By: Michael J. Lundie, Ph.D.
Illustration: S. R. Galaen 2016
Everything feels hyperpolarized, doesn’t it? Sure, we regard social media and airwaves of news coverage as the de facto battlefield upon which ideologues wage cognitive warfare. But even family gatherings can feel like battlegrounds of competing ideologies, whether conservative, progressive, liberal, or shades in between —there’s an overwhelming pressure to pick a side, and it can feel that friendships and family ties are at stake if we pick the “wrong side.”
It’s human nature to gravitate toward those who are like us and share our beliefs, values, likes and dislikes. That amounts to a network principle called “homophily,” the tendency for people with similar attributes along certain dimensions to glom together into tight-nit groups. This sense of belonging provides us with a sense of security, camaraderie, and connection. But what happens when that group membership becomes too rigid? How about when our personal identity starts to dissolve into a hivemind, crowding out curiosity, and enjoining itself to rigid dogmatism.
This gradual envelopment of our identity rapidly accelerates into a totalizing worldview, the sense that our preoccupation with a certain ideological perspective dictates our ethics, our morals, conferring upon our lives a sense of grand purpose and significant meaning. It can feel deceptively comforting at first—like we have found our tribe, we have embraced a noble cause in this world.
As author Todd Rose points out in his insightful book Collective Illusions, this kind of totalizing identification with an ideology can erode one’s capacity to entertain diverse perspectives on important ethical, political, and philosophical issues. Extremist political groups, cults, and even more subtle ideological factions thrive on this cognitive distortion. Avoiding this trap requires more than just awareness of one’s vulnerability to this phenomenon. As Rose articulates so well toward the end of Chapter 2 (“Lying to Belong”), it calls for something deeper: “expanding your social portfolio.” When you belong to multiple groups—social, cultural, professional—you build a diversified portfolio of social identities. This means that no single group fully defines who you are, and therefore no single group can dominate how you think or what you think. The more various your social connections, the more robust, resilient, and independent your mind becomes.
The Problem with Single-Group Identities: Dissolving into the Hivemind
Ideologically dogmatic movements demand absolute loyalty and unwavering adherence to a particular worldview, shutting down curiosity and decrying exploratory conversations with perceived ideological adversaries as a form of treachery. Belonging to just one group—especially one that discourages exploratory engagement with opposing perspectives—your growth as an individual becomes arrested, freeze-framed, and one-dimensional.
As our identity dissolves into a single group perspective, we become more vulnerable to confirmation bias, the tendency to seek out information that reinforces what we already believe while ignoring or dismissing evidence to the contrary. Over time, we start filtering the world through a single lens, reinforcing the group's beliefs without recognizing the blind spots. Whether it’s a political party, a cultural movement, or even an online forum, beware injunctions to conform. The danger is that you stop questioning, stop exploring, and, more crucially, stop growing. Instead of challenging your beliefs, you begin reinforcing them. This is why, in today’s world, having a variety of social identities is crucial.
The Benefits of Expanding One’s Identity Portfolio
Belonging to multiple groups—whether they are professional networks, cultural associations, or even hobbyist communities—can provide a psychological buffer and serves to enrich one’s life. Each group offers a different perspective and, depending on the nature of the related activity, propels our growth intellectually, physically, and even spiritually. This complexity of identity makes us less vulnerable to ideological capture because no single group defines us.
Moreover, engaging with diverse groups forces us to exercise our fluid intellectual capacities – in more familiar terms, it compels us to think critically. One group’s beliefs might challenge another’s, generating a broader perspective and making it less likely that we’ll succumb to the echo chambers dominated by ideological dogmatists. It’s this kind of cognitive diversity that keeps our minds flexible, adaptive, and curious— intellectual qualities that collectively offer our best alternative to ideological polarization.
That brings us to the role of social media plays in shaping our beliefs. Algorithms are designed to feed us content that aligns with existing views, creating a feedback loop that reinforces our perspective. By consciously belonging to multiple groups, both online and offline, we can counteract this algorithmic bubble and expose ourselves to a wider range of thoughts and ideas.
Reading Rose’s reflections on these subjects was a refreshing reprieve from the usual simplistic us vs. them bromides that pass for political commentary. If you’re interested in learning more about the factors that encourage group conformity, the role of social media in this process, and how online cognitive warfare campaigns manipulate our thinking, I highly recommend Collective Illusions. Todd Rose offers invaluable insights into how we can break free from the mental traps that single-group identities impose on us, and how cultivating a more complex, resilient identity insulates our mind from ideological capture.
コメント