Describing Human Flaws with Social Psychology
This list focuses on some unsavoury behaviours that are quite popular throughout society today. No one is immune to them, but some people are able to see where their cognitive reasoning may need a double-take before it’s too late.
Take a look, and have an honest think about whether you see yourself in any of these topics, because I was hoping that by describing these behaviours, others might be able to rethink how they think and act. Even while writing this, the realisation dawned that I’m guilty of most of these things on both a small and large scale.
Prejudice and discrimination
We all should have by now heard these two words being thrown around. A prejudice is an unjustified attitude towards an individual based solely on their involvement in a particular group (gender, race, nationality, preferred sport, anything). Discrimination is when actions are based on those prejudices.
For basically every human, we naturally form prejudices based on past experiences as a quick way of categorising pleasant people from unpleasant people, and along the journey of human evolution, this would have been a good survival tool. Perhaps you could have been able to identify characteristics in someone or something that would influence your survival in either a positive or negative way.
It could have helped you identify who was likely to steal your food, kill your family and so on. But this mechanism can be over-applied, used in the wrong circumstances and on the wrong people. We can even use it to sort people into completely meaningless, arbitrary categories that are misguided and by doing this commit harm towards other people.
This “survival strategy” has been problematic for not just some, but for MANY people’s thought processes. For example: After the 9/11 catastrophe in the U.S.A, many people developed a prejudice towards anyone who looked like they came from a middle-eastern country. These negative prejudices and beliefs of middle-eastern people, and especially of Muslim people, were created when people associated the middle-east with terrorism. Somehow people thought that because a relatively small group of dangerous people were from this area of the world, that therefore ANYONE from there must be dangerous. (You might describe this as ignorance bred by fear).
The reactionary situation can also happen, which I will continue to use the 9/11 example to express: Citizens of strongly Muslim countries hear the heavily anti-Muslim rhetoric of foreign politicians, like in the U.S.A. They are “randomly” searched a lot more in international travel, are even barred from some places and in general are socially punished for being associated with any group that might remind someone of the terrorist stereotype.
How do you think this makes people feel? Keep in mind that the vast, VAST majority of people receiving this treatment have done nothing wrong, and would be sympathetic to the suffering that terrorism brings to anyone, regardless of nationality. Do you think that they are going to be strongly aligned to say, Americans, after experiencing so much discrimination from American politicians, representatives, border patrol agents and media? The initial “anti-terrorist” sentiments that bred discrimination towards Muslim and middle-eastern communities in turn breeds “anti-American” sentiments. Do you see how this spirals out of control?
It’s generalisations like this which lead people to completely misunderstand the reality they are in. Next thing you know, every Muslim entering the US is getting “randomly selected” for security checks at the border. People who aren’t even Muslim or from the middle-east are getting harassed and beaten in streets just for looking they way they do. Many people from one group discriminate against another group of people simply because they generalised everything into an oversimplified category of Middle-Eastern = Dangerous.
Just think about what prejudices you may hold. Are all Asian-looking people really good at maths? Or bad at driving? Are all lower-class people uneducated or lazy? Are all upper-class people overly posh? All of these beliefs about other people you haven’t even met yet are prejudices, and even if you don’t openly act on them, they can direct your actions towards them.
Maybe you are overly surprised to find out that your friend Zhun is an excellent driver, even though you’ve been actively avoiding getting a ride from them. Maybe you haven’t acknowledged someones intelligence, opinion, or even their emotional needs because of a prejudice that you have. While your prejudices may involve ideas of other people, they are actually nothing to do with those other people and EVERYTHING to do with you.
The important thing here is to realise that you do not have all the information when trying to understand the world, so don’t assume things and don’t pretend like you know it all. More than likely, you are going to be wrong if you judge a book by it’s cover, and even more likely to be wrong if you judge a book by what Debbie or Sandy believe to be true about the cover. Notice how these judgements aren’t even made based on the content of the book, but on other peoples ideas about the cover.
Social Identity Theory
Social identity theory describes how people’s sources of pride, self-esteem and personal identity generally come from the social groups to which they belong. Of course it’s healthy to be a part of a community and to socialise, however this can also be a huge flaw in many people when taken too far.
There are some who feel they need to heighten their own self-image by “talking up” their associated group. You may have heard this before:
“MY LOCAL SPORTS TEAM IS BETTER THEN THE NEXT TOWNS SPORTS TEAM BECAUSE IT’S MY SPORTS TEAM. ANYONE WHO DISAGREES IS WRONG AND I WILL FIGHT AND ABUSE THEM”.
A mundane example, I know. However even this type of mentality becomes excessively violent. I have seen a group of “sporting enthusiasts” savagely put a man in hospital because he was wearing the wrong sporting jacket. So f****** what if he supported the Lakers and they supported the Celtics.
As well as improving one’s self-image by promoting the group an individual identifies with (called the in-group), it’s also possible for individuals to improve their self-image and self-esteem by discriminating against other groups (or out-groups), like in the case of extreme patriotism or racism. For example:
AMERICA IS THE BEST! GET OUT OF OUR COUNTRY YOU DIRTY, LAZY FOREIGNERS!!
In this case, the in-group is not only trying to insult an individual who he holds a prejudice against and therefore actually knows nothing about, but is also trying to bolster their own self-esteem by making it seem like America is too good a place for these individuals, and wasn’t already dirty before they arrived.
This model resembles the mentality of the schoolyard bully with self-esteem issues, who feels it necessary to discriminate and degrade others in order to feel confident about themselves. How strange is it that some adults also behave this way?
Your self-esteem and identity need not be based on anything external, whether it’s your religion, nationality, sporting team, or anything else. Your identity as a person comes only from you, so please don’t get sucked into the group mentality, because that can soon change into the mob mentality and before you know it; everything becomes about “us versus them” instead of it being about “all of us, together”.
Self-Serving Attributions and Attribution Theory
We all want to know how and why things happen around us don’t we? Attribution theory considers how we as humans try to determine the reasons for the actions of other people based on our existing understanding of them. This behaviour is a natural function of our social brains and as such doesn’t always follow logical analysis, leading to people occasionally arriving at unrealistic or out-of-touch conclusions. Our attributions tend to be based on our own emotions, motivations and prejudices, giving a tendency for them to be self-serving to our own ideas of the world.
For example: A man who exercises every day and has a good physique, one that he is proud of, sees a heavily overweight woman walking down the street. He may wonder how she became so big, imagining that she is lazy and makes poor health decisions when the reality is that she has a debilitating health problem that prevents her from losing weight. The man didn’t know this of course, but based on his idea of “if you work hard you can get fit”, she isn’t fit because she doesn’t work hard. He has not only incorrectly described her situation, but also found what he believes is “evidence” that his belief is correct.
Now think of how many people shun the homeless and call them “lazy”, “useless” or “stupid”. I’ve met many homeless people who were the opposite of these words, who lost everything due to a series of unfortunate events. Describing a homeless person as useless and lazy without even knowing who they are is an example of a self-serving attribution. Perhaps you don’t want to acknowledge that hard work and determination sometimes isn’t enough to succeed in life, and that it could be you in their position one day.
Cognitive Dissonance
Attribution theory leads on to cognitive dissonance which applies to many arguments where someone may appear to be “closed minded”. Cognitive dissonance refers to when someone is exposed to an idea which is in conflict with one of their own and makes them uncomfortable, forcing them to change a belief, attitude or behaviour in order for these ideas to not conflict with each other. They can of course also dismiss the idea that they hold an incorrect belief in order to protect their own position, avoiding any acknowledgement of being in the wrong.
We humans have a preference to keep the beliefs we hold in harmony, not wanting to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time. Sometimes this leads to what is socially referred to as “closed-mindedness”. Someone considered to be “closed minded” usually changes their behaviour into a defensive one in order to avoid changing a belief they hold. By fighting the conflicting idea and avoiding internalising it (sometimes regardless of evidence given), they maintain harmony in their own belief system, returning to a comfort zone.
Take the gay marriage debate, for example:
Many religious groups opposed allowing homosexuals the same rights as heterosexual couples because such an act would disagree with their own ideas of what is “good”. Since the religious groups view themselves as “righteous followers of god”, and were taught that homosexuals were “evil sinners”, “lust-driven”, or “unholy”, to admit to any kind of equality between the two would require a change in their religious world views which is a lot more difficult than just fighting the conflicting idea.
Of course, gay couples want to get married out of LOVE, not from some evil demonic lust, but if you try telling this to someone with strong, anti-gay, religious ideologies, you will most likely trigger some defensive behaviour.
By disagreeing with the idea of gay rights and condemning it, the opposing group refuse to consider any idea which might compromise their own beliefs, subconsciously altering their attitude to a heightened state of aggression rather than lose harmony between the beliefs they hold.
The human fault here is not wanting to be wrong about something. It is much easier to imagine false evidence that proves your initial views than to accept you are wrong and change how you see the world. We like to think that we know how the world works, and for some of us it’s just too scary admitting that we don’t.
But this is no excuse for not changing our beliefs when confronted with ideas that challenge them.
In order to practice avoiding these behaviors, one must be flexible with their mind and belief, ready to accept new truths should the initial ones be proven wrong. They should try not to describe another persons problems or situation without first getting to know the other person. Don’t follow the herd like a sheep and rely on being part of a group for your personal identity and self-esteem, and don’t assume that everyone from a specific group are all the same whether they be man or woman, black or white, tall or short, thin or fat, religious or atheist.