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When we’re assessing the legitimacy, goodness, and even relevance of an idea, ideology, or group of people, there is a potent collection of cognitive lenses influencing our perception of these things.
This is true regardless of what we’re considering, who we happen to be, and what sorts of actions or inactions we’re inclined to take as a result of our thus-filtered perceptual processes.
We needn’t be automatons to succumb to groupthink. We needn’t be bigots to thoughtlessly adopt assumptions about other people that aren’t representative of who they actually are.
The term “groupthink” refers to a collection of psychological phenomenon that engender a subconscious tendency to align our thinking and actions with those of the tribe to which we most strongly affiliate—often leading us to favor consensus and in-group harmony over uncomfortable, even contradictory evidence or independent judgement.
Which is a fancy way of saying we often and quite subconsciously bend our opinions and actions so that they are similar to those of other people in the groups to which we belong or believe ourselves to belong.
Businesses often harness this psychological tendency to sell us stuff, playing on our perceived group affiliations to imply that their product, their service, is what other people who are like us buy and use and wear and eat.
Groups themselves make use of this tendency, as well, implying or outright saying that good members of the group do specific things, participate in certain rituals, dress or act or live a particular way. In some cases, this message is delivered indirectly, by using other groups as a contrast.
Don’t be a boring corporate drone, be an open-minded, creative person. This product is for non-drones.
That other group wants to take away your rights, but we are in favor of defending your rights. Join our group if you like freedom.
These clothes are for people who are young, cool, and attractive. If you’re not that, don’t wear our clothes.
Group-adherence guidance is often implied rather than overtly stated. This product/ideology/tribe isn’t for some people, therefore, if you don’t want to be excluded, bend your self-perception so that you fit within this shape we’ve drawn. Adopt our philosophy and way of doing things and you’re in.
Being outside of a particular group, though, can also be a way of demonstrating that you’re in another group.
Many companies and groups identify as being anti-establishment, carving out a tribal template that implies anyone who adopts it is not part of the monolithic, faceless mass that makes up a theoretical, central, mainstream way of thinking and being.
By definition, however, these brands tend—or aspire—to be their own type of establishment; to position themselves as outsiders while influencing the thoughts and actions of as many people as possible.
Groupthink can make us less likely to question our tribal dogmas, and less inclined to do anything that might rock the boat or imply we are “bad” by the standards of our chosen or inherited groups.
Over time, this fear of ostracism can result in tribal stagnation: no one wanting to risk their affiliation to address even blindingly obvious flaws or hypocrisies.
It can also lead to what’s called “in-group favoritism,” which is a positive bias toward people who are part of our perceived group, and a negative bias against those who are not part of our perceived group.
This type of favoritism manifests as a subconscious tendency to put our mental thumbs on the scale when weighing the value, goodness, productivity, intelligence, looks, or whatever other trait of those within our group versus those who are not.
If we’re part of a religious organization, we might look down on those who are not part of the same cadre.
If we use a particularly well-branded type of smartphone, we might look down on other smartphone brands, and those who use them.
If we are part of a racial or national or political identity group, we might be more inclined to judge those who we perceive to be part of the same group positively, while being more likely to be negatively biased against those who are not in our tribe.
Importantly, this is not a reference to overt sexism, racism, militant nationalism, or other types of prejudice.
This is something all of us do, to greater or lesser degrees, when assessing people, ideas, products, and everything else.
We tend to be more favorably inclined toward people who are part of our perceived tribe, and the ideas they present, while being relatively less positively inclined toward those who are outsiders.
The degree to which this is the case varies from person to person and group to group, and research on the matter implies that, perhaps unsurprisingly, if our tribe is oriented against another tribe—a rival political party, for instance—this subconscious negative bias will be more dramatic, as well.
Whether we realize it or not, then, our perceived affiliations to groups influence our assessment of the world, ourselves, and other people.
Part of what leads to this tendency, it’s thought, it a cognitive bias called the “false consensus effect,” which says that we tend to assume a broader consensus about our ideas, beliefs, and biases than actually exists.
This bias is thought to be powered, in part, by our tribal affiliations.
Because we tend to surround ourselves with people who have similar beliefs, and because we tend to seek out informational inputs that reaffirm our existing beliefs about the world—news and other types of media that share our personal editorial slant—it makes sense that we might assume that a huge chunk of the population sees things as we see things; many of our inputs reflect our perceptions and biases right back at us.
We also, as humans, tend toward what’s called “implicit stereotyping,” which is the unconscious tendency to imbue those who belong to particular groups with specific attributes based on their group affiliation, not evidence we have about the individual.
We might assume everyone who belongs to a liberal political organization, then, is a certain type of person, who does certain things and behaves in certain ways.
We might assume that everyone who was born in a particular country adheres to certain templates, mores, and tendencies.
We might assume that all protestors are a certain way, or all police officers are a certain way: logic dictates that this can’t possibly be the case, but our knee-jerk, heuristic, decision-making faculties are often hijacked by these convenient assumptions, which allows us to batch perceived Others into a more seemingly comprehensible collective, and to generalize in a way that justifies our opinion about and actions against people in that group—all based on often ill-informed, superficial assumptions about who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing.
Categorizations of this kind can lead to absolutely monstrous behavior in otherwise decent human beings, but it can also slowly change our perception of other peoples’ behavior, which, thus tweaked, can go on to influence how we understand the workings of the world, more broadly.
In other words: groupthink and its associated psychology can cause us to make ill-informed decisions in the moment, but it can also warp our inputs over the long-haul, rewiring our neural circuitry so that we are more inclined to package people and ideas into simplified categories.
Our understanding of things, resultantly, becomes more limited, and our biases and actions are more easily justified as the complex, gradated world desaturates into an unrealistic and highly distorted black and white caricature of reality.
It’s unlikely that most of us will ever completely rid ourselves of such subtle, in-built biases.
But we can remind ourselves, in the moment, that such heuristics exist, that our perceptions of people, ideas, and groups are being influenced by them, and to adjust our behaviors accordingly, based on that knowledge.
Enjoying Brain Lenses? You might also enjoy my news analysis podcast, Let’s Know Things.
There’s also a podcast version of Brain Lenses, available at brainlenses.com or wherever you get your podcasts.