Friday, September 4, 2015

Social psychology and how we the humans didn't move from the pack mentality

Us v them - it is everywhere: my school - your school, my team - your team, my country - your country and so on.
Henri Tajfel explained this human behavior through social identity theory. In order for us humans to have sense of belonging and value we identify with particular group. Once we do that, we glorify the traits of our own group and demonize or at least look down upon other group.
Once we think we know which group we belong to we start profiling individuals to establish whether they belong to our in group or other out group. In cultural and religious differences that may (and does) escalate in violence. This is, at least to me, one of the better explanations why people do what they do, in this miserable world of ours.
One thing Tajfel didn't tackle is that there is a third, very small group aware of this weakness of ours who will exploit the premise to the maximum and for their own benefit. We the people are still sheep and we dance as somebody else plays. Now, that has to stop!!

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