Why Most People Are Idiots

My freshman year of college, I lived in Mosher Hall. Not only did I live there, I became a member of the Mosher Hall Council, having first been rejected from four other student organizations. My randomly assigned roommate, Michelle, was also on Hall Council. This was the only, I repeat, the only thing we had in common.

She was a staunch Democrat who didn’t particularly care about religion, had gone to a public high school, and was majoring in pre-med. I didn’t particularly care about political things, but my family and friends were mostly Republican, and I was a Christian, had gone to a private Christian high school, and was majoring in English.

One evening, a few months into the fall semester, we had a Hall Council party in my hall director, Alisa’s, apartment. Upon walking into her apartment, I immediately noticed a giant poster of George W. Bush on the wall. I thought to myself, “Yes! She’s on my side!” I felt safe.

Then I turned a corner and saw a giant poster of Bill Clinton on the wall. I thought to myself, “What the heck??” I felt slightly betrayed that someone who liked George W. Bush would also claim to like Bill Clinton. Did that mean Alisa liked Michelle just as much as she liked me? Or more than me? Who did she like better? Was she on my team? Could I trust her? She seemed friendly enough.

My mind was blown. It was the first time in my life that I remember getting to know someone and not being able to put them in either a Christian/conservative or a non-Christian/liberal group in my mind. And the amazing thing was, I still liked her. We actually became friends, in a hall director-student sort of way. Not only that, she became a bridge between Michelle and me. She accepted us both as we were and, in doing so, influenced us to accept each other as we were.

Michelle and I went on to work together to create this masterpiece, which took first place in the Mosher Hall Halloween Door Decorating Contest.

Henri Tajfel and Me

In Psychology 101 that same semester, I learned two terms that helped me understand what had taken place in Alisa’s apartment: “in-group” and “out-group.” An in-group, my textbook said, is “a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member.” An out-group is “a social group to which an individual does not identify.” Simple enough.

But as the book went on to describe how people come to identify with an in-group and how classifying themselves and others into these groups affects how people think and treat one another, I was totally floored. I read that “people can form self-preferencing in-groups within a matter of minutes and that such groups can form even on the basis of seemingly trivial characteristics, such as preferences for certain paintings.”

The textbook contained a lot of psychological jargon I didn’t fully understand but the concept of in-groups and out-groups—“social identity theory”—rang through loud and clear. I could see it all over my life. I considered for the first time that what I had always thought to be a God-given, spiritual feeling of affinity with other Christians might in fact be a simple display of in-group favoritism. Or that I only liked the Phoenix Suns because my dad did, not because they were better people or more talented basketball players than every other NBA team. Or that the students at my small, private high school who didn’t attend the same church the majority of us did probably hated high school because we never made them feel like equals.

Once I learned the terms for how social identity theory plays out in the real world, I noticed them everywhere: in-group favoritism, out-group derogation, groupthink, and group polarization. These ideas explained so much about what was going on in my head, who I liked, why I did things, what I talked about with people. Suddenly I felt sheepish, like my opinions, beliefs, and identity were nothing more than a product of the groups into which I had been placed or trained. I hadn’t been able to see it before, but Henri Tajfel—along with most other careful observers of human society—had.

Later, I found out Tajfel’s birthday is June 22, the same as mine. Mere coincidence? You be the judge.

Why Groups Form

Most in-groups form around one or a few simple binding characteristics: engineers, working moms, waitresses, teachers, parents of children with special needs, partyers, Catholics, and so on. In a brief article written for a psychology course at Miami University, Jamie Schlabach explains, “Categorizing people into groups by identifying some common attributes or characteristics reduces the amount of information to be dealt with […]. Such categorization can represent a sensible and useful strategy to reduce the complexity of the social world.”

Over the past century, psychologists have studied this in-group/out-group phenomena from every angle, trying to figure out, especially, 1) why people do it and 2) what effects it has on individuals and society.

The realistic conflict theory says we do it because resources are limited and we increase our chances of survival by promoting the welfare of our own group. In the tribal and warring cultures of early human history, your life literally depended on sticking with your tribe and defeating other tribes. Still today, in many situations, one’s immediate safety depends on being part of a group and working for the good of that group over other groups, such as in gang relations in U.S. cities or in conflicts between Sunni and Shiite sects in the Middle East. Research abounds on how the realistic conflict theory translates into group conflict in today’s world.

The social identity theory, as briefly described above, says we establish and favor our in-groups for the sake of maintaining our own self-esteem. Wildly popular in the 1980s and 1990s, the notion of self-esteem has fallen on hard times in the past couple decades. Social scientists are realizing that the correlation between a person’s self-esteem and success in life is likely due to the fact that people who feel good about themselves feel that way because they are happy, healthy, productive, and moral, rather than the reverse.

Still, a general sense of being okay with oneself and how one fits into the world are widely recognized as critical needs of human beings. In his famous hierarchy of needs, Abraham Maslow identifies these as esteem and belongingness needs, which come just after our needs for food, water, shelter, and safety. In fact, advances in neuroscience are showing that feelings of social disconnection can trigger the same response in our brains as the threat of physical harm.

Whatever the motivation, putting people in groups is natural. There is nothing inherently wrong with categorizing people to make sense of the world. A quick glance at my family, city, country, and world, though, reveals that we have gone off course. We use these alliances as substitutes for real relationships. We use the “truths” believed by our in-groups as substitutes for facts. We too often let our instincts, rather than our minds and spirits, determine how we relate to people.

In-Group Favoritism

“Individuals will find a reason, no matter how insignificant, to prove to themselves why their group is superior.” If you’ve identified yourself as a person who eats healthy food, you then feel the need to repeatedly prove—to yourself and others—why being a healthy eater is superior to not being a healthy eater.

Sometimes this is easy; everyone knows it’s good to eat healthfully. Sometimes, though, eating healthfully butts up against other legitimate values, such as staying within your budget, being a considerate guest, not being uptight about what other people feed your kids, and spending time with people you care about.

So when you’re having a conversation with a friend about buying organic, grass-fed beef, and the friend says that she doesn’t buy it because it’s too expensive, you feel the need to prove to her that buying it is worth the extra expense. You may also believe it is important not to overspend on groceries, but you downplay that value to prove the superiority of your group (healthy eaters) over your friend’s group (non-healthy eaters).

Strength in Numbers

We like to get people to join our group because it affirms that our group is the best.

“I’m doing this new workout program; you should join me!”

“Oh, I buy these frozen burritos for lunch; they’re super easy and cheap and tasty. You should try them!”

“I always study in this building; it’s actually much quieter than the library. Want to come?”

These types of offers and invites aren’t bad. It’s perfectly reasonable to promote something you believe in and perfectly polite to invite others to join. For me, though, I can sense when it goes beyond that and becomes a need to have someone else affirm my choices, to round up more people to my side.

I make a new friend and invite her to come to my church. Great! But what if she says she’s not interested in my church because she likes the church she already attends? What does that mean about my church? Is it not as good as hers? Impossible!

Rather than entertain the possibility that my church—my group, my identity—is not the best, I come up with reasons why mine is better than hers, or why her reasoning for staying at her church is flawed. If I’m socially aware enough, I don’t do this to her face. I politely say, “Okay, great. I’m glad you like your church.” Then I go and rationalize the superiority of my church to my friends who go to my church. They agree with me, naturally, and together we lament my new friend’s lack of judgment and spiritual sincerity, patting ourselves on the back for at least inviting her.

Internal and External Attributions: Credit and Blame

In order to preserve the superiority of our groups, we come up with wacky ways of explaining things.

When a person in our in-group does something positive, we attribute it to the nature or intentional action of that person. This is called internal, or dispositional attribution. When a person in our in-group does something negative, we attribute it to factors outside of that person’s responsibility. This is called external, or situational, attribution.

In other words, when a group you identify with (your family) does something right (your sister marries a great guy and has a beautiful wedding), you will tend to attribute it to inherent good things about your family (they are capable of healthy relationships, they are attractive people, they have good taste in food and décor). But if that same group (your family) does something wrong (your sister gets divorced), you will tend to attribute it to situational things outside your family’s control (her husband was a lowlife, divorce just happens sometimes).

We do the opposite for out-group members. Say I pride myself on feeding my family healthy food and I have a friend who feeds her kids Totino’s pizza rolls five nights a week. If one of her kids gets sick, I’ll be quick to conclude it’s because their diet is so lacking in nutrients and so high in processed foods. But if her baby never suffers from reflux and grows into a non-picky toddler, I’m likely to chalk it up to getting lucky.

Most of us can tell when other people do this. It’s very annoying. We have a harder time being honest with ourselves about when we do it.

Out-group Derogation: Why Nice People Act Like Bullies

“The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image.” Out-group derogation means viewing the out-group members as threatening, hindering, or lesser than your group, as explained in this unconventional but insightful video by a prominent online gamer regarding group identity. This view naturally leads us to criticize or harm those we view as out-group members.

We do this both when we are confident that we are on the right side and, ironically, when we feel we might be wrong.

I was recently working with a group of five-year-old girls during a Bible program at church. A small group of kindergartners were all discussing where they go to school. Two or three girls each named their school, a couple public, one private, and then one young lady burst out, “I do homeschool! Homeschool is better because it puts you at a HIGH level but regular school puts you at a LOW level.” Her eyes were fierce, her little hand rising high and then coming down low to indicate the difference in education levels provided by homeschool and “regular school.”

I used to think that exact same thing. And here’s the thing: most in-group biases have some basis in fact. It is true that many homeschool families provide better education for their kids than what’s available in the local public or private schools. However, turning that limited, specific piece of information into a working paradigm for how you understand the intelligence and education of everyone you meet is a huge mistake.

Unfortunately, it’s a mistake that almost all of us make automatically. Why? Because we have a built-in need to feel that we are on the right side of everything—at least the important things. So if we fear we may be on the wrong side, we create a mini-universe in which the wrong side is actually right.

That’s what seems to have happened in the case of my kindergartner friend. She was daily faced with a feeling of being left out and different because she was homeschooled. It would have been too hard to hold that tension, to believe, “Gosh, it would be better if I went to regular school but I don’t”—especially since it was her parents’ choice, not hers—so she (and perhaps her parents) coped by creating a lens for her that views homeschoolers as superior to non-homeschoolers.

I come from a homeschooling family with six children. We did things differently than most of the people we knew: we rarely ate out, we had endless chores written out in color-coded lists on the whiteboard, we shared bedrooms, we hardly ever watched TV, and my mom made us eat healthy food way before it was cool. On the one hand, we were jealous of our friends who were allowed to watch TV in their rooms and eat Froot Loops for breakfast. On the other hand, we viewed them as somehow inferior, as sellouts, as lazy people who had no higher values than satisfying their own appetites.

So many of the in-group/out-group attitudes I’ve held throughout my life are embarrassing to admit. I used to think families with three or fewer children weren’t as good as larger families. I thought if you didn’t have at least four kids, it was probably because you didn’t care about your kids learning to share and all you wanted to do was take expensive, indulgent vacations and buy your kids their own handheld video games.

The positive takeaway from my narrow-minded childhood is that I can step back a bit from how I view certain other groups right now, at this juncture in my life. I can acknowledge that my view is limited at best and dead wrong at worst, just like my view of smaller families was when I was a kid.

Out-group Homogeneity: You’ve Seen One, You’ve Seen ‘Em All

We tend to view all those in the out-group as basically the same as each other. This is called out-group homogeneity.

As a stay-at-home mom, I am very aware of the variety of stay-at-home moms: the organized ones, the strict ones, the relaxed ones, the involved ones, the creative ones, and so on. But I tend to place all working moms in one single type-of-mom group, forgetting that there are also organized, strict, relaxed, involved, and creative working moms.

If we know one member of a group, we know them all—we think.

You know those public school kids, they do drugs. You know those attachment parenting people, their kids are brats. You know those old people, they can’t use computers. You know those young people, they’re lazy. You know those blue collar workers, they love fast food. You know those sorority girls, they’re snobs. You know those guys who drive big trucks, they’re assholes.

We see people in our group as individuals and we see people in their group as all the same. I’ve avoided using the word “stereotype” thus far because most of us already have strong, objectionable feelings attached to that word…“But stereotypes are often TRUE!”

I get that. Don’t think about it in terms of stereotyping then. Think about how just because someone knows several white, middle-class, Christian women (or whatever categories you fit into) does not mean they know you. Think about how you cannot possibly represent or be responsible for everyone who belongs to a group you also belong to. The same is true for every individual in every type of group.

Groupthink and Group Polarization: When Everyone Jumps Off the Cliff

Though most in-groups initially form around one or a few shared characteristics, group members tend to become more like one another in areas unrelated to their initial commonality. Once you’ve identified yourself with a group, you have more affinity for those in your group and you will accept advice and opinions from them more readily than you would accept that same advice or opinion from an outside source.

Once I was at a prayer meeting for young moms. One of the women was telling a friend—in between prayers, of course—that she had found a coupon code for $2 off a car wash at Soft Suds. Somehow a few other women overheard, and suddenly all of us in the room were clamoring for the $2 coupon code, myself included.

The weird thing is, I hardly ever get my car washed. I don’t care about my car being clean. Soft Suds was not close to my house or anywhere I normally go. I rarely remember to use coupons. But somehow, because these women with whom I strongly identified thought it was very important to get that coupon code, I began to think it was very important to get that coupon code.

This phenomenon often gets labeled peer pressure, and it is that. But it’s more than that. What also happened that evening is that we all subconsciously filed away a mental note that Soft Suds was a good car wash, not bothering to do any sort of research about which car washes in town were the best or fastest or least expensive. The next time car washes came up in conversation, you can bet each of us would be more likely to defend Soft Suds over any other car wash, for the simple reason that our friend had promoted it.

Doing things just because your friends do them is also called “groupthink.” We like going with the flow, we like fitting in. It’s easier, it’s less risky, it makes us more confident in ourselves. So we adapt the beliefs and practices of others in our group, even when they’re not the best beliefs or practices and even though we might choose something different if we were acting independently. Groupthink often leads to polarization—a group becoming more extreme over time.

The danger with groupthink is that it can lead to bad decision making. In the prayer group situation, if I had happened to know of a coupon for a different car wash, or of a car wash that was less expensive to start with and still just as good, I probably wouldn’t have said anything. I wouldn’t have wanted to rain on anyone’s parade. I may have even begun to doubt what I knew about local car washes.

Studies have shown that, when people hold a belief that differs from the prevailing belief in their group, they are overwhelmingly more likely to change their belief in order to align with their group rather than to act differently than other group members to stay true to their belief. This idea was most famously tested by Solomon Asch in the 1950s in his conformity experiment and has been studied in many different contexts with many different types of studies since then. My online gamer friend claims that if you are someone who does not change your beliefs in order to fit in to your group, you are in a tiny minority—2% of people. I can’t find a source to corroborate that, though.

It’s not a big problem if a small number of moms in Midland, Texas, hold an ill-informed view about which car wash is the best. However, this groupthink phenomenon occurs everywhere, all the time, in all sorts of groups, with much higher stakes.

Back in 2001, someone at Enron should have said, “Hey, maybe we should quit telling people we’ve made money that we haven’t actually made.” But no one wanted to be that guy. No one wanted to be the traitor who was disloyal to the company or the weak link casting shadows on their “we are brilliant and invincible” philosophy.

Challenging a belief held by a group you identify with is incredibly risky, especially if it’s a group you consider core to your identity, such as religion, profession, or gender. In my world, the stakes are in social currency only. In some worlds, the stakes are life or death.

Those Who March to Their Own Beat

You may be thinking, “I don’t do that. I don’t like doing what other people do. I march to my own beat, I take the road less traveled.” This is more common in individualistic western cultures than in eastern cultures. Still, no one is immune to social identity theory. You have actually joined an in-group that draws its sense of worth from being different.

“Those suckers who are always trying to fit in, I’m not like them. I hate Pumpkin Spice Lattes AND Taylor Swift.” Most likely, though, you have managed to find a few people with whom you can identify, sympathize, and make fun of all the people who need be in a group to feel good about themselves.

Another version of this mindset is what I call the “narrow gate” paradox.

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Regardless of what Jesus meant by those words, what we humans tend to do is claim this passage when we are doing something people do not approve of or agree with, then forget all about it when we are making lots of new friends, growing our businesses, gaining new church members, or rounding up a large following on social media. Then we start talking about Jeremiah 29:11 and how the Lord is expanding our territories and blessing our work (see also: Duck Dynasty). We never consider that our own broad road might be leading to destruction.

The narrow gate paradox hearkens back to that internal/external attribution I talked about earlier. If we’re not doing what everyone else is, it’s because they are fools. If we’re doing what everyone else is, it’s because we’re doing something right.

So, Why Are Most People Idiots?

Because I am not. I cannot function in life if I constantly believe I am wrong, inferior, dangerous, lazy, or foolish. Whether it’s for survival, self-esteem, or some combination of both, I have a deep-seated need to make sure I am on the right team. Yet I am different from the people around me in so many ways. They say and do things that make me feel annoyed, confused, and threatened. Someone is the problem here. It’s not me, so it must be them.

I do not mean to imply that there is no such thing as right and wrong or that all differences between people are imagined. Right and wrong absolutely exist, there are better and worse ways of doing things, and getting along just for the sake of getting along is a paltry goal for humankind.

My point is that the way we perceive our differences is often far from accurate because of our need to be part of the in-group. These inaccurate perceptions keep us from solving real problems in effective ways. They keep us from learning and growing. They keep us from valuable relationships and in a constant state of defensiveness.

Beyond Grass-Fed Beef

My examples about food, parenthood, church, and school are sounding tired, I know. I originally included examples outside of my experience, about bartending and corporate jobs and such, but they felt hollow and artificial. It seemed important to stick with what I know, both for the sake of credibility and to show that I am implicating myself before anyone else.

But you are a smart person. You can overlay your own experiences onto these concepts and see how they have played out in your life. That is the first, critical step: recognizing these social identification phenomena and admitting that you are not immune to them.

The next step is noticing where these habits have harmed yourself or others and beginning to make changes. For me, this has taken a few different forms:

1. Listening longer before forming an opinion. Not disinterested or skeptical listening, but listening in a sincere way, trying hard to see things from the other person’s perspective. In his powerful article, “Keeping Our Love On In a Climate of Fear,” relationship expert Danny Silk says, “The heart of love says, ‘I will pursue connection with you even when we disagree.’” Fully hearing someone out does not mean you are signing your soul away to their ideology. It does mean you are showing them you value them and it has the added bonus of teaching you something you did not know before.

2. Admitting I am wrong. This is so unbelievably hard. It’s especially hard if you have not made a habit of it, but even once you have, it’s a fresh sting every time. While writing this article, I have pressed Backspace more than any other key. I think I know something, so I write it, then go dig up the source I got it from, realize what I said wasn’t quite right, and have to totally rethink what I am claiming. Living this way can be frustrating, but I am learning that it is vital to being a trustworthy person and maintaining good rapport with people I care about.

3. Holding the tension between two seemingly opposing viewpoints long enough to find that sweet spot where they converge. Nothing is as simple as it seems at first blush. Nothing is as simple as we teach our children it is. Early in their development, children need things to be black or white, bad guys or good guys, this or that—not both. As we mature, we are able to make sense of increasingly complex situations that are not easily divided into just two categories. Even for adults, it can be scary not to have all the lines firmly drawn. But I would rather work with blurred lines than plant myself firmly on the wrong side of an incorrectly drawn line.

Though we can’t make ourselves stop subconsciously forming in-groups and out-groups, we can override those tendencies. Silk says, “We are all powerful people who can learn to stop ourselves when we start to react with anger or avoidance and practice emotional awareness.”

Neurobiology is showing that we feel more attracted to people when we understand their emotions better. Even though it’s biological, it’s not unchangeable. Neuroplasticity is the ability for brain functioning to change over time. We can put in the man-hours it takes to better understand people we don’t understand, and in turn, be able to connect better with them.

A third theory about the reason for in-group formation is the “normative theory.” That is to say, we do it simply because it’s what we have seen done. It’s a massive, worldwide habit. The beautiful thing about habits is that they can be changed.

Up Next: A Much, Much More Controversial Post

Thus far, the social groups I have given as examples have been innocuous: parents vs. nonparents, healthy eaters vs. nonhealthy eaters, and so on. Mentioning these types of groups does not elicit incredibly strong emotional responses because they are not fixed. People can move across, between, and among these groups fairly easily, so it’s not a huge leap to identify with the other side.

Things really get dicey when we start talking about groups such as race, religion, theology, class, gender, ethnicity, or political party. These types of groups are much more complicated because they are fixed (or semi-fixed) and they are more readily obvious. Furthermore, the views we hold about these groups are often subconscious and membership in them is often involuntary.

You drive a minivan but you don’t want to be pegged as a minivan person? Fine, sell your minivan and buy an SUV. But you are Asian and you don’t want to be pegged as an Asian? Too bad. You are totally at the mercy of the perceptions everyone around you has regarding Asians, whether those perceptions are well informed or not. Your membership in the Asian group is fixed, involuntary, and readily obvious to others, and others’ perceptions about Asians are likely subconscious.

Productive discussions about class, race, and religion—all those highly charged issues—are made exponentially more difficult by the power of our in-group and out-group mentalities. These important topics strike at the core of people’s identities. They beg to be handled patiently, thoroughly, and graciously. What most often happens instead, though, is that they are discussed with little more objective than to bolster our own side and take down the opposition. Discussions are defensive and destructive, and we all suffer from the fallout.

I said earlier that getting along for the sake of getting along is a paltry goal for humankind, and I stand by that. God has demonstrated Himself so beautifully throughout history in such a rich diversity of class, race, gender, language, geography, lifestyle, family structure, and culture. In God’s kingdom, differences are not to be shamed, hushed, or nullified, but celebrated. When we view our differences this way, learning to connect with people we might not naturally connect with, we see a fuller, deeper, wider picture of who God is.

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