bad.
It can also help define positive movements. For example, The "black is beautiful" movement, described as a Black American embrace of African culture, hairstyles, music and traditions was provided by Tajfel as an example of the cognitive creativity of lower status groups to show stable in-group relations.
While social identity theory is newer, the ideas are not. In 1906, another psychologist, William Sumner, said this in his Book, Folkways: "Loyalty to the group, sacrifice for it, hatred and contempt for outsiders, brotherhood within, war-likeness without,—all grow together, common products of the same situation. ... Men of other groups are outsiders with whose ancestors we waged war. ... Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders. Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite scorn." Sounds very sinister… and frankly, it is…
So what is an in group and an out group? Well, lets say you see someone wearing a shirt with your favorite sports team on it? Psychologists say that in group bias makes it likely that this will evoke good feelings and promote immediate trust. Basically, we tend to favor others who exist in similar groups as themselves. We overwhelmingly favor those similar to us. We are more likely to act if the results of the action will favor others in the in group, and we are more likely to extend what is called generalized reciprocity, which is basically says I’m more likely to buy a white person dinner because I figure that they are likely to buy it next time. Come to think of it, I know a few Caucasians who owe me chipotle. Ok I’m exaggerating a little, but not much. It’s usually reserved for our tightest connections, such as family. One study showed that boys as young as three years old have been shown to display shades of in group bias, although it’s important to note that it’s not a fixed mindset.
Now, to out group bias, the dirty, scaaaaary other. We all possess a cognitive bias. We can have this bias towards the opposites sex, another religion, race, region of birth, or who went to a rival school or fraternity. Out group bias is literally primitive, as it’s likely a carry over from primitive times, where resources were being fought over by other groups, such as a herd of buffalo, a water source, or a cave. If another group took that, you die.
But that only really comes into play for basic needs. One damaging form of out group bias is xenophopia, or fear of immigrants, where people are afraid that an “invading” group may take resources, or jobs in most cases, and thus will paint those groups in a bad light.
Jane Elliott was a 3rd grade teacher in the 1960s. She split her class into two groups, the blue eyes and the brown eyes, and alternated praising one group and pointing out mistakes and criticizing the other, and noted the results. She did so to teach her students about the effects of racism, and went viral, so to speak, at least in psychology and sociology circles. And of course, Fox news would have loved to cover this story today. What was striking was how fast students would turn on the whichever was the outgroup was that given day. This was dublicated a few years later with the Stanford prison experiment, which went famously wrong and led to violence, trauma, and the cancellation of the study after less than a week. In short, these studies and others show over and over that outgroups are viewed as “all the same” and displaying similar “unfavorable traits” according to practical psychology. This homogony bias makes it easier, they claim, to remember those in an ingroup than anyone in an outgroup. This of course, is known as stereotyping, and Mikey and I covered this about a year ago in another video.
Then we have Schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is a combination of the German nouns Schaden, meaning "damage" or "harm," and Freude, meaning "joy." So it makes sense that schadenfreude (sha-din-froida) means joy over some harm or misfortune suffered by another. The English word for this is substatntially less fun and is “epicaricacy” e-pic-ah-rick-a-see. Either way, this is literally the reason Jerry Springer became popular.
Schadunfreude is a reaction of pleasure when someone from an outgroup encounters peril. We all feel it, to some degree, especially if we feel like that other group has been winning, or arrogant, or other. A Cubs fan can feel it when a Cardinals player gets injured, a Pacers fan when the Bulls lose, or any human being outside Boston experienced it when the Patriots lost Tom Brady. We saw this when Trump got Covid, when Biden got Covid twice in a week, when RGB died, when Rush Limbaugh died. When Roe was overturned, the right wing engaged in schadenfreude to epic levels, matched only by that of centrist democrats when Bernie concedes a presidential primary. Researchers have found that there are three driving forces behind schadenfreude – ones perception of 1. aggression, which represents an improvement or validation of a persons in-group, which was rampant during celebrity deaths during Covid, depending on one’s vaccination status, 2. rivalry, related to interpersonal competition, or a desire to stand out from and out-perform one's peers, like when I prove Mikey wrong, its glorious, and 3. justice comes from seeing that behavior seen as immoral or "bad" is punished. It is the pleasure associated with seeing a perceived "bad" person being harmed or “getting their come-uppins”
Finally, because we as humans continue to have such out group biases, we, on purpose or not, or both, are bound to oppress other groups. So it only becomes logical that since we are all in multiple groups, that people who belong to more than one group that in this county are often out groups, that social science would identify that, and it did, in intersectionality. Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalize people – gender, race, class, religion, sexual orientation, physical ability, weight, etc are called identity markers. Intersectionality recognizes that these identity markers do not exist independently of each other, and that each can compound the other.
These biases by the way, even find their way into AI algorithms, and algorithmic biases can even be exaggerated by AI systems. So even you, Alexa, need some bias training.
So look, we all want to make sense of the world, and our brains do this naturally, by forming concepts, which are mental groupings of similarities. We organize concepts by forming prototypes, or examples of things. The common example of this is if I say think of a bird, you probably didn’t think of a penguin or ostrich, as they are not prototypical. Of course we know, prototypical birds are just robots but lets move on before Anna goes insane. Prototypes aid our thinking, but they can also hamper it, and that leads to bias.
The more we understand our implicit biases, the more we can begin to overcome them, and only then can we create a more equitable and fair society. Our perception is formed form our experiences. So in theory if we broaden our experience and study things, no matter how uncomfortable or foreign they may seem, the better we are at accepting others into our group, so long as, of course, that group is a good idea. Good ideas should be popular, and promoted. Here’s the good news, things are changing. In the 1930’s only a quarter of Americans would vote for a woman, but today, it’s over 90%, despite women being an outgroup for half the country. But unfortunately, it’s morphed into more social, cultural and political divides, such as the idea that one must view the American ideal in a certain way is necessary.
In group and outgroup biases and social identity 100% drives discrimination, but what we will discuss here, is when is it justified, if ever?