Distortion: It is natural and good to congregate with the like-minded.
Call it cognitive clustering.
Once human beings started settling permanently in one place, growing wheat and raising animals to eat, it became possible for populations beyond the Dunbar Limit – more than 150 people – to live together in one place.
This was unprecedented in human history – we had never lived like this before. The migratory nature of human tribal existence made it impractical, and our brains couldn’t deal with that many people anyway. Both the environment and our social brain tissue kept us below the 150-person limit.
But a village by a river – that’s a different story. The nutritional yield per acre of farmed wheat is, at worst, about fifty times that of wild plants. And animals you can kill and eat without having to track and hunt them? It was an irresistible deal for countless thousands of human tribes.
It led us into a dark tunnel from which we have yet to emerge.
When human beings live in close community, living their entire lives around the same small group of people, they are exposed to the different thoughts and minds and decision-making abilities of one another in roughly equal measure.
But when several hundred people live in close proximity, it becomes impossible to know everyone in the community intimately, because of our social cognition limitations – but it is possible for the community to split up into sub-groups, based on a new discriminatory criterion – like-mindedness.
Suddenly, human communities could segregate into clusters of people who thought the same way: in this corner, people who are adventurous; in that corner, people who are not. Over here, people who are attracted to the new and different; over there, people who feel more comfortable with routine.
And this, too, was a way we’d never lived before.
Cognitive clustering – segregating into sub-groups who think and feel the same way. This is the origin of Us vs. Them.
It began with religions – large clustered groups of people who favor a particular behavioral code, an agreed-upon worldview – in direct opposition to the code and worldview of that other group; it spread beyond, inspiring sub-groups of aggressive types who favor taking over dealing, and other sub-groups who found cooperation more emotionally satisfying.
It splintered the human species. After 300,000 years of Nature-enforced cognitive randomization and survival-critical negotiation, we made it possible – by learning to harness edible energy – to split into intellectual and emotional factions. And in that critical step, we ended our innate cooperation and social harmony. We forfeited our inborn humanism, and exchanged it for something less.
These cognitive clusters not only persist today, they’re more intense than ever. A half hour of Internet surfing is all it takes to see that our social universe is driven by cognitive clustering: our worldview, our decision-making methods, our beliefs and convictions, all of these derive from the cognitive cluster – the emotionally concentrated tribe – to which we are committed.
What do those clusters look like?
Back in “The Needs of the Many”, we looked at the ingredients of cognitive social diversity – the ACC, the insular cortex, the amygdala, and dopamine receptivity (the main ingredients, but certainly not the only ones). And we looked at an example of how variety in these brain components leads to diverse, survival-enhancing social function (‘Chuck’ and ‘Roger’).
Cognitive Types
Different combinations of brain components affecting social cognition lead to explicit cognitive types – people who predictably see the world in a similar way, who regard others in a similar way, who possess similar emotional responses – adding up to a shared worldview. Based on the functions and interactions of those brain parts, we can begin to see familiar patterns emerging to form those cognitive types.
And those types are built out of social behaviors we know well, from our own behavior and from what we observe in those around us.
Authoritarian <-> Egalitarian. Authoritarian/Egalitarian is an axis of social cognition, a scale with many points, one of which applies to each of us as an individual. Authoritarianism – the need to outsource decisions (and sometimes beliefs, and sometimes even thought itself) to an alpha, a leader – exists in all of us to some degree: almost all of us will submit to a judge, when we recognize the judge’s authority; almost all of us will pull over when flashing lights appear in our rear view mirror.
But some of us are more Authoritarian than others.
Conversely, there is the social impulse to decide jointly – to work with others to achieve a consensus on a course of action: Egalitarianism. We are all egalitarian to some degree, if in nothing more than choosing a restaurant when traveling with a group.
But some of us are more Egalitarian than others.
We all fall somewhere on this social scale, depending largely on our brain parts – and, of course, on our positive and negative social experiences. How Authoritarian/Egalitarian we are as an individual is a big part of how we see others, how we respond to social decisions and challenges, and what emotions we experience in interacting with others.
Threat-Scanning <-> Opportunity-Scanning. Another axis of social cognition is our sensitivity to Risk – another factor determined largely by our personal biology. Some of us are comfortable with taking risks, in the physical world or the social environment; some of us avoid it at all costs; and many fall somewhere in between.
The risk-averse among us scan for threats; the risk-friendly scan for opportunity. Again, we all are at least a little threat-scanning; few are comfortable walking into a dark alley. And we are all at least a little opportunity-conscious; we are pretty receptive, for instance, to free food.
But some are more risk-averse than others; and some are more opportunity-conscious than others.
Novelty-Seeking <-> Uniformity-Seeking. Finally, there is our innate level of openness to the new-and-different, versus our comfort level with the familiar. Many among us love the unexpected, thriving on novel experience – while others find satisfaction in sticking close to what they know well. Again, it’s all in the brain, all in the genes, tempered by experience.
And, again, we’re all novelty-seekers to some degree: getting to know a new romantic partner is exciting to most all of us, for example. And we all find at least some comfort in what we know – few could tolerate drifting the globe, from one culture to another, being given no time to acclimate in any one place.
Some are more novelty-seeking than others, as others are more uniformity-seeking.
What behaviors and worldviews do we tend to find familiar when we are around people who clearly favor one end or the other of these scales? And where in the brain do those tendencies originate?
An Authoritarian is predisposed to outsource belief and decision-making to a person they perceive to be stronger and more capable than themselves, someone they believe will protect them. This causes them to be distrustful of authorities other than the Leader, and to consider such other-leaders enemies. This predisposition's great evolutionary value was its rapid-response mechanism when the entire tribe was suddenly threatened. Attention is directed by the Leader. Persons with a large amygdala and high dopamine receptivity tend to have this predisposition.
An Egalitarian is one who is boundary-transparent with respect to the tribe. Such a person assigns value to all others of their kind, whether intimate or not, and tends not to outsource belief or decision-making, trusting consensus. This makes them incautious with respect to Others who actually do present danger, but on the other hand they are master integrators of old and new information, making them excellent at long-term planning, for the good of the tribe. Attention tends to roam free. Persons with larger ACC and insula, along with a smaller amygdala, fit this predisposition.
A Threat-Scanner is one whose threshold for risk and perception of danger are lower than average. They spot threats quickly, even to the point of seeing them when they aren't really there. Their value to the tribe is considerable, as they are the first to see real danger and sound the alarm. Because their disposition is impulsive, they are good at immediate decision-making. On the downside, they tend to take a default position of Threat against those not in their tribe. Attention is truncated, in times of threat, to the threat. Persons with a large amygdala and a smaller anterior cingular cortex and insula tend to have this predisposition.
An Opportunity-Scanner is one who does not have a strong Threat response, along with a high threshold for negative sensory stimuli. This person is excellent at discovery - finding food, tracking game, studying weather patterns. They can be insensitive to danger and risk, so their social value is that they are able to provide food for the tribe, but they can be reckless. Attention tends to drift from tribal preoccupations. Persons with a larger anterior cingulate cortex and a smaller amygdala tend to have this predisposition.
A Novelty-Seeker is one who not only does not mind change, but thrives on it. This person is a superb pattern detector, a master of “One of these things is not like the others.” Like the Opportunity Seeker, this person can spot resources and value where others cannot - but rather than simply being less risk-averse, with a propensity for discovery, they are explorers, deliberately pushing across boundaries. In the modern world, such people become artists, writers, musicians, and scientists. Attention is practically random, with a capacity for hyper-focus on objects of curiosity. A combination of small amygdala, low dopamine receptivity, and larger ACC result in this predisposition.
A Uniformity-Seeker is a person who feels secure in the familiar. They are slow to accept change and will tend to resist it. They believe there is a Right Way to be and a Right Way to do things. Such persons present tremendous value to the tribe as archivists of What Works, the couriers of knowledge to the next generation - ritualists, traditionalists. They are overly distrustful of new information or voices that challenge their idea of What Works. Attention tends to be limited to those things within the known. Persons with high dopamine receptivity and a smaller ACC tend to have this predisposition.
Add these axes together and you have a social framework defining a subset of the human population. Every combination out there describes a group that we would all find familiar.
Egalitarian/Opportunity-Scanning/Novelty-Seeking
As we discussed earlier, the Paleolithic version of this person is a hunter, a person with great skill as a pattern-finder, able to navigate complex terrain, track difficult prey, forecast changes in the weather – all essential skills for group survival.
In the modern world, this person is an artist or a writer, questing for patterns in the human experience – creative, able to see what others cannot – and prefers to contribute to decisions affecting the group. Such people take risks, often to their detriment. They are fine with change, and even look forward to it.
Authoritarian/Threat-Scanning/Uniformity-Seeking
The Paleolithic version of this person is great in a pinch – able to react very quickly in precarious situations, someone who can be counted on when help is needed quickly. They aren’t deliberative or contemplative, but you don’t want those qualities when a leopard attacks – you want action.
Today, that person is a fire chief, or a trauma surgeon, or a military field commander. They take orders well and give orders well, and have little patience with those who like to debate the options. They are uncomfortable with risk, and think those who aren’t are careless fools; they are uncomfortable with change, especially social change, and resist it strongly.
These are only two of the possible cognitive types that arise from how our brains work, and from the evolutionary travails that crafted them. The take-home point is this: all of these persons, with all of these skills, were required for tribal survival in the ancient past. None could last without the others. The lesson is clear:
When we begin to view others thru these lenses, a whole new layer of understanding emerges... more tolerance, more interest in others, a greater appreciation of our diversity.
The problem is, of course, that we’re going in exactly the opposite direction.
Cognitive clustering diminishes our natural humanism. It weakens each of us, depriving us of our capacity to empathize with (and treat as equals) those who think differently than we do. It causes us to downgrade the humanity of others beyond our group. It deprives the groups in which we claim membership from the full range of human problem-solving and decision-making skills.
This is easily seen in the world’s religions. Each claims to have the definitive take on human nature, as well as the key solutions to human strife. They disagree wildly in these areas, all asserting that they alone are the definitive authority – and are all equally inadequate to either solve the world’s problems or correctly describe human beings, because they are, by definition, only able to see humanity from their own restricted point of view: they have deliberately amputated all of those cognitive skills that they themselves have selected out of their groups.
The same is even more true, and painfully so, of political ideologies. The world today is more partisan than ever, with struggles between authoritarian and egalitarian parties throughout the West – each believing they would be best in charge, each believing their answers are the definitive ones, each thinking they have the inside scoop on human nature – and each equally wrong. As the religions have done, our political parties have self-selected themselves into postures of anemic ineffectiveness, eschewing the cognitive potential of those not in their groups; their deep conviction that they are right, that their opponents are self-centered, deluded fools, and that defeating them is everything, is edging the world toward disaster.
Not all social groups are cognitive clusters. Often we find ourselves in groups that are necessarily random, where social cognition is concerned.
A class in an educational institution is an example. Students of all cognitive stripe are found in all high school courses, or an exercise class, or in first aid training. A sports team is another – team members might be strength-oriented authoritarians anxious to submit to the will of the coach, or risk-taking novelty-mongers, out to experience new thrills. And a military unit may be the most randomized of all: assignment to a platoon is a process indifferent to one’s social biases.
Consider that these are three of our most effective forms of social grouping: they are all either very high in utility, very high in focused performance, or both. Imagine what our more discriminatory forums could accomplish if they followed suit.
Imagine what will happen if they don’t.
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