Quotes About In-group

In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next chapter says, "Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it." That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other.

Christians seldom realize that much of the moral consideration for others which is apparently promoted by both the Old and New Testaments was originally intended to apply only to a narrowly defined in-group. 'Love

Segregated schools. Children are educated, again often from a very early age, with members of a religious in-group and seperately from children whose families adhere to other religions.

Nationalism is a form of cultural self-centeredness, and as a collective thought-form, can only exist because the dominant in-group is itself comprised of self-centered and narcissistic individuals.

Group identification can powerfully reinforce these conformity effects. In experiments similar to Asch's landmark study, subjects have been found to conform much more when presented with judgments said to come from members of an in-group, and much less when judgments are said to come from out-group members. And it's not just that people tend to think what their fellow tribe members think. They will do what their fellow tribe members do—even to the point of savagery.

The impulse to form group identities and favor in-group members has a neurological basis. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientists have scanned people's brains while conducting experiments similar to the one just described. Their findings, as one writer puts it, suggest that: "group identification is both innate and almost immediate.

It creates within America a virtuous Us and a demonized Them.

Young humans are like chimps—six-year-olds not only prefer to be with kids like themselves (by whatever criteria) but readily say so. It isn't until around age ten that kids learn that some feelings and thoughts about Thems are expressed only at home, that communication about Us/Them is charged and contextual.60

Religion raises the stakes of human conflict much higher than tribalism, racism, or politics ever can, as it is the only form of in-group/out-group thinking that casts the differences between people in terms of eternal rewards and punishments.

People are prone to ethnocentrism. It is an uncomfortable fact that even when given a guilt-free choice, individuals prefer the company of others of the same race, nation, clan, and religion. They

A great deal of research in social psychology shows that people are warmer and more trusting toward people who look like them, dress like them, talk like them, or even just share their first name or birthday.

Anything that binds people together into a moral matrix that glorifies the in-group while at the same time demonizing another group can lead to moralistic killing, and many religions are well suited for that task. Religion is therefore often an accessory to atrocity, rather than the driving force of the atrocity.

Simplemente, no sentimos tanta empatía hacia los que vemos como -los otros-

Sectarianism •The trend defined by a complete refusal to conduct dialogue with other groups or work with them on small projects, following one's own line dogmatically without striving towards one's further education. •To refuse conducting work with other local groups on the grounds of high theoretical differences, to refuse further investigation and cling to superficial understandings, to become an in-group rather than a mass organization.

More collectivist cultures, including especially those of East Asia, not only show less focus on the self and more on family and other in-group members, they also are less dispositionist in their world view and in fact less prone to the fundamental attribution error. They focus less on the actor and more on the social situation surrounding the actor.

There are three entirely consistent characteristics of groupthink: closed-mindedness, pressure toward uniformity, and overestimation of the in-group.31

The proposal that doctors not be licensed by an in-group does not mean that their services shall not be evaluated, but rather that this evaluation can be done more effectively by informed clients than by their own peers.

Modern humans' group-minded interdependence thus served to spread human sympathy and helping to all in the group, best characterized as a sense of loyalty to the group. As a consequence, there emerged in modern humans a distinctive in-group/out-group psychology.

Communication of this message required a coordinated effort. Each person's willingness to talk to Woodward was cross-checked against the willingness of several others to talk to him. This was part of Woodward's standard method of establishing a critical mass of inside sources: he created a kind of in-group, and this also suggested that if you failed to participate, you would not only lose your opportunity to be part of the in-group but lose your place in history

Demagoguery is powerfully reduced when it stops getting people elected, and that usually happens because of in-group policing. Similarly, when it isn't profitable for a media outlet to engage in demagoguery, it won't, and that happens when its target market declines to put up with it. Individual demagogues are best stopped by in-group condemnation, and particular strains of demagoguery are generally ended by public shaming.