Customer Reviews

Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind

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"Prejudice", we are told, isn't "reasonable". "Race" is an "illogical" or "unscientific" concept. Christians tell us we must "love all others as our brothers" - and sisters in a more ecumenical world. Yet Chief Executives can label entire nations as elements of an "Axis of Evil" and make or threaten war with impunity. And masses of the population support them. Why should this be so? David Berreby sought out philosophers, psychologists and other scholars in an extensive quest for some answers. He found a good many and recounts them in this nearly exhaustive study. In a well organised and captivating account, he weaves together many threads in building a picture of how we view ourselves and others.

Biology tells us that our DNA makes us one with our fellows. Yet, somewhere between conception and our ability to distinguish ourselves from others, we begin to categorise those "others". We may find them acceptable, and join their company. In other cases, we deem the differences unacceptable. "Us" and "Them" become the basis for value judgements. Berreby recognises that the distinctions are in our minds. He asks how they come to be there in the first place. He examines the various forms of prejudice, both positive and negative, in tracing both their histories and manifestations. Heart disease, for example, was once considered more prevalent among the rich and powerful. Now, studies show that those carrying burdens of pressures from "above" feel more stressed. Hence, their bodies react and heart problems follow. Classes of people, often the poor and ill-considered such as the "cagot" peasants in France, were despised and relegated to menial roles in society. Over time, the classification fell into disuse. In Berreby's words, they were "recategorised".

The author traces the mental patterns of how we "type" people. The process involves focussing on particular aspects while ignoring the rest. His favourite example is the motorist stopped by a police officer. The officer turns out to be a dark-skinned female. Does the motorist view the officer as a cop, as an Arab, as a light-skinned African or as a woman? For some of us, by the time we work it out, the ticket has been dispensed! The delay is due to our propensity to carry the "type" in our minds, then select characteristics that seem to fit. We generally select an essential characteristic and focus on that. Skin colour is an obvious "essential", but left-handedness or dress can be just as suitable.

These essentials, he argues, can be reinforced within ourselves, as well. In a famous study, Asian women were set into groups, some reminded that Asians are considered to excel in math, others that women are deficient in those skills. When tested, the ones who believed Asians are superior in math had higher test scores. "Type" reinforcement has many ways of developing and expressing beliefs. The best example of this is the military person. Recruits are trained to shed previously held categories, which are replaced with new values. Society at large dims as new loyalties to the squad are instilled. Sacrifice is raised in merit, and hierarchically, running from one's immediate mates, through the levels of the force and finally the nation as an entity. This training is not easily shed, as one marine demonstrated when he left his drinking chums to chat with a uniformed individual. Their shared experiences were more powerful than the friendship bonds.

How we acquire these in the first place is difficult to assess. It seems that it is essential for our dealing with the world at large. That condition dictates that the process is both universal and in the mind. Berreby offers a fine chapter on the areas of the brain involved in various body processes and emotional states. He briefly discusses the devices that indicate where in the brain various activities are recorded. PET and fMRI scanners are given their due, with some history of how the brain's "modules" were identified. He stresses, however, that seeking a "centre" for categorising others is fruitless. The mind's actions are too widely scattered and diverse. This situation may explain both why we may hold prejudices deeply, but can also shift them to lesser importance or even replace them with a new circumstance. With so many ways to "type" our fellows, emphasis can vary quickly and easily. While we like to think we can "top-down" direct our feelings about somebody, there may be equal signals from "bottom-up" to deflect or override our "reasoned" approach to others. Following this vein, Berreby examines the role of emotion as a driving force for categorising.

Is Berreby aiming to dislodge prejudice from our brains? Nothing so simplistic. Does he think training will deter a child from associating with an errant group? Not likely, since one of his primary examples is that of a group of boys who might have been social and ethnic clones dividing them into hostile groups. The separation grew intense until adults stepped in. Berreby is a realist, and provides a plausible structure for how we view others. Unfortunately, the thrust is sociological rather than cognitive, which is where he might have gained further insights. Although he spoke with many researchers, he ignored Daniel C. Dennett's "Consciousness Explained" which might have provided him with an expanded framework for how the process evolved and now works. While that shortcoming is serious, it doesn't detract from the value of this work's theme. Prejudices are not rigid dogma, and with a little effort we can examine and assess them in ourselves as well as in others. We can rebel against their dictates if we wish. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

As an academic researcher and a lawyer, I admit I am biased in favor of a more scholarly presentation. I agree that this book is informative and I have found it helpful as a gateway to the professional literature. However, Berreby has made my task doubly difficult by his inexplicable failure to use footnote numbers for his references, instead organizing the references by page number and phrases at the end of sentences; thus giving no indication in the text that a reference even exists, and forcing the reader to labor mightily to locate his authority. Further, some studies he discusses are not even given a reference -- at the very least, a footnote should indicate the study is unpublished and where it might be located if a person needed it. If this information is summarized in any other book, I would buy it instead of this one.

The book is a sleeper hit that is so timely and valuable to our understanding of why we do what we do (make enemies or friends) in the midst of the world today (wars, loneliness, isolation, craving for community, smart mobs, the "power of us" trends made possible by technology ...) ... like Freakanomics it offers breakthrough insights on how our behavior gets in our way and protects us...... I bought ten of these books as holiday gifts, wrote about it in my newsletter and speak about it. Along with Learned Optimism, Blink, Smart Choices, Illicit and other books it offers insights on how we can be more capable and caring, wise and collaborative in this seemingly disjointed world.
- Kare Anderson, author of SmartPartnering, LikeABILITY, Resolving Conflict Sooner, Getting What You Want, Walk Your Talk and Beauty Inside Out and publisher of the Say it Better newsletter

Us and Them by David Berreby is an attempt to understand the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of intergroup conflict. As such, it is only partly successful. Berreby begins with a discussion of "human kind" which covers everything from race to nation to a happenstance group of strangers in a woman's restroom. This is an overly broad definition that conflates true social groups with temporary collectives or "aggregates." The former develop identity, structure, and rivalries, while the latter do not. This broad beginning foreshadows a book that tends to lose its focus from chapter to chapter. Berreby leaves his thesis for pages at a time, often to discuss irrelevant though admittedly interesting neuroscience research. Nevertheless, the reader is often left wondering what happened to the tribal mind. Truth be told, neuroscience cannot yet explain the area of group conflict. Don't let yourself be dazzled into persuasion.

In addition to being overly broad and unfocused, at times Berreby is simply wrong. On page 36 he refers to the "flawed" research on similarity and interpersonal attraction, suggesting that people may join a group and then begin to act like them. This may well be true (due to various social influence effects), but the observation that people seek out similar others is one of the most robust and replicated findings in social psychology. Berreby is a little too eager to prove his point, and this leads him to distort and go beyond the evidence throughout the book.

I don't want to be completely negative in this review. Certainly, Berreby is a competent writer, and to some extent, this book fills an important niche. Still, I wish he had gone about it in a different way. There is plenty of good research on group relations that he ignores. His neuroscience approach is clever, but ultimately futile as an explanation.

I found this book after reading the phrase Us and Them in Jared Diamond's Third Chimpanzee (After slogging 1/2 way through Guns, Germs and Steel ; DVD is easy to watch ; Collapse audiobook long but good too) not long ago which got me wondering about this phrase. Lo and behold, I was pleasantly surprised and overjoyed to find a book just published about this phrase. (Ponder that coincidence)

While the writing is clear, this book really makes me think and thus I have only been able to read 20-30 pages at a time as I digest it. The devil in understanding why the world is the way it is - today and in the past - is in the details. David Berreby has figured out and articulated a crucial reason. He brings meaning to that phrase - "Everything is Relative." While growing up as an Asian minority in America and traveling to over 35 countries I have sensed and known it, but didn't have a language to define it. Now I do.

Someday David Berreby will be remembered as one of the greatest men that ever lived. This book is that profound. As much as the last one I finished - Why We Lie by David Livingstone Smith.

Both of these titles have transformed how I view the world and myself. You can't trust all bald men, but you can trust both of these authors named David.

I also recommend Ronald Wright's A Short History of Progress.

"Us and Them" by David Berreby explores the human faculty for seeing other people as members of groups with group characteristics, or as Berreby calls them, Human Kinds. The book examines classic results of social psychology, such as Sharif's Robber's Cave experiment and Tajfel's arbitrary groups. He tries to present the current evidence for the faculty being an unconscious module in the mind that automatically places people in groups and attaches group qualities to Them.

The book is well written and has many vivid examples of how people stereotype and why those stereotypes are not reliable guides for rational human behavior. Although he occasionally dives into brain architecture and evolutionary theory, it is not too overwhelming for the intelligent lay reader (that all important Human Kind). The topic is very important, considering that issues of race, gender, religious conflict, and injustice based on economic class dominate our political scene. This book helps the reader get a better scientific footing on the psychological basis of those issues.

By exploring how our human minds--and by extension our brains--process group identity, the author is in an area that has been popular lately due in part to Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works." This research area is called the modular theory of the mind, pioneered by people such as Jerry Fodor and Noam Chomsky. However, Berreby is wary of Pinker's complete programme. He explicitly criticizes Pinker. Never in this book does Berreby refer to a brain "module." Instead, he refers to the mind's code for processing human kind thinking, called kind-sight. To this reader, it amounts to the same thing. A module is a module. Berreby does make the point at length that there is no single chunk of brain that does all human kind code processing. (But, then, I don't think Pinker ever claimed that, either.)

Berreby does show that the human kind code is automatic, unconscious, and hardwired into the developing brain. This to me qualifies his theory as in the tradition of the modular theory of the mind.

Berreby also holds evolutionary theory at arm's length. He is wary of strict reductionism from social structures to selfish genes. He seems uncomfortable with Williams and Dawkins and their insistence that the selfish gene is the final arbiter of evolution. He shows that some of the assumptions of this camp are inseparable from the assumptions of "race realists" such as Rushton. This wariness leads to an excellent exploration of the nature of science and "levels of analysis." He describes the "selfish gene" camp and the "plurality of mechanisms" camp as two competing social groups that use stereotypes and intergroup hostility as part of their own human kind thinking. Clearly, he doesn't want to be a blind follower of either camp.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that he does consider the faculty for kind-sight to be an evolved and distinct mental structure. To that extent, he is, whether he admits it or not, an Evolutionary Psychologist (or Evo Psycho as he mentions in the book).

Berreby rejects what he sees as Pinker's pessimism about the human kind faculty. He ends to book with a hopeful gesture that we can take control of our own destiny by rationally controlling our irrational kind-sight faculty. But he admits that the faculty that propels us to reach the ideals of our human kinds is inseparable from the faculty that can lead to genocide. So I am not convinced that Berreby's conclusion should lead to optimism. Pinker's outlook was really not that much more pessimistic. All in all, they amount to nearly the same outlook.

Berreby is critical of thinkers who use this capacity within human nature for group violence to claim that human nature is evil. He expressedly does not want the evil potential for kind-sight to be used to bolster a theologically Christian worldview. But in the end, his conclusions do not eliminate that line of argument. So long as humans have an irrational kind-sight, which is built-in, we will be fully capable of prejudice and evil, and that capacity cannot be eliminated by any kind of socialization. The hope that everyone will rationally control their prejudices over the long-term is contradicted by human history. He leaves us with an unattainable ideal. Perhaps he gives us the ideal in the hopes of improving the actual, but his finale is more hopeful than plausible.

I've had this book on my shelf since the fall, waiting until the school year was over so I could get to it and several other books. Unfortunately after the fist chapter it's moved down to the bottom of my reading list.

The reason is as simple as it is preventable - the author (or more likely the publisher) has completely failed to provide usable citations for the book.

Most books use one of two citation schemes. Either a bibliography, with all citations listed by author and publication date; or endnotes where a number in the chapter links to the citation at the end of the book. Both have advantages and disadvantages.

However, this book uses a new scheme for `references'. No source material is cited in the chapter. Instead, if you turn to the end of the book, you'll find a page reference and short quote from that page, followed by citations. This is, quite simply maddening.

The only way to read this is to read the chapter, then flip back and forth between the page and the note until you find the sentence, then interpret the sentence in light of the note. I've never seen a system like this, and with any luck, I never will again.

That said, the book is probably fine for non-serious study. If you simply want a readable book to introduce you to this kind of sociology, it's probably decent. However if you're a serious scholar looking for books on this subject, I suggest you keep looking.

As I said, I have not read the whole book - it may be well written and informative. But without an effective system to allow additional study of the original source material, it's useless for me. Assuming it's well written, I'd suggestion the following ratings:

0 for serious study
5 for casual readers

My rating of 3 is a compromise between the two.

There is plenty of excellent material to read here. The substance is good, but the form is bad. Major areas of concern:

a. While there is an overall theme to the book, I got lost moving from one chapter to another. Each chapter, while not written in a vacuum, seems to be disjointed from the preceding chapter.
b. Each chapter should have contained some concluding remarks to emphasize the major points with a bridge to the next chapter, rather than leaving the conclusion for the end of the book. The conclusion at the end of the book had some good points, but was not well written. The author seemed to be in a hurry to finish the book.
c. The author seemed to be all over the place at times.
d. The chapter headings and quotes at the beginning of the chapters did not seem to make a lot of sense.
e. Was not able to grasp fully the author's ultimate objective

Us And Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind isn't the New Age title it sounds to be: it's a survey of how science addresses issues of group identity, using new findings from anthropology to neuroscience to discuss the 'tribal sense' and how it manifests in human affairs. Us And Them defines this sense in both a scientific and cultural perspective, from how those from different cultural roots gain reputations for performance and group reactions to how a sense of place in society affects health, cultural manipulation, and more. A 'must' for any who would understanding group psychology, social and cultural influence, and more.

This book opened my eyes to the extraordinarily inherent propensity for people to accept stereotypes uncritically. The author examines the varied and multilevel bases for this inclination and proposes that, ultimately, we are in control of how we respond to our prejudices. Essentially, our thoughts do not need to dictate our behavior, assuming that we are reflective and not impulsive.

An exceptional book with a great many insights.