Ingroup Vs. Outgroup: The Concept of “Us” & “Them” and How to Push Back the Bias of Your Brain

Understanding Social Categorization and the Origins of “Us” and “Them”

Over the course of human history, all the way up to your current news feed, humans have behaved in ways that seem incongruous to the traits that make them exceptional. Here is a species with impressively developed brains and reasoning abilities, as well as being social and capable of sympathy. Still, groups have done objectively awful things to each other based on negligible differences. Why is this?

The origins of offensive, and very human, attributes like xenophobia, sexism, or racism can be found in our brain’s need to categorize.

Social Categorization is the process of classifying people into groups based on similar characteristics: nationality, age, occupation, race etc. Such categorizing is a mental shortcut that allows us to infer properties about a person based on the properties of others in the same category (although these inferences may be incorrect).

Within such categorization people find comfort and meaning in the groups they place themselves in. An Ingroup is a group to which a person identifies as being a member. An Outgroup is a social group with which an individual does not identify.

This process provides us with a sense of community and belonging. It also forms the foundation of the offensive attributes listed above.

As categorizing can be either positively or negatively impactful, before looking at the “good” or “bad” aspects of categorizing we should look at why and how we categorize.

Why Categorize?

The “mental shortcut” of categorization

Daniel Levitin maps out our limitations in The Organized Mind, “In order to understand one person speaking to us, we need to process 60 bits of info per second. With a processing limit of 120 bits per second, this means you can barely understand two people talking to you at the same time.”

To overcome such limitations our minds have evolved to learn and perform faster by thinking in categories. Our ability to sort out people and things in different groups helps us to decide more efficiently, and was necessary for our continued survival, or as Leonard Mlodinow states in his book, Subliminal, “If we hadn’t evolved to operate that way, if our brains treated everything we encountered as individual, we might be eaten by a bear while still deciding whether this particular furry creature is as dangerous as the one that ate uncle Bob.”

Group Identity

Once we form group identities through the process of categorization, placing ourselves in an Ingroup and others in an Outgroup, we tend to view members of our group as individuals and members of the other group as homogeneous. This is “Us” Vs. “Them” thinking and it has many components.

Outgroup homogeneity is the tendency to see members of an Outgroup as very similar but consider members of an Ingroup as individuals.

Ingroup Favoritism or Affinity bias makes us like people who are similar to ourselves. When someone does something we don’t like, we may think of the act being very predictable of other group’s member. We then jump to the conclusion that all people from that particular culture, race, religion etc behave like that. This generalisation seeds the development of discrimination and racism. We are strengthened by the notion that we are better than them and view Outgroups as threatening, angry, and untrustworthy.

The benefits of“Us”

You might rightly wonder about the extremes of this type of grouping. Why is a tendency towards bias apparently a part of our evolutionary biology?

Why do we “Us”?

There is an expectation of shared obligations. An expectation of mutuality which has roots in reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal Altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism’s fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time. Robert Sapolsky’s book, Behave, explores this foundation of cooperation in detail. It can be traced back to kin groups (a very small “us” group).

Why do we “Them”?

As soon as there was an “Us” (ingroup) there was a “Them” (outgroup). Our perception of “Them” helps make “Us” more unified by providing a counterpoint. The ways we differ from them becoming a list of unifying attributes for us.

So this is why we categorize, and it is a powerful motivator. Our tendency towards Ingroup favouritism is subtle, even when we might think we are being fair and acting neutral, there is a high chance of favouring our Ingroup at the expense of an Outgroup member. We need to understand the how part of such categorizing to fully appreciate that it is a trait in all of us. If we grasp how unconscious it is we can work at diluting its negative consequences, because while it is powerful, it is often illogical and best fought with logic. To effect change we need to understand the biology of such grouping.

The Biology and Psychology of “Us” vs.“Them”

Imprinting

This phenomenon was first discovered by Konrad Lorenz in ducklings, goslings and chickens and describes their instinct to follow the first moving object they see after birth. In her book, Blindspot, psychologist Mahazarin Banaji, indicates “a preparedness to favour the familiar is a fundamental property of all animals-including human- and it is a powerful determinant of attachment, attraction and love.”

Dichotomizing

Sapolsky stresses how young we are when we start dichotomizing. By ages three to four children are already grouping people by race and gender. They also already perceive other-race faces as being angrier than same-race faces.

There are a variety of factors as to why.  Exposure being a big one, for an infant, the most notable thing about the first face they see with a different skin color is going to be skin color.

Also, dichotomies are formed during a crucial developmental period. This is evident in the fact that children adopted before the age of eight by parents of a different race form dichotomies differently than those adopted after the age of eight. They develop the expertise at face recognition for the adopted parent’s race.

Our discussions or reporting of the extremes of dichotomizing are uncomfortable and often gravitate towards moralizing. This is understandable as the consequences of dichotomizing can be as severe as genocide.

Oxytocin

The hormone Oxytocin exaggerates Ingrouping and Outgrouping. It prompts trust and generosity to “us” and worse behavior towards “them”. Sapolsky stresses the uniqueness of this, “This is hugely interesting. If you like broccoli but spurn cauliflower, no hormone amplifies both preferences. Ditto for liking chess and disdaining backgammon. Oxytocin’s opposing effects on Us and Them demonstrate the salience of such dichotomizing”.

Amygdala & Insula and The Unconscious Nature of Categorizing

The categorizing of Ingroup and Outgroup (Us and Them) is largely unconscious. The book, Behave, details studies that have shown 50-millisecond exposure to the face of someone of another race activates the amygdala. The amygdala being a little almond-shaped part of the brain primarily responsible when triggered, for rapid fire signals to make your body ready to fight or flight the situation. Interestingly, the brain groups faces by gender and social status at roughly the same speed.

More evidence as to the subliminal nature of categorizing is found when an image of a person is shown long enough for the subject to be aware, “if whites see a black face shown at a subliminal speed, the amygdala activates. But if the face is shown long enough for conscious processing the anterior cingulate and the ‘cognitive’ dlPFC activate and inhibit the amygdala.”

What does this mean? Well, the dlPFC is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. It is the most recently evolved part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and mostly communicates with the other cortical regions. It is the more rational and cognitive part of the PFC.

Basically, once the face is shown long enough for conscious processing the frontal cortex starts taking control (or telling the amygdala to “calm down and put down that rock”).

In addition to the amygdala, the insula is involved in responses to Outgroups. The insula is the part of the brain that causes your response to rotten food, taste and smells. It’s been helpful for keeping our species going by stopping us from eating things we shouldn’t. That the part of the brain that is associated with disgust is involved in our responses to Outgroups is significant for what it implies about the strength of the reaction and the variation in severity among individuals.

Arbitrary but Powerful

Studies show that there is no particular requirement needed for considering someone as an ingroup. Mlodinow relates how just knowing that somebody is in our group can trigger an ingroup affinity.

Sapolsky gives a great example of the power of minimal, arbitrary grouping to form a sense of “Us” with a study where subjects conversed with a researcher. Unbeknownst to them, the researcher did or didn’t mimic their movements. Those whose movements were mimicked were more likely to help the researcher, by picking up a dropped pen.

Unfortunately, grouping is as psychologically powerful as it is arbitrary. Mlodinow points out that Ingroup identity not only influences the way you judge people, but the way you feel about yourself, the way you behave, and sometimes even your performance.

Sapolsky illustrates this while also addressing the multiple categories we occupy. Asian American women were subjects of an experiment built around the stereotypes of Asians being good at math, and women not. Half the subjects were primed to think of themselves as Asian before a math test, and their scores improved. Half were primed about gender; their scores declined.

The Negative Effects of Ingroup Vs. Outgroup: Biology is Not an Excuse

There is a tendency to think that by presenting the biological reason for something, one is excusing the presenting behaviors as inevitable. As stated in our intro, atrocious actions have resulted when Ingroups include enmity towards Outgroups. Knowing why we do this is meant to highlight self-awareness and combat the more negative extremes and outcomes of this characteristic.

Psychologist Mahazarin Banaji points out the fact that although humans are similar to other species on how they form attachments, we are particularly different in the flexibility of it. Meaning that we can influence to what extent we allow these attributes to affect our conscious behaviours towards our the only true in-group, the human group.

What can be done?

What can we do to outsmart what is essentially reflex of our brains?

It is frequently said that the cure for such tendencies is exposure. Travel is often touted as an antidote. And it makes sense that by connecting to other cultures, we learn more about their differences as individuals and find similarities to us. But studies show that even people with diverse relationships and impressive knowledge about each other fall into bias.

We need to actively engage our brains. We are trying to overcome biological reactions developed through thousands of years of evolution and nestled in our brains more primitive regions. It is work.

“Unchallenged brain is not worth trusting”. ~Helen Thurnball

1. Work on your inner security and self-confidence. The more we feel safe inside, the powerful our minds become and the less likely we are injured when see people are behaving differently. Then we will be able to accept the differences more easily.
2. Empathy. Trying to put yourself in the shoes of the other group members helps you understand the other person’s perspectives and not be trapped in this bias.
3. Look for similarities between yourself and members of an outgroup.
4. Be thoughtful and conscious of your surroundings. Use rational thinking and reasoning. This will help you catch and correct yourself when you are failing to see someone as an individual.
5. The more people of different groups work together to overcome issues and solve common problems, the better they’ll know each other and the less they’ll discriminate against each other.
6. Work to minimize hierarchical differences. Great hierarchical differences within societies demand essentialist thinking in order to justify the social order. This makes it that much more difficult to view people as individuals.

---

---

References and Further Readings:

1. Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky
2. Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinow
3. The Organized Mind by Dr. Levitin
4. Blind Spot by Mahazarin Banaji
5. Psychology Today
6. Racism with Jane Elliot