Can a sense of identity only develop at the cost of believing that others are less complex and therefore more predictable?
After all, isn't reduction of complexity paramount as a strategy to operate properly in the social world?
In Star Trek, humans are almost always the only species with multiple cultures; alien species are almost universally depicted as having a single culture.
A pretty intuitively obvious pair of cognitive biases would argue in favor of this argument: the outgroup homogeneity bias and the trait ascription bias. The main difference between the two is that the first relates to the group and the second to the individual.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article:
"According to the outgroup homogeneity bias, individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.
This bias was found to be unrelated to the number of group and non-group members individuals knew. You might think that people thought members of their own groups were more varied and different simply because they knew them better, but this is actually not the case. The outgroup homogeneity bias was found between groups such as "men" and "women" who obviously interact frequently.
The implications of this effect to stereotyping is obvious, and it may be related to confirmation bias"
I'll devote a post to the confirmation bias later
Trait ascription bias Wikipedia article:"Trait ascription bias is the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable in their personal traits across different situations. This may be because our own internal states are much more observable and available to us than those of others (more on the availability heuristic and other heuristics in a later post).
This attributional bias has an obvious role in the formation and maintenance of stereotypes and prejudice, combined with the negativity effect."
Trying to give order to a mind which is by nature a "disorganized mind", is probably inevitable and a source of violence.
1 comment:
Is it not possible, though no doubt difficult, to live harmoniously whilst at the same time accepting the great complexities around us? Although, you probably can't take all these complexities into account all the time, in which case you would get hardly anything done :)
I think grappling with one's own complexities is hard enough :)
I'm definitely guilty, to varying degrees, of both the outgroup homogeneity bias and the trait ascription bias, though I imagine we all are.
---> Awesome first post dude! Don't worry about fluff, Tim and I will provide unhealthy amounts of fluff ;) A little 'Substance' never hurt anyone :)
---> "Trying to give order to a mind which is by nature a "disorganized mind", is probably inevitable and a source of violence."
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