If you woke up in medieval Europe, could you survive? Do you know how to sew clothing, grow crops, or tend animals? Probably not.
You are prepared in at least one regard: you know how to live as a part of a small, homogeneous in-group.
Although we’ve lost many of the skills our ancestors likely considered effortless, being a good tribe member has stuck with us. Without ever being taught how to do it, we know how to protect the strength of the tribe itself. How to belong, how to tell who doesn’t, how to share resources.
And as we become more politically tribal, people are increasingly becoming the unwitting recruits of the Democrats and Republicans. They’re working on behalf of their party in ways they likely don’t even recognize.
Given how unhappy most people are with their political party, I suspect that many of them wouldn’t actually want to work on their party’s behalf, much less engage in some of the destructive and counterproductive behaviors that tribalism incites.
Automatic tribalism
We spend a lot of time telling people to be less polarized. To listen to people who disagree with them. To disagree civilly and avoid violent language and behavior.
All of those are appeals to our conscious selves.
The dynamics I’m describing are not conscious.
They are evolved patterns of thinking and behaving that happen outside our awareness.
Trust
Trust is higher among in-group members. And our trust of our own side feels rational—we can always generate reasons why we are confident about their actions. But those reasons tend to be back-justifications that come after the choice we’ve already made to join a tribe.
As a woman without a party, I hear this from both sides. It’s the right-of-center voter explaining why even though the Trump administration is doing things they don’t understand, they know it’s for the best. It’s the left-of-center voter saying that government can’t be trusted (now that it’s in the hands of the other political party).
Did you know that every time a new president is sworn in, consumer confidence spikes among members of his party and drops among members of the other party? It has nothing to do with economic prospects of the incoming administration. It’s simply a matter of trust.
Policing
Group members also police the behavior of other members to make sure they align with group norms. Do you have the right beliefs? Do you say the right things? Make sure you don’t ask the wrong questions. If you do, you may be publicly scolded so that you get back in line. And if you don’t get back in line, you may get kicked out of the group.
People who dislike being publicly criticized—a perfectly sensible position—are likely to keep their unaligned behaviors and values to themselves rather than be scolded by members of the tribe. That makes it look like the tribe is more cohesive than it actually is. Because questioners and skeptics stay quiet.
And why does the tribe’s members care so much about who belongs?
Because of another non-conscious bias: we preferentially give resources to members of our group.
Resources
This is one of the earliest and most robust findings in social psychology.
Henri Tafjel put participants into groups based on a coin toss, or whether they liked Klee or Kandinsky paintings better. Group membership was meaningless. Participants didn’t know each other or expect to remain in contact after the experiment.
But when they were asked to distribute money, they gave more to people in their group.
This is called the minimal group paradigm.
We unconsciously follow this pattern all the time. We give more to our tribe—whether that’s money, opportunities, attention, or simply the benefit of the doubt.
And because it seems that there is real value in being a group member, we become highly attentive to the question of who does and does not belong.
The people throwing around labels like RINO, secret Republican, or squish are doing the same thing their tribal ancestors did. They are identifying the people who aren’t real group members so that they don’t get the goodies.
The Lie Beneath It All
There are lots of reasons not to be an unwitting recruit to the tribe’s demands. But the main one is that the entire premise of goodies for the political in-group is a lie.
Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly spoils of political influence, they’re just limited to a very small group of people. Lucrative contracts, favorable legislation, and political jobs are being traded in Washington, but they are not being distributed to everyday Americans, no matter how loyal they are to the Democrats or the Republicans.
So whatever work you’re doing on behalf of your political tribe has real costs—fraying your relationships and damaging our civic fabric—but no material benefits.
That’s why I want more people to be aware of the non-conscious effects of tribalism. The political parties are waging war against each other. Against human dignity and decency. Against functioning government.
Let them do it with their own resources. They don’t need our help.
We need more conscientious objectors in this conflict.
What If You Opted Out?
What if we all realized that there are no resources for us, no matter how good of a political soldier we are on social media?
What if we realized that the uncompensated work we are doing for political parties allows them to continue amassing power and wealth while failing to solve the problems they are supposed to address?
What if we recognized that the trust we feel for our own side is, at least in part, an illusion created by group membership rather than objective evaluation?
How would we participate in political life then?
Wow! I'm writing an essay now trying to answer this last question! You'll have to tell me how I did when it comes out :)