Rejecting someone else’s prejudice does not make us immune to our own. Better politics requires standards that apply to allies and opponents alike.
Most of us can recognize tribalism when the other side practices it. We see the excuses for bad behavior, the selective use of facts, the insistence that every problem is somebody else’s fault. We wonder how otherwise reasonable people can believe such things.
Then someone criticizes our side, and we begin explaining.
In my earlier article, “When Tribal Loyalty Overpowers Truth,” I examined how political belonging changes the way we judge evidence. But recognizing that habit in another group—or even leaving that group—does not necessarily change how we think.
We can change our allegiances and carry the same habits with us.
Someone can rightly object to stereotypes about immigrants or city residents while casually stereotyping rural people, Christians or Republicans. A conservative can condemn progressive conformity while demanding unquestioning loyalty to a favored leader. A person can leave an intolerant religious community and become just as intolerant in politics.
In each case, the person may believe the change demonstrates greater independence or moral understanding. It might. But that depends on whether the standards have changed along with the allegiance.
This has practical consequences for the work of governing. An official can feel pressure to defend a proposal because it came from an ally, dismiss a useful idea because an opponent offered it, or stick with a failing program because admitting the mistake would embarrass the group. Residents bear the costs of those decisions. Holding office requires enough independence to disappoint your own supporters when the evidence calls for a different course.
Belonging itself serves real human needs. Families, friendships, religious communities and civic organizations give us support and purpose. Cooperation helped human beings survive long before there were political parties. The trouble begins when attachment to our own group becomes a reason to distrust everyone outside it.
Jonathan Haidt captures the tension in four words: “Morality binds and blinds.” The commitments that help people work together can also make it difficult to recognize when their group is wrong.
It takes surprisingly little to get that process started. In experiments published in 1971, Henri Tajfel and his colleagues found that participants favored their own groups when distributing rewards, even though largely irrelevant classifications distinguished the groups. In some choices, they sacrificed other advantages to increase their group’s lead.
They needed no serious disagreement or history of mistreatment to begin favoring their own side. That ought to make us cautious about assuming our loyalties always follow a careful examination of the evidence.
There is pleasure in it, too. In a small 2011 brain-imaging study of avid Red Sox and Yankees fans, Mina Cikara and her colleagues found that success for the favored team and failure for its rival were associated with reward-related brain activity and reported pleasure.
Anyone who has enjoyed a rival team’s loss can understand the appeal. In politics, though, cheering for the other side to fail can put us at odds with our own interests.
If a program succeeds under an official we dislike, can we welcome the result? If an ally’s proposal fails, can we acknowledge it and change course? Or does the political score matter more than what happened to the people the program was supposed to serve?
Admitting that an opponent was right can cost us something within our own group. Political scientist Lilliana Mason’s Uncivil Agreement describes how partisan loyalties have become increasingly aligned with racial, religious and cultural identities. People can agree on some policies and still distrust each other intensely.
A political disagreement can then feel like a judgment on our friends and community. We may have to defend a change of mind to people whose approval matters to us.
In his 2021 Atlantic essay, “America Without God,” Shadi Hamid argued that some of the fervor once invested in religion had migrated into politics. “This is what religion without religion looks like,” he wrote.
His interpretation raises a useful question about what we expect politics to provide. When a movement becomes central to our sense of belonging and moral worth, questioning it becomes harder. Compromise can feel like a failure of character, even when it would produce a better result.
A common enemy can help keep such a movement together. Members may agree far more readily about whom to blame than about what would actually work. Leaders who can keep attention on the enemy may face fewer questions about their own results.
Social media offers a ready audience for that approach.
A 2021 study examined more than 2.7 million Facebook and Twitter posts from news organizations and members of Congress. Posts about the opposing political group were shared or retweeted roughly twice as often as posts about the writer’s own group.
That finding helps explain the incentive to keep pointing at opponents. Their worst moments can attract more attention than the patient work of explaining a proposal.
And the people filling our feeds may be a remarkably small share of the public. In 2019, Pew Research Center found that the most active 10 percent of adult U.S. Twitter users produced 80 percent of tweets. That historical snapshot is a useful reminder that posting volume is no measure of public agreement.
When we mostly encounter people who agree with us, our position can start to feel like the only reasonable one. When we encounter opponents chiefly through clips selected to embarrass them, we can forget how little those clips tell us about everyone who shares their political affiliation.
Recognizing this does not require treating every movement as equally responsible or finding a compromise between truth and falsehood. A policy can be demonstrably bad. An official can deserve sharp criticism. An organization’s stated principles and record are legitimate subjects of scrutiny.
The distinction is whether we can explain our judgment through specific claims and conduct, using standards we would apply to allies. Group membership alone should not be enough to establish a person’s motives or character.
That matters here in Minneapolis. A proposal about policing, housing, schools or transportation deserves examination on its merits. Who benefits? What does it cost? What evidence supports it? How will we know whether it worked?
Someone asking those questions should be able to get an answer without first proving membership in the right political group.
We also need to allow people to express a concern without assigning them an entire collection of beliefs. Worrying about crime does not establish support for every police practice. Concern about police misconduct does not establish indifference to public safety. Both deserve a hearing.
I don’t exempt myself. Experience defending an argument can make a person better at defending it long after it needs reconsideration.
A useful place to start is with our first reaction to unwelcome information. Do I want to understand it, or do I immediately want to discredit the person who brought it up? Would I accept this excuse from an opponent? What evidence would actually change my mind?
Those questions are easier to ask before we have publicly committed ourselves to dismissing the answer.
It helps to work with people whose politics differ from ours. A neighborhood project gives us a chance to see concerns and abilities that a political label leaves out. We do not have to agree on everything to accomplish something together.
My mom drilled two things into me from a young age. She was incessant. The first was the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Yeah, outdated, corny, whatever. This was the 1960s, so cut me some slack here. I still think it’s a pretty good place to start.
The other was: “You’re no better than anyone else, they’re no better than you. You both put your pants on one leg at a time.”
That second lesson matters just as much. We don’t have to consider ourselves inferior to anyone, and we don’t get to consider ourselves superior because of the group we belong to. Having a better argument on a particular issue doesn’t make us a better class of human being.
We want others to judge us fairly, hear what we actually believe and allow us to correct a mistake. We owe them the same consideration, including when we think they are wrong.
We can keep our convictions and still acknowledge an opponent’s good idea. We can belong to a group and still tell its members they are wrong.
My mom’s rules didn’t require much explanation. Living up to them takes more work.
Sources
- Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, Chapter 9 — group loyalty and moral judgment.
- Henri Tajfel and colleagues, research on social categorization and intergroup behavior (1971).
- Mina Cikara and colleagues, study of rivalry, pleasure and brain activity among baseball fans (2011).
- Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement — political identities and partisan division.
- Shadi Hamid, “America Without God,” The Atlantic (2021).
- “Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media” (2021).
- Pew Research Center, “Sizing Up Twitter Users” (2019).
