Variations in Tribalism | Mahzarin Banaji

Video Description

A group’s identity can be determined by the personal characteristics (e.g., white, young, able-bodied, heterosexual), location (e.g., East Coast residents), or interests (e.g., RedSox fandom) of its members. Data from millions of tests and hundreds of thousands of individuals tells us that we automatically favor the groups to which we belong. In this talk, Dr. Banaji reveals why evidence for this implicit group preference is now known to be far stronger than we previously assumed, and why it shows that such implicit tribalism is not only robust, but also acquired almost instantly and with little input. However, as Niels Bohr said, the opposite of a great truth is also true. Implicit preference for one’s own group is muted among members of evaluatively subordinate groups, and she’ll explain why this perverse “system justifying” orientation is also true of human beliefs and social cognition. Her presentation will yield a new understanding of social group relations in modern societies. This talk was part of a Leakey Foundation Survival Symposium entitled, "Our Tribal Nature: Tribalism, Politics, and Evolution." The symposium was held in September 2019 at the Morgan Library in New York. About the speaker: Dr. Mahzarin Banaji is the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University while also serving as the first Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and as the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Chair in Human Dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Banaji studies thinking and feeling as they unfold in a social context, with a focus on mental systems that operate in implicit or unconscious mode. She studies social attitudes and beliefs in adults and children, especially those that have roots in group membership. She explores the implications of her work for questions of individual responsibility and social justice in democratic societies. Her current research interests focus on the origins of social cognition and applications of implicit cognition to improve individual decisions and organizational policies.