In Summary
- If the individual hurt or grieving does not fall into a group that you share affinity with, then your brain does not react to their suffering. Researchers call the differences in-group reactions versus out-group reactions.
- Often times religion and ethnicity act as some of the deepest labels a person may give to themselves. Classifiable identities become stronger when a difficult entry process exists, such as rite of passage rituals in among ethnic groups or perceived threats from outsiders.
- World famous psychologist David Eagleman researches on brain scans that focus on regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and others, that process empathy.
As social mammals, humans possess strong primordial desires to group with others. Even all but the most extreme introverts crave interpersonal social contact and group identification. Throughout recorded history, humans identify with others largely based on ethnicity, religion, language, and geographic proximity.
Over time, additional psychological bonds formed around controllable life characteristics such as trade or craft, social class, political affiliations, nationality, and education as well as deeper uncontrollable realities including gender, age, sexual orientation, health, and size.
Please pause for a moment and contemplate what classifications run deep inside you? Who are you at your inner core? You likely draw your identity as you compare yourself to others and lump yourself into other congregants of people.
Do you most strongly identify as a Kenyan? Or possibly identify strongly with religion as Christian, Free Thinker, Muslim, or Hindu? How about classifying most as a banker, accountant, doctor, or lawyer? Maybe these nationality, religion, and profession identifiers most resonate with your core inner identity.
Often times religion and ethnicity act as some of the deepest labels a person may give to themselves. Classifiable identities become stronger when a difficult entry process exists, such as rite of passage rituals in among ethnic groups or perceived threats from outsiders.
We know from decades of research that persecuted groups often find strong solidarity with each other. Judaism persisted and thrived despite millennia of hostile pressure from governments, other religions, and majority cultures.
Psychological connection
The deeper the psychological connection to a label, then the stronger empathy one feels for other members of the same group. Empathy encompasses understanding and feeling another individual’s conditional realities from their perspective, not one’s own. Empathy makes social interactions deeper and more meaningful when people put themselves in each other’s shoes.
We seek out friendships with more empathic companions and jobs with bosses who show more empathy. When in crisis we desire others to view us with compassionate sympathy and we convince ourselves that we act in understanding ways to those we love. Empathy serves as the emotional currency of our social societies.
Given our preference to surround ourselves with sympathetic people, sometimes glaring examples of uncompassionate actions shock our conscience.
Horror grips us when the occasional Caucasian American police officer shoots an unarmed person of African origin, when Kenyan post-election violence pits a few neighbours against neighbours, or when intermittent Europeans attack migrants.
Here is the underlying depressing fact about our own psychology: we are deeply preferential. Eminent Stanford University psychologist Albert Bandura laid down much of the groundwork in understanding our preferences for and indifferences against people in and out of our grouping labels.
World famous psychologist David Eagleman researches on brain scans that focus on regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and others, that process empathy.
If you see a person agonize and you also believe that the individual is in a group label to which you subscribe to, then parts of your brain that process empathy reacts when you see them suffering.
