Why do we divide people into friends and foes and can this be changed

How is the division into friends and foes

AT bookR. Sapolsky. Biology of good and evil. How Science Explains Our Actions "The Biology of Good and Evil" neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky says that our brain is downright programmed to divide people into friends and foes.

Even babies do it when they barely learn distinguish faces. And of course, all adults do this, regardless of culture and personal beliefs.

The division into friends and foes often happens automatically - imperceptibly quickly, without consciousness control, and only then is comprehended and explained in one way or another.

For example, in experiments with face recognition figured outT. A. Ito, G. R. Urland. Race and gender on the brain: electrocortical measures of attention to the race and gender of multiply categorizable individuals / Journal of personality and social psychologythat the brain takes a tenth of a second to determine that the photograph is a person of a different race. In response to such pictures, the amygdala was excited in the subjects - the main

anxious center of the brain that is sensitive to threat.

similar situation observedA. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, J. L. Schwartz. Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test / Journal of personality and social psychology in the test with pictures and associations. People were given a choice of two photographs - representatives of their own and someone else's race, as well as two words denoting something positive and negative.

When participants had to press a button in response to a pair of “inside” person + positive word or “stranger” + negative word, they responded much faster than if the task was the opposite.

It is more difficult for the brain to combine “ours” with negatives and “strangers” with positives, dissonance arises, and the reaction is inhibited.

Of course, we divide people not only on the basis of race and nationality. There are many more categories: gender and age, socioeconomic status, education, appearance, musical tastes, political views, pet preferences.

In one experimentH. Tajfel. Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations / Annual Reviews of Psychology people were divided into insiders and outsiders depending on whether they exaggerated or underestimated the number of dots on the screen. Even such a trifle was enough for them to establish increased cooperation within the group and to form an attraction to “their own”.

In this experiment, people simply felt better about group members who were similar to themselves, while not feeling negative about those who thought differently. But unfortunately, in life everything is much more serious.

Why do we so easily recognize our own as good, and others as bad?

On the one hand, considering our own unconditionally good, we are more likely to be able to build a solid societywhere everyone will be friendly and help each other.

Several experiments have shown that people are much more willing to helpb. C. N. Müller, A. J. Maascant, R. b. Van Baaren. Prosocial consequences of imitation / Psychological reports those who are similar to them, even in such trifles as the same pose or preferencesM. Levine. Identity and Emergency Intervention: How Social Group Membership and Inclusiveness of Group Boundaries Shape Helping Behavior / Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in choosing a sports team.

But while their own are perceived as correct, humane and sane, strangers receive all the unpleasant epithets. People tend to generalize and easily connect even that which, in theory, does not correlate in any way. For example, Sapolsky notesR. Sapolsky. Biology of good and evil. How Science Explains Our Actionswhat if a person believes vile food of strangers, he is very likely to find their entire culture disgusting.

Aliens are spoken of with derision and sarcasm, presented as unpretentious people with simple emotions, a blunted sense of pain and low aspirations. It is clear that such an opinion is possible only with monstrous generalizations and often the absence of direct contact. For example, when the whole nation is declared bad, and not its individual representatives.

Aliens are a homogeneous mass of faceless units. We are separate individuals.

And here the most interesting begins. When the unconscious separation has already taken place and you feel hatred and alien aversion, the frontal cortex steps in and explains why this is true. There would be a desire, but there will be arguments.

Is it possible to deal with this and how to do it

It is impossible to completely get rid of the tendency to divide people into friends and foes, and it is not necessary. Suspicion of strangers is the other side of the amazing sense of community with one's own, which brings a lot of pleasure to any person.

Fortunately, in addition to unconscious reactions, we also have conscious ones. And it is they who will help get rid of unjustified and blind hatred.

Beware of generalizations to see the man

First of all, it is important to defeat generalizations. Abandon the idea that strangers are a faceless mass, a priori stupid and hostile. As we mentioned earlier, ours are far from always people of your nationality or the same political views.

We can sense commonality in many different ways. The main thing is to see the person.

Sapolsky leadsR. Sapolsky. Biology of good and evil. How Science Explains Our Actions a wonderful example of how you can change your attitude even towards the enemy, if you find something in common with him.

In the chapter “Inside Against Outsiders,” he tells the story of how World War II British secret agents kidnapped the German General Heinrich Kraine and marched to the coast to bring him to the ship.

Once, when the group saw the tops of the mountains in Crete, General Kraine murmured in an undertone in Latin the first lines of Horace's ode. British commander Patrick Leigh Fermor picked up the verses, and both realized that they "drank from the same source." After that, Fermor took care of the general, bandaged his wounds and provided security during the march. They kept in touch after the war.

Another telling example from the same chapter is the Christmas truce during World War I. Soldiers from both sides sang, prayed and had fun together, played football and gave gifts to each other. For a short time, the British and Germans stopped seeing each other as enemies. Those who sit in the rear became strangers to them.

Try to understand someone else's point of view

Our beliefs firmly grow into the picture of the world and sometimes seem unshakable. It is difficult to doubt your opinion, especially if it is directly related to self-esteem.

But if you have already abandoned generalizations, recognizing that strangers are not a gray mass, but the same people with their good and bad qualities, the next step is to try to understand their point of view.

This helps to change even the automatic response to racial characteristics. In one experimentM. E. Wheeler, S. T. Fiske. Controlling Racial Prejudice: Social‑Cognitive Goals Affect Amygdala and Stereotype Activation / Psychological Science participants were asked to look at portraits of people and guess which vegetable they would like. During the task, the subjects did not find an automatic response of the amygdala to the photo of representatives of another race.

Sapolsky suggests that this happened because, as part of the task, people were endowed with personality and tried to figure out what they might like. But for this you need to imagine a person in a store or restaurant, think about how he feels when he tries this or that product.

Trying to understand someone else turns on the "intelligent" part of the brain - the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), which suppresses the automatic response of the amygdala to threat and helps to make thoughtful and measured solutions.

This does not mean that you have to understand absolutely everyone and justify any actions (and possibly such). But if the place of blind hatred for “strangers” and thoughtless justification of “ours” is replaced by reflections and attempts to figure it out, the world will probably become a little it is better.