Us vs Them
The Psychology of Belonging
It’s 1971, A social psychologist, Henri Tajfel, is working on the Minimal Group Experiments. He selected a few college students and offered them two simple, pointless choices. Each student has to select only one option and has to donate their points (which we can consider as money) to other students.
Henri noticed that students created two groups and preferred donating points to their group members.
From this observation, he concluded that even when the choices are futile, people create groups: in-group (us) and out-group (them). Henri named this theory “Social Identity Theory.”
Henri never thought to be a psychologist; instead, he was studying chemistry in France. The pivotal influence driving him towards psychology is notable. To leave out its foundation would be unfairly withholding context.
Henri was born in Włocławek, Poland, in 1919, a year after independence. He grew up in Poland as a Jew and moved to France to pursue higher education. In 1939, World War II started, so Henri joined the French army against the Nazis. But luck wasn’t on his side.
He was captured by the Germans and became a POW. In his whole prison life, he concealed his Jewish identity to avoid being sent to the concentration camp, since the Holocaust was at its peak. After his release, he moved to England, where he came to know that all of his family had been killed in the Holocaust.
Here began his quest. He was eager to answer: How easily do people form groups?
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Soon, he found the answer from the Minimal Group Paradigm and named this theory the Social Identity Theory.
Social Identity Theory
His theory states that,
- Humans don’t require any major conflict to create blocs; instead, meaningless events are enough to do so.
- People adopt the identity of a particular group and its norms. They claim their side is the flawless and righteous one. As a result, in-group favoritism and out-group hostility emerge.
In-group favoritism and Out-group hostility
It’s just like a Manchester United fan considering his team’s goal — a brilliant play, and Liverpool’s goal — their luck.
If a Manchester player just missed the shot, Liverpool’s fans start booing and whistling. For a Manchester fan, the shot was missed because the pitch was bad.
- Once individuals divide into ‘us’ and ‘them’, their focus shifts to affirming their own beliefs and asserting superiority. Even when wrong, they find ways to prove themselves right — it’s human nature to need to be right. It’s clear in stadiums when people cheer, boo, and whistle.
But I’m not writing this article just to define the Us vs Them mentality and how it works. My main focus is to explain how the shadow figures use the same tricks (creating small differences to dominate the opposing ones). They don’t use these terminologies, but they create the same scenarios to achieve numerical superiority or to fulfill their hidden goals.
Politicians try their best to spread stereotypes, either with fabricated stories or by initiating baseless propaganda. And we people, without realizing these machinations, join them, directly or indirectly, by believing every incoming narrative, divine words. And we lose our real self here.
What binds you is a lie. Break the chain.
