The Biology Of Nationalism

Thursday, March 21, 2019


In an article in Foreign Policy magazine, This Is Your Brain on Nationalism: The Biology of Us and Them, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky describes the cognitive biology of nationalism. A three minute interview by Fareed Zakaria with Sapolsky about this article and nationalism is here: https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/what-neuroscience-has-to-do-with-nationalism/1172179109608632/

 Humans have a strong impulse to sort people into us and them groups. Sorting happens unconsciously. It is fast, taking about one-tenth of a second, and occurs before we are aware of any assessment. A portion of the brain that regulates fear and aggression reacts quickly, and a few seconds later the region of the brain that is crucial for impulse control and emotional regulation (prefrontal cortex) activates and normally suppresses the initial negative impulse. The unconscious brain reaction to images of faces of people of another race are different than images of same-race faces.

 Sapolsky argues this is driven by evolution, which shaped how our brains perceive and think about sensory inputs from the world. He asserts that nationalism is a critically important phenomenon:

To understand the dynamics of human group identity, including the resurgence of nationalism—that potentially most destructive form of in-group bias—requires grasping the biological and cognitive underpinnings that shape them.

Such an analysis offers little grounds for optimism. Our brains distinguish between in-group members and outsiders in a fraction of a second, and they encourage us to be kind to the former but hostile to the latter. These biases are automatic and unconscious and emerge at astonishingly young ages. . . . . Humans can rein in their instincts and build societies that divert group competition to arenas less destructive than warfare, yet the psychological bases for tribalism persist, even when people understand that their loyalty to their nation, skin color, god, or sports team is as random as the toss of a coin. At the level of the human mind, little prevents new teammates from once again becoming tomorrow’s enemies.

One aspect of our cognitive biology is that biases against out-groups is often learned, although some are completely innate or nearly so. Infants pick up on cues from parents and caregivers about who is in-group and who is out-group, and race is a key marker the brain picks up on. Sapolsky comments:

Put simply, neurobiology, endocrinology, and developmental psychology all paint a grim picture of our lives as social beings. When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from the families of chimps killing each other in the forests of Uganda: people’s most fundamental allegiance is to the familiar. Anything or anyone else is likely to be met, at least initially, with a measure of skepticism, fear, or hostility. In practice, humans can second-guess and tame their aggressive tendencies toward the Other. Yet doing so is usually a secondary, corrective step.

For all this pessimism, there is a crucial difference between humans and those warring chimps. The human tendency toward in-group bias runs deep, but it is relatively value-neutral. Although human biology makes the rapid, implicit formation of us-them dichotomies virtually inevitable, who counts as an outsider is not fixed. In fact, it can change in an instant.

Nationalism: The sorting trait applies to nationalism and globalism:

At its best, nationalism and patriotism can prompt people to pay their taxes and care for their nation’s have-nots, including unrelated people they have never met and will never meet. But because this solidarity has historically been built on strong cultural markers of pseudo-kinship, it is easily destabilized, particularly by the forces of globalization, which can make people who were once the archetypes of their culture feel irrelevant and bring them into contact with very different sorts of neighbors than their grand-parents had. Confronted with such a disruption, tax-paying civic nationalism can quickly devolve into something much darker: a dehumanizing hatred that turns Jews into “vermin,” Tutsis into “cockroaches,” or Muslims into “terrorists.” Today, this toxic brand of nationalism is making a comeback across the globe, spurred on by political leaders eager to exploit it for electoral advantage.

In the face of this resurgence, the temptation is strong to appeal to people’s sense of reason. Surely, if people were to understand how arbitrary nationalism is, the concept would appear ludicrous. Nationalism is a product of human cognition, so cognition should be able to dismantle it, too.

Yet this is wishful thinking. In reality, knowing that our various social bonds are essentially random does little to weaken them. . . . . The pull of us-versus-them thinking is strong even when the arbitrariness of social boundaries is utterly transparent, to say nothing of when it is woven into a complex narrative about loyalty to the fatherland. You can’t reason people out of a stance they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.

 Sapolsky argues that we could try to harness nationalist dynamics and not fight or condemn them. That would mean leaders need to avoid jingoism and xenophobia, and appeal to people’s innate in-group tendencies to socialize or incentivize cooperation and accountability. In this political scenario, nationalist pride is rooted in a country’s ability to do social good such as care for the elderly, teaching children empathy, and ensuring increased social mobility.

 Is America capable of trying to harness nationalism in some way akin to Sapolsky's suggestion?

B&B orig: 3/11/19