We & They
🥊 People are never what they seem...🥊
“All good people agree,
And all good people say,
All nice people, like Us, are We
And every one else is They:
But if you cross over the sea,
Instead of over the way,
You may end by (think of it!)
looking on We
As only a sort of They!”
-Rudyard KiplingLet’s have some “fun” with stereotypes.
(Trust me, it’s not as bad as it sounds.)
I am going to give you a list of characteristics, and you are going to silently decide whether or not this piece of information means that a person is more likely to be a Democrat or a Republican:
Listens to NPR (National Public Radio)
Watches UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship)
Attends church multiple times per week
Identifies as an atheist
Reads Adam Grant
Reads Jordan Peterson
Eats red meat multiple times per week
Grows organic vegetables
Home schools their children
Mines Bitcoin on a daily basis
Naturally, there is no “right” answer to the question. But I suspect you could guess what most people would immediately assume how people would answer. While these assumptions initially appear benign, the belief that entire groups of people operate a certain way can quickly lead us into problematic territory, which brings us to this week’s heuristic.
Out-Group Homogeneity
The statements above have one thing in common: each provides an opportunity to make assumptions about a large and diverse group of people. However, the situation gets worse when we compare groups. This is the out-group homogeneity (OGH) bias.
The APA Dictionary of Psychology defines OGH as “the tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other, particularly in contrast to the assumed diversity of the membership of one’s own group.”1 If you’ve ever said or heard someone say that a group different than your own is “all the same,” you’re seeing the OGH in action. Here’s a helpful video summary:
I searched for the first usage of the term OGH for a while but could not find a definitive answer (even enlisting ChatGPT for the project). However, OGH is influenced by the work of Loren Chapman,2 Henri Tajfel,3 David Hamilton,4 George Quattrone,5 Edward Jones,6 Bernadette Park,7 Myron Rothbart,8 and Marilynn Brewer,9 to name a few.
In their 1980 article on OGH, George Quattrone and Edward Jones argue that “people perceive more variability within in-groups, social categories of which they are members, than within out-groups, social categories of which they are not members,”10 often for logical reasons. When you identify with a group, you get to know people on a deeper level and see the nuances of beliefs in what might appear to be a homogeneous group from the outside looking in. Lacking the same level of interaction with an out-group, it’s easy to imagine how a person might draw different conclusions lacking similar access.
If you’re saying to yourself, “OGH sounds a lot like what we call prejudice or bigotry,” you’re spot on. Scott Pious argues in The Psychology of Prejudice that once we start seeing “outgroup members…as interchangeable or expendable,”11 we are taking one small step to conclude, such as “All Jews are X,” “All women are Y,” and “All Republicans are Z.” Sadly, not only are none of these statements even close to correct, the fact that someone believes is one small step towards building a more harmful permission structure.
Of course, one of the easiest ways to mitigate the effect of the OGH bias is to spend as much time as possible with groups unlike your own. However, we know this is easier said than done, more so than ever. And this brings us to this week’s book recommendation.
The Big Sort
If I had to choose the least academic yet most informative account of how OGH impacts our society, it would be Bill Bishop’s 2009 book The Big Sort. Bishop combines data and narrative to describe how the United States became a country filled with “social resonators, and the hum that filled the air was the reverberated and amplified sound of… [people’s] own voices and beliefs.”12
While we typically focus on echo chambers regarding media consumption and social media, The Big Sort focuses on how these echo chambers are far broader and deeper than mere media consumption but extend to zip codes and where people choose to live. Previously, Bishop argues that “Migration wasn't thought to be much of a factor in politics,” yet The Big Sort shows how people with shared beliefs continue to cluster together geographically, providing greater opportunity for amplification of existing views and less chance for exposure to dissenting views, thereby leading most people to become “more extreme in their thinking.”13 While reading certain websites or listening to specific podcasts creates an echo chamber, that chamber becomes more impenetrable when like-minded groups send their children to the same schools, go to the same synagogues or churches, and participate in the same hobbies.
Seen through this lens, it’s not hard to see how the situation described by Bishop is ripe for people to develop higher degrees of mistrust of one another as their communities become more homogeneous. Returning to the OGH bias, Bishop notes that this sorting of Democrats and Republicans in the United States results in each group developing more extreme perceptions of the other:
“Not knowing many real Democrats, Republicans come to believe that all Democrats are more radical than they really are. And Democrats living in homogeneous communities come to believe that all Republicans are fiendishly right-wing. Knowing a real-life Republican might settle the nerves of a Democrat. In fact, exposure to a wide array of views increases tolerance. But Americans are increasingly unlikely to find themselves in mixed political company.”14
Sadly, The Big Sort describes a problem and does not offer solutions. I don’t blame Bishop; I’m unsure if solutions to this problem are easily identifiable. But maybe if we can start to remember that they share our perceptions of bias in other groups about us, we might check ourselves before continuing to wreck our society.
In the coming weeks, I will spend less time relating our weekly concepts to the recent election, and it’s worth mentioning that out-group homogeneity affects the Jewish organizational world. While there are limited areas where organizations exist in opposition, building formal organizations and informal networks of like-minded people is more common than we want to admit. And maybe one of the reasons few, if any, organizations solve our biggest problems is that insular in-groups create the solutions. More on that to come.
And it’s not getting better…
30 million tons
The total amount of CO2 generated yearly by lawn and garden care in the United States. Maybe that’s why many cities aim to phase out gas-powered leaf blowers.
What I Read This Week
Why It Pays To Be Grumpy: Do you feel grumpy? I can’t imagine why. Some evidence suggests being grumpy may be good for your health.
What’s New in Google Docs: I write Moneyball Judaism in Google Docs, and I suspect I’m not the only person who uses this word processor. Subscriber and recommender Jeremy Caplan wrote a terrific update on new tools in this indispensable Google app.
AI That’s Already Raising Money: Not surprisingly, specific nonprofits with large donor bases are using AI to raise money. Here’s an article on what this trend portends for the future.
When Facts Don’t Matter: This article is less about the recent election than an examination of what recent events tell us about journalism’s ability to report the truth and our ability to listen. The results may surprise you, but not always in a bad way.
What American Jews Gave After October 7th: Thorough analysis of the impact of October 7th on philanthropy in the American Jewish Community by my teacher, Jack Wertheimer.15
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 73-74.
I had to look up the meaning of “eleemosynary.”