Social Mixing
Us. Them. Babies.
Research Roundup
Baby Gangs of New York
Us vs Them starts early—as early as 2.
In an experiment, toddlers watched others play with toys. Some of those “others” were from an ingroup; some were from an outgroup. The two groups had preferred toys, but the individuals had their own preferences as well.
Whenever an “outgroup member was present, toddlers expected the target individual to select the ingroup-associated toy and no other toy”. But when no outgroup was present, toddlers expected individuals to choose their favorite toy.
This doesn’t mean toddlers prefer ingroups, but they do expect aligned choices. While I suspect significant heterogeneity in these expectations, they lay a foundation for othering.
Ozymandias Was Right!
How can we bridge societal divides? A new fMRI study suggests that noted supervillain Ozymandias was right: redefine Us vs Them.
Singapore is a fascinating society made of ethnically Chinese, Indian, and Malay citizens, and surrounded by vastly larger countries. So the study tested what happens when Singaporeans are primed with their “subordinate (ethnic) versus superordinate (national) identities”.
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—a brain region heavily implicated in self-referential and in-group processing—typically increases its activity when our own ethnic group is primed. When participants were primed with their national identity, however, vmPFC activity also increased when viewing faces of ethnic out-groups.
Multivariate pattern analyses revealed that priming national identity “reduces the neural representational distance between ingroup and outgroup faces”. The ethnic distinctions still registered, but the shifted neural map changed social perception.
A shared identity literally makes the brain treat others more like "self" in a dynamic remapping. Us vs Them changes with context.
I’m not saying that I’m surprised by these findings, but watching brains dynamically remap ingroup-outgroup borders is both very cool and an important insight into the neuroscience of trust. We change with context because our brains change with context.
Bias doesn’t make you bad; it just makes you human. The badness creeps in when you lack humility to admit that you don’t always treat even the same person the same.
Trust is Effortful
I’ve shared research showing that 2-year-olds have expectations about ingroups and outgroups; does that mean we are born with an "us vs. them" bias, or does our environment build it?
Research in the complex ethnic landscape of Jerusalem tested how varying degrees of everyday contact between Arab and Jewish communities influenced young children's distributive decisions (reciprocating fairness in a costly, one-shot interaction with unfamiliar peers).
Across three distinct settings, the children's behavior mirrored their cultural experiences:
Low Contact = Low Reciprocity: Children from distant, highly homogeneous neighborhoods reciprocated fairness at or below chance levels, regardless of whether the other child was in their group or not.
Medium Contact = In-Group Bias: Children from adjacent but segregated neighborhoods (where the "other" is visible, but not integrated) showed a clear group bias. They played fair with in-group peers, but not with the out-group.
High Contact = Universal Fairness: For children attending a bilingual, fully integrated school with daily, structured intergroup contact, fairness was reciprocated equally across ethnic lines.
Social practices like fairness and cooperation are highly adaptive responses tuned by our environments. Simply existing near diverse populations (medium contact) isn't enough to foster cooperation, and can actually crystallize in-group bias. True, structured, and active integration is what breaks down divides.
We don't just teach fairness by talking about it—we engineer it through the social architecture of our shared spaces.
Media Mentions
Take a deep diver with me on the Job Ready Podcast! Watch or Listen here:
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Mm2SP7oievqq3hZc4O3Iw?si=f6afd8f579674bbb
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/job-ready/id1726097931
- YouTube: https://youtu.be/2tf1ISE_XYo
- Job Ready: https://www.jobreadypodcast.com
SciFi, Fantasy, & Me
I just watched Wicked for Good. Apart from the fact that all of the allegories from the original books are lost in the Phantom Menace-esque, Elphaba “created” everyone storyline, the characters display all of the emotional depth and social complex of not particularly bright teenagers.
I recommend Tad Williams’s Otherland series for a dark cyberpuck take on Oz and other tales.
Stage & Screen
- May 12, Online: I'll be reading from Robot-Proof for the The Library Speakers Consortium.
- May 12, SF: We'll talk about collective intelligence, the neuroscience of trust, and how dumb I have to be to be launching my 13th company.
- May 14, Miami: TEDxMiami
- June 9-10, London: London Tech Week!
- June 11, Luxembourg: How Europe (and even some of it smallest states) compete and grow in a trade environment dominated by zero-sum leaders
- June 12, Denver: GlobalMindEd
- June 18, Stockholm: The Smartest Thing on the Planet: Hybrid Intelligence
- October, Toronto: The Future of Work...in the Future