Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / PREMIUM: "In-Groups & Out-Groups" with social psychologist Jolanda Jetten

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PREMIUM: "In-Groups & Out-Groups" with social psychologist Jolanda Jetten · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get our humans! Welcome to the Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas. Here's a dangerous idea
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  for you. Western civilization, liberal democracy and your place in it, indeed your life, will
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  thrive or fail based not on the actions of individual human beings, but on the behavior
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  of groups. The way we think about ourselves inside a group, why we kick people out of
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  a group, who gets to have high status within our groups, that really everything is going
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  on in the world can be boiled down to the way groups form their boundaries and the way
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  groups interact with each other.
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  Yolanda Jetten is a professor of social psychology at the University of Queensland and she is
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  an expert on the psychology of inclusion and exclusion how groups form, how groups form
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  on social media, how groups form in the real world, how groups conceive of themselves
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  with regards to immigration and nativism. This was a fascinating chat, I hope you enjoy
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  it as much as I did, the one and only professor Yolanda Jetten.
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  If you think about it, everything that we do is often with others, other in groups or
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  with friends, with family members. So the interesting thing is that if we, even if I would
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  have to introduce myself, I often do that by talking about the groups that I belong
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  to, or the categories that I belong to, female and Dutch, I'm an academic, a psychologist.
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  So these are the sports teams that I follow, etc. So exactly where I stand, you never
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  say, hey, I'm an individual who has these traits, so completely devoid of context.
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  When I find that fascinating, that we think of ourselves as unique individuals, but in
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  many ways, we're simply the product of the groups to which we belong. And for each of
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  us, that's of course a very unique constellation of groups, but often we talk about comparing
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  the groups that we belong to. Oh, yeah, you're also living in that city, or what's up
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  up? What, what, you know, you always sort of connect with others by comparing the groups
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  to which you belong. And I find that a fascinating content.
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  And you mentioned sport. So I guess there are ways in which we invent groups for ourselves.
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  You know, if you're a male or a female, that might be a group that you're born into,
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  although increasingly not so, if you're choosing to identify as something, somewhere else
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  on the gender spectrum. But is there something inside us that drives us to try to find ways
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  of categorizing ourselves? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, anything can be the basis of
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  categorization, you could say, right? Could be the color of eyes, whether we have long
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  hair, short hair, whether we tall or short, what kind of bodies of favorite color, you
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  know, they have to people who love red and the people who love green or even, you know,
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  you have to dog lovers and a cat lovers. And we really attribute deep meaning to that
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  that these are different categories. You could completely different person if you're a cat
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  person or dog person, which is interesting how we not only categorize, but also seek a
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  deeper meaning to all of that. We also judge whether or not other people care about
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  particular groupings. I mean, when you say what's your favorite color or are you a dog
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  person or a cat person, if you're a 15 year old on your first date, those are very appropriate
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  questions. If you're dating and you're in your 30s and you're on your first date,
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  someone who you've met on Tinder says, what's your favorite color? You're going to roll
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  your eyes a bit because that's not a sophisticated way of thinking about the way that we ought to
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  group ourselves. Is that fair? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. That means that you're not quite
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  aware of what other relevance categorizations for a relationship, right? For a relationship
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  you would want to know, well, that political orientation, you would want to know what
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  they do for for living. You want to understand education, their interest, their hobbies,
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  the way they want to spend their free time. So just it's different categories become salient
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  to us, depending on the aims that we have. So if it is indeed about checking out someone
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  else for an intimate relationship, you're interested in very different categorizations.
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  And does the libertarian instinct in the West, the desire to a kind of a universalist, individualist
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  attitude towards human rights and thinking about ourselves all as being fundamentally equal?
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  Is that run against what you're talking about or is that it's own kind of grouping? What
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  do you mean they don't? Sorry. Well, I suppose in the past or in traditional societies, we
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  were very focused on tribes and we were very focused on belonging and community and hierarchy.
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  And in the past couple of hundred years in the West post enlightenment, there is a strain
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  of thought that says we should treat everybody equally. We didn't see the color of people's
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  skin, we are first and foremost individuals and we are unleashing the individual in the
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  face of the coercion of the state or the community or the tribe or the society. And I wonder
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  how that fits into this picture. I would actually argue the opposite. I would say that yes,
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  we see each other as individuals, but we always are very aware of the features of the
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  categories that the other person belongs to in terms of race, age, gender, all of those
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  things. But not only that, in all of those comparisons we're thinking about, what is the
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  status of that category relative to my own? It's always about comparisons. Is it an upward
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  comparison for me or is it a downward comparison? So a status differences play a very important
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  role there. In that sense, it's not any different from comparisons you make with sports
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  teams, right? You want to know in the whole league, where does the other team stands? And
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  that determines, then I'll see your behavior. Right. And is it status within the tribe or between
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  tribes? Between, but also within, right? So we've done quite a bit of work where we look
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  actually, you know, you have people who are really high status within the tribe. Well, their
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  behavior is very different from peripheral members in the tribe. It's actually interesting
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  because you can predict fairly easily the behavior of someone who's high status in a tribe,
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  but it's very hard to predict the behavior of someone who's peripheral. Sometimes people
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  at the periphery, they are the ones who bail out the first, right? So the fair weather fans,
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  you know, my team has lost so therefore, yeah, you know, I'm going to abandon them. So the
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  first one's to leave, but at other times we find that they're the ones who are most loyal to
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  the group are also really working hard to gain more respect within the group. They want to get in.
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  Yeah, they want to get in. So it's very interesting interplay between, you know, can I actually get a
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  better position in this group and strategic assessments of whether that's possible or not to
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  determine steveavia? Does the likelihood of their bailing on the tribe not correlate to their
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  status in other tribes? In other words, you're more likely to leave if you know that you can go
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  somewhere else? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you have other options, then you may sort of compare,
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  well, where do I want to be? Where is it best for me to go right now? So choice is a very important
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  predictor there to, yeah. And you said that it's quite easy to predict the behavior of people who
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  find themselves at the top of a hierarchy within a tribe. But what are those expected behaviors?
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  Look, we do know that people at the top of the hierarchy within the tribe. Well, they're most
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  likely the leaders. They are more likely to be able to influence the attitudes and behavior of
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  others. They're also setting the norms. What is appropriate behavior in a group? What's not?
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  So in many ways, their behavior is almost always sort of reflective of what are the concerns of
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  the group. So if you understand what the group wants to do, then you also understand what the
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  high status person, what their motivations are and what their concerns are. How much are they
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  leading from behind and interpreting the wishes of the group in order to stay on top and how
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  much freedom do they have to actually create a new path? Well, I think it's interesting because
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  I wouldn't even argue that the best leader is someone who actually best encapsules what the rest
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  of the group wants. It's really a leader is a good follower following what others want. Actually,
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  there's also good evidence that the more you're a leader who just sort of does whatever comes up
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  in my mind without ever sort of checking with others, whether that's what they want to. Well,
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  then that is probably a likely recipe for disaster. That's not a good way to go.
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  How do you think about what social media is doing to this dynamic of people being in and out of
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  groups? I think it makes it more complex. It makes it also
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  harder for people to navigate because they may feel that they have options going online to
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  join groups, but other real options. That's one of the issues. We know that the social world of
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  people, the face-to-face world, the real world that we live in is still the best predictor of
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  many outcomes that we have, our well-being, etc. But we can actually navigate the online world
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  and think that that's the same and it's actually not. It may give us the false idea that we can
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  well, we can be someone in that online world that is actually practically impossible.
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  Or it holds a promise that we can join particular groups that are actually in reality not possible
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  fast to grow. We can live our life online that is pretty disconnected from the realities on the ground
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  and sometimes that's when there's attention there or people just don't quite know where they stand
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  and it can be anxiety-provoking. What do you mean you're under that we are not going to get the
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  payoff that we expect when we join an online group because there are lots of stories of someone
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  who has some weird fixation on model trains and finds a community of people in different cities and
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  suddenly feels validated or someone with a minority sexuality or something like that. They seem to
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  get real payoff. Absolutely and I think online support groups can be really, we know that that can
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  be a real boost for people's well-being and it's great outcomes that you can find there.
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  But that is the example you're giving is indeed one where I can imagine yes that's great. You
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  find other people like you and there is a positive vibe there. You share information that's
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  incredibly valuable. Same if you actually have an illness, you actually find other people who
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  support you and go through very similar sort of issues. But we also know for instance that
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  the number of Facebook friends that you have is either not a predictor of your well-being
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  or it's actually a negative predictor of your well-being and more that people actually I'm talking
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  about extremes here. The more that people actually are not living the real life but living their
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  life online that is associated with feelings of loneliness and then also depression and poor mental
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  health. What's the psychological phenomenon there? What's happening? There is something about
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  interacting with people face to face being part of a group that can do things with other people
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  and having that sort of shared enjoyment that is so much richer and that you could even say
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  evolutionary that's the thing we thrive on. And online except for the examples we just talked about
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  often it's way poorer you know at least my real friends that are really there for me when I'm
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  having sort of massive issue right now can I call them what probably not right because there are
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  these concerns about these are not real friendships this is not that deep connection that I'm looking for.
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  I mean it strikes me that there may also be an illusion of a group online but what is actually
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  happening is you have a bunch of individuals who are engaging with each other when I think about
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  the way that most conversations take place in a group chat for example it's actually an individual
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  asserting their individuality rather than a kind of collective flow state that you can get when
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  you're all together at a pub. Yeah yeah and it is often on one particular topic that you have a shared
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  interest but outside of that you probably have very little in common and there's also not the
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  space online to really explore the way that you would do it with a friend you go out with them you
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  really understand their opinion on a hundred thousand different topics so you get to know them and
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  there is something there it is also about doing things together that seems to be incredibly important
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  not just talking but also just doing things without talking you could say. Like what? Sports or just
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  just all sorts of hobbies where you're just in a group often sort of even being in a room together
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  with people doing yoga things like that where you just know well we're all we're not talking we're
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  all on our own in our own little world but at the same time it's it's it has a bonus it does
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  something positive to people's well-being. You're reminding me of movie theaters and you know
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  cinemas and plays and concerts and things like that that there's this ineffable thing like I hear
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  the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world talk about a future in which everyone's going to be able to attend
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  the same event remotely by wearing a virtual reality headset for example in alone in their room
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  and we'll get the same psychological payoff as if they were actually at the area on a grand
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  day concert. Are you do you buy that or are you skeptical? I'm very skeptical of that I I think you
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  know if I am still willing to go to stadium and to either watch a band or you know to go and watch
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  a game and actually I can see far less what's going on in on the field I can't have the repeats
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  in many ways I'm less comfortable than sitting at home on a couch but still we do those things
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  because we want to be out there we want to be in a crowd and we sort of even physiologically
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  there are good data now to suggest that we're really way more engaged with there and it's important
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  to be there with others that's the the key bit and an empty stadium even if like this doing it
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  all for you is not the same thing as being there with thousands of people. So I'm interested also
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  in how we jostle for hierarchy within our groups and you know I think about the moment when I was
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  on Twitter a lot for example between 2015 and maybe 2022 and there was a clear phenomenon of
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  mob pile ons or cancel culture moments where something would go viral and everybody would start
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  sharing there was a currency of outrage a currency of dispensing justice a currency of sort of
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  social do goodery which was quite contaminated by performative anger and mob like behavior
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  and it almost seemed like there was an incentive towards the most extreme and judgmental person
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  having the highest status within that group and it frankly looked like a bunch of monkeys or chimps
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  in a jostling for hierarchies can you give me a psychological explanation of what's going on
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  when that happens? Well I think aside from the algorithms that also sort of make the more
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  negative or the more emotional the language is that you're using the more that these are being
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  pushed so that's one way we know that that's attention grabbing and of course the platforms all
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  want to push for that that's so it's that is one thing but more generally we do know that negative
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  or extreme views are attention grabbing and you know you may see a hundred things that are neutral
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  and then there's one extreme one and that is the one that sticks in my in your mind so it's not
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  and that's whatever one starts to gravitate towards and why why do we do that why doesn't that
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  person become a pariah? I think because I mean if you look at in a lot of groups what we're trying
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  to figure out is what do we think? What is normative? What do we all agree on? And you can often
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  figure out what is normative by knowing what's not normative, what's Stephen's, what's problematic
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  behavior, right? If we think about if if there is someone committed a crime we're very much like
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  there's a fascination with that. Can we figure out is this wrong? Is this morally wrong?
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  To what extent should this person be punished for that? And is a large literature that suggests
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  that by us debating that we figure out where the boundaries are? What is okay behavior and what
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  is not okay? It's less about of course it's about the person what they've done but it's very much
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  also about the group. Work that we've done in the past is very much looking at the function of gossip,
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  similar sort of process here. If we gossip about someone who's done something wrong that is you know
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  it's it's basically what we're doing is if the two of us would gossip about a third person we're
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  really trying to figure out are we an agreement about what is normative and what's not normative?
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  Where do we think the boundary is? And the more we agree the better the closer we feel the more we
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  feel like yeah I feel validated I feel that I understand the world better because so in a basic
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  basically my argument would be that Twitter and social media response is in the same way
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  us all condemning that one outlier with extreme views is also helping us to understand where we
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  stand right so it's I actually see it as a positive process focus on the negative that that
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  crazy lunatic who says these outrageous things but it also helps me to understand where I stand
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  and my place in the world more generally and who I who I relate to who agrees with me and who's
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  my in group therefore and who is the out group? That's a very generous way of interpreting it
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  because surely there's also a negative violence to what's going on psychologically in the sense
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  that I suspect there's a lot of noticing the bully and wanting to make sure that you're on the
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  right side of the bully's decrees is there not like so the person who is most most visibly outraged
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  and is setting the terms of the you know the normative terms as tightly and strictly as possible
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  you don't want to get in their line of fire and you don't want the mob to pile onto you so you
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  want to make sure that you're on the correct side of the the line and that you remain in the in
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  group so you can sometimes contort yourself into positions you would not otherwise hold or a
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  demeanor that you would not otherwise endorse in order to make sure that you don't end up one of
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  these poor bastards who are on the outside yeah yeah absolutely look there's something scary
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  there about it but the good thing is you know exactly what you should not do right you should know
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  exactly how to stay safe and how to yeah so there is also something positive for you once you
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  understand all right so that's wrong this is okay all right I now know what to do and that gives
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  you some sort of security sort of certainty I mean maybe but maybe maybe you'll under the rules
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  keep shifting so fast that you don't have a foot to stand on which I think is part of the disorientation
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  that people feel over the past five or ten years they don't know what the anything they say could
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  be misinterpreted or they might you know be subjected to a mob pile and they might end up getting
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  fired for saying the wrong thing because HR got a complaint about something that didn't even
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  realize was offensive to somebody it's quite destabilizing when the groups edges are that
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  the malleable I absolutely agree and I'm giving a very simple example here but very often
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  the multiple angles to the issues that we discuss and as you say it's shifting it's nuanced
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  and very often these discussions are not done in a very nuanced way it is really the one with
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  the loudest voice and most power who determines what's okay and what's not I don't but yeah so
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  certainly I agree with you that in reality it doesn't play out as nicely as that very often and
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  sometimes the people in positions of power are cloaking themselves in a noble desire to uplift
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  traditionally marginalized voices right I mean you know a lot of the ways in which people have
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  found themselves getting into trouble at least recently during the sort of social justice moment
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  that the left has found itself in in the past ten years is not because a particular minority
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  person criticized them but because a self-appointed group of people from academia or in the media
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  or online have taken it upon themselves to enforce new norms on behalf of other people and get
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  outraged on behalf of other people yeah I certainly think that there it depends on very much
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  on the topic of course it depends very much on the the strategy or the aims that you're trying to
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  achieve what is possible and what's not right my examples were very straightforward but I understand
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  that yeah there's a difficult terrain to navigate and particularly online when you are not in a
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  context where you understand everyone who's part of the debate where they stand right so it makes
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  a very tricky and if you speak up yes there will you will be attacked from multiple sides for
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  different reasons something I've experienced many times myself okay that's one of the reasons why
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  I don't even go there expressing my opinion it's just it's one of the liabilities of talking a lot
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  about a lot of provocative issues so that the conservative or especially the religious conservative
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  will hear this and say this is why we need a more fundamental and enduring grounding for our norms
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  and that we live in a moment where we've lost any kind of tether to tradition community family
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  maybe church which provided us with these certainties and these contexts for what our community
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  meant and what membership meant what do you make of that well because it's often very restrictive
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  norms right it is it's it's I think sometimes it's problematic to have these very hard boundaries
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  that are non-negotiable they're not really sort of driven by what is what do we think is the best for
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  everyone it is almost a doctrine it's sort of imposed and it can be for some people
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  reassuring right because you know exactly where the boundaries are makes your life very simple
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  and easy to to navigate you know exactly what to do and what not to do and there can be an appeal
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  in that for some people but it is indeed restrictive and it is also in a sense it is exclusionary
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  of many people who are not wanting to live the lifestyle that's a sort of cold for but I
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  these religious groups or sort of minority groups so it's but at the same time what we're looking at
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  sometimes if you have a group where it is also black and white we do see that for some people in
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  particular who have never had certain certainties or that that can have an appeal you think even
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  of cults things like that we're so clear you're you know all you have to do is just bluntly follow
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  the leader they will do the thinking for you you lose your individuality it's not you know you just
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  just go with the flow so there is something positive about that but of course it has a huge price
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  in a sense that you also have given up your voice and your ability to protest or to say hey
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  but I want to do something else today right so I think actually something else or can I actually
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  say that I don't agree with what what is being said right now so there is a big price to pay for
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  that but what I'm also interested in though is that if you go along with a group that you care
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  about you identify with that it can also be validating and it's we have lots of evidence that
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  people feel very positive about that it's reassuring that the world is predictable and there's
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  someone actually who makes the decisions for me so there is that too again cults are extreme
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  examples of that but yeah so going out there on your own and saying no no I'm happy to have all
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  of these debates and I'm happy to I don't know where I belong I I don't quite know where my
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  group is yet I'm having all of these chats can also be very stressful and well a difficult
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  journey. Stressful and difficult and exciting I mean I think we all have been young and trying
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  to find our feet and what is my tribe who am I what I really believe what I really belong
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  even it reminds me of the armish who go away for a year you know they send the they send young
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  armished people out into the world for a year to not obey armished precepts and then it
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  includes to come back yeah or or not so that they can choose so they can make an informed choice
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  about remaining within the community rather than simply being coisted against their will.
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  Have we lost something though I mean I understand as I'm not a conservative and I'm not a
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  religious person and I can't say that I don't feel like we have not done a sufficiently good job
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  in the secular world of finding a context for big life events and a way to mandate community
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  that there's probably something about going to church on the weekend or Moscow synagogue and
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  that there's something about having a you know a preset series of rules and communal behaviors
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  that take place when you get married or have a birth or have a death or whatever it is and that
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  was sort of trying to reinvent our sense of community and life on the fly can you envision
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  a secular version of that or am I looking in the wrong place? No I think you're absolutely right
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  I think we all are on our own journey trying to find the groups that work for us that are
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  meaningful for us right and in the past that may be given you know from birth you would simply
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  find yourself in particular groups and these are your groups for the rest of your life no choice in
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  that so now we live in a more complicated world where you have to find your own groups that you
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  belong to that are meaningful to you that you identify with and that can be a very different
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  difficult journey right and not all groups work for you or or well so it is way more difficult
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  now I would say than it was in the past but we also do know that if people manage to find
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  that constellation of groups that works for them and that provides them with that meaning and anchor
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  that they can use in life that that is directly predictive of well-being and well satisfaction
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  with life and how do you navigate countries like Australia and the United States where the
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  multiplicity of groups is explicit to the purpose of the country that they are multicultural multi-ethnic
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  multi-religious countries that have no blood and soil tradition other than indigenous people I
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  suppose but that are really part of the identity of being and Australian is that you come from a
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  multicultural country where more than half the population has arrived since the Second World War
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  and we all have our different groups working together does that form its own sort of meta community
• 29:42
  in a way a community of communities or how does that function yeah yeah yeah if you grow up in a
• 29:49
  community that is already very diverse right and you belong and that that then also comes together
• 29:54
  with a sort of a normative system of we value diversity it's who we are right so that then also
• 30:02
  sort of helps you further to define who you are if you belong to a group that really values
• 30:08
  diversity and has a lot of diversity that shapes you as an individual in that right that that forms
• 30:15
  you so in that sense yeah the being growing up in a multicultural society shapes your identity
• 30:24
  in a different way then if you grow up in a society where there's less diversity you could say
• 30:31
  and so as a social psychologist what do you see as the preconditions for the breakdown of that
• 30:36
  identity because when I was growing up 20 years ago there was not a phenomenon as far as I was
• 30:42
  aware of white you know white right wing xenophobic nationalism that had much currency anywhere
• 30:51
  now there are podcasts all over the place and you know groups and Donald Trump and you know
• 30:56
  the far right in Europe and Nigel Farage and Brexit where it's much more of a the AFD in Germany
• 31:03
  much more of a viable phenomenon for white traditionalists to express their own identity of that
• 31:11
  group in a way that they didn't a generation ago yeah that's a big question that's a big question
• 31:22
  got a humans well if you've listened to this much of the episode then you must enjoy it
• 31:26
  presumably unless you're just listening from massacistic reasons so you should listen to the
• 31:30
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• 32:01
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• 32:32
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• 32:42
  take care