Great that you’re thinking about this issue! A few sketchy thoughts below:
I) As you say, autistic people seem to be more resilient with regards to tribalism. And autistic tendencies and following rationality communities arguably correlates as well. So intuitively, it seems that something like higher rationality and awareness of biases could be useful for reducing tribalism. Or is there another way of making people “more autistic”?
Given this and other observations (e.g., autistic people seem to have lower mental health, on average), it seems a bit hasty to focus on increasing general mental health as the most effective intervention for reducing tribalism.
II) Given our high uncertainty of what causes tribalism and how to most effectively reduce it, it seems that more research in this area could be one of the most effective cause areas.
I see at least two avenues for such research:
A) More “historical” and correlational research. First, we might want to operationalize ‘tribalism’ or identify some proxies for it (any ideas?). Then we could do some historical studies and find potential correlates. It would be interesting to study to what extent increasing economic inequality, the advent of social media, and other forces have historically correlated with the extent of tribalism.
B) Potentially more promising would be experimental psychological research aimed to identify causal factors and mediators of tribalism. For example, one could present subjects with various interventions and then see which intervention reduce (or increase!) tribalism. Potential interventions include i) changing people’s mood (e.g., presenting them with happy videos), ii) increasing the engagement of controlled cognitive processes (system 2) (e.g. by priming them with the CRT), iii) or decreases the engagement of such processes (e.g. via cognitive load), iv) using de-biasing techniques, v) decreasing or increasing their sense of general security (by e.g. presenting them with threatening or scary images or scenarios). There are many more possible interventions.
C) Another method would be correlational psychological research. Roughly, one could give subjects a variety of personality tests and other psychological scales (e.g. Big Five, CRT, etc.) and examine what correlates with tribalistic tendencies.
D) Another idea would be to develop some sort of “tribalism scale” which could lay the groundwork for further psychological research.
Of course, first one should do a more thorough literature review on this topic. It seems likely that there already exists some good work in this area.
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Even more sketchy thoughts:
III) Could it be that some forms of higher mental health actually increase tribalism? Tribalism also goes along with a feeling of belonging to a “good” group/tribe that fights against the bad tribe. Although at times frustrating this might contribute to a sense of certainty and “having a mission or purpose”. Personally, I feel quite depressed and frustrated by not being able to wholeheartedly identify with any major political force because they currently all seem pretty irrational in many areas. Of course, higher mental health will probably reduce your need to belong to a group and thus might still reduce tribalism.
IV) Studies (there was another one which I can’t find at the moment) seem to indicate that social media posts (e.g. on Twitter or Facebook) involving anger or outrage spread more easily than posts involving all other emotions like sadness, joy, etc. So maybe altering the architecture of Facebook or twitter would be particularly effective (e.g. tweaking the news feed algorithm such that posts with a lot of anger reactions get less traction). Of course, this is pretty unlikely to be implemented. It also has disadvantages in the case of justified outrage. Maybe encouraging people to create new social networking sites that somehow alleviate those problems would be useful but that seems pretty far-fetched.
Great that you’re thinking about this issue! A few sketchy thoughts below:
I) As you say, autistic people seem to be more resilient with regards to tribalism. And autistic tendencies and following rationality communities arguably correlates as well. So intuitively, it seems that something like higher rationality and awareness of biases could be useful for reducing tribalism. Or is there another way of making people “more autistic”?
Given this and other observations (e.g., autistic people seem to have lower mental health, on average), it seems a bit hasty to focus on increasing general mental health as the most effective intervention for reducing tribalism.
II) Given our high uncertainty of what causes tribalism and how to most effectively reduce it, it seems that more research in this area could be one of the most effective cause areas.
I see at least two avenues for such research:
A) More “historical” and correlational research. First, we might want to operationalize ‘tribalism’ or identify some proxies for it (any ideas?). Then we could do some historical studies and find potential correlates. It would be interesting to study to what extent increasing economic inequality, the advent of social media, and other forces have historically correlated with the extent of tribalism.
B) Potentially more promising would be experimental psychological research aimed to identify causal factors and mediators of tribalism. For example, one could present subjects with various interventions and then see which intervention reduce (or increase!) tribalism. Potential interventions include i) changing people’s mood (e.g., presenting them with happy videos), ii) increasing the engagement of controlled cognitive processes (system 2) (e.g. by priming them with the CRT), iii) or decreases the engagement of such processes (e.g. via cognitive load), iv) using de-biasing techniques, v) decreasing or increasing their sense of general security (by e.g. presenting them with threatening or scary images or scenarios). There are many more possible interventions.
C) Another method would be correlational psychological research. Roughly, one could give subjects a variety of personality tests and other psychological scales (e.g. Big Five, CRT, etc.) and examine what correlates with tribalistic tendencies.
D) Another idea would be to develop some sort of “tribalism scale” which could lay the groundwork for further psychological research.
Of course, first one should do a more thorough literature review on this topic. It seems likely that there already exists some good work in this area.
--------
Even more sketchy thoughts:
III) Could it be that some forms of higher mental health actually increase tribalism? Tribalism also goes along with a feeling of belonging to a “good” group/tribe that fights against the bad tribe. Although at times frustrating this might contribute to a sense of certainty and “having a mission or purpose”. Personally, I feel quite depressed and frustrated by not being able to wholeheartedly identify with any major political force because they currently all seem pretty irrational in many areas. Of course, higher mental health will probably reduce your need to belong to a group and thus might still reduce tribalism.
IV) Studies (there was another one which I can’t find at the moment) seem to indicate that social media posts (e.g. on Twitter or Facebook) involving anger or outrage spread more easily than posts involving all other emotions like sadness, joy, etc. So maybe altering the architecture of Facebook or twitter would be particularly effective (e.g. tweaking the news feed algorithm such that posts with a lot of anger reactions get less traction). Of course, this is pretty unlikely to be implemented. It also has disadvantages in the case of justified outrage. Maybe encouraging people to create new social networking sites that somehow alleviate those problems would be useful but that seems pretty far-fetched.