Probably the most important advantage of humanity as a species is its willingness to work in society, in a group . However, the weapon appears to be double-edged, since it sometimes seems that such social behaviour may be the one that leads the species itself to its inevitable end.

And that is, there is an unexpected side effect that natural selection did not count on when deciding on the benefits of social behavior: the appearance of groups. However, this way of life does not regulate itself. In practice, when it comes to social relations, we often do it from a feeling of group identity that leads us to consider the other person our equal or, on the contrary, someone with whom we do not identify.

Gregariousness in humans: a survival resource

Yes, the human species has managed to rise as the dominant species on its planet (and whether this is a credit to be proud of or not would give us for another article), although social conflicts, discrimination, inequality and hatred are a price that seems very high.

But why does all this happen? There are infinite reasons that lead us to be part of groups . Sometimes it is because of common interests that we end up being part of a group of cyclists, geeks or vegetarians. Other times, they are ideological issues, so we may belong to the group of anarchists, feminists or atheists, and other times they are “mere” physical or biological differences, so that, objectively, we may be men, women, black, white…

This doesn’t seem so far-fetched, after all, everyone is as they are and the differences, if anything, should be cause for celebration rather than hatred – but why not?

Well, everything starts from a phenomenon that Tajfel coined as social identity , which is related to self-concept, that is, the way we see ourselves.

Tajfel and his research on collective identity

Social identity is the set of aspects of individual identity that are related to social categories to which we believe we belong . In this way, when we consider ourselves, let’s say, Spanish, all the behaviours and norms that, as we understand, are typical of Spaniards, become ours. In this process there is already an error of logic, which is to consider that all the members that belong to a group share the same behavioural or psychological characteristics.

These are the famous stereotypes, which are nothing more than heuristics, or mental shortcuts, that fulfil the function of simplifying our environment and saving psychological resources that could be oriented towards other tasks, but which, as we say, are unfounded. With them, prejudices come hand in hand, that is, the unfolding of attitudes towards a certain person according to the social group to which he/she may belong .

Anyway, as far as we’ve counted, there doesn’t seem to be any major problem either. If we were to stay there, we would simply live in a tremendously ignorant world that wastes immense potential with regard to the benefits that interculturality can bring. So yes, why, in addition to developing a social identity, do we compete with other social identities?

Tajfel demonstrated, with experiments he called the “minimal group paradigm”, how the most trivial and superficial difference can lead to competition . By classifying the participants into two groups with respect to whether they liked one or the other painting better, each was invited to distribute resources (money) between their group and the other.

The results showed that the participants preferred to win less money as long as the difference between money received with the other group was maximum… In other words, if I have chosen Klee’s painting, and I can choose that both my group and Kandinsky’s win 20 euros, I will prefer to win 18 if they win 10… as long as the decision is anonymous.

Emotions and group identity

If something as frivolous as choosing a painting or the colour of a T-shirt already leads me to harm other groups, what won’t I do when deeper elements such as ideologies or families are involved?

The mechanisms that are related to all this are very much related to self-esteem . If I consider that the qualities of my group are applicable to me, if my group is valuable, it will be that I am valuable…and as always, value is something relative, and it is only possible to assign it by comparison.

Therefore, current social conflicts are based on the search to feel valuable (self-esteem) through my group (social identity) as a result of making other people less valuable who (prejudice) belong to a different group. Following the discourse that we have taken here, the logical conclusion is that this is a war that cannot be won, because it is based on the perceptions of each one of the sides, and perhaps the solution is in obtaining self-esteem through our behaviours and not through our colour, sexual organs or the very arbitrary geographical accident of our birth.