Tribalism

All individuals are embedded within a set of concentric social circles. The first circle contains their immediate family members and close friends. Surrounding that is a larger circle of more distant family members and friends, as well as acquaintances. Around that circle is an even larger circle of strangers that belong to the same community and visit the same groups and locations. But this is just the beginning. People also have affiliations such as group membership to a nation, political group, social club, sports team, religion, that create connections between individuals within these different circles as well as between still larger circles that span national boundaries. Therefore, the human social environment is complex and multifaceted. It contains intersecting and often contrasting loyalties that are at least partly hierarchically arranged. However, one thing is clear from decades of research into how we make groups and cognitively represent them within our social worlds: We tend to prioritize and favor individuals that are closer to us, a tendency known as tribalism (Greene 2013). This tribal tendency is evident in a wide variety of human behaviors and cognitive mechanisms that works towards the function of cooperating with, and expressing loyalty to one’s in-group (i.e., withingroup cooperation) or expressing disagreement and hostility toward out-groups (i.e., between-group conflict) (Balliet et al. 2014; Clark et al. 2019; Tajfel 1982). Tribal tendencies manifest in various areas of human social life including politics and warfare, ethnic and racial discrimination, morality, and sports teams. They include in-group favoritism (Balliet et al. 2014; Clark et al. 2019), discrimination and hostility towards out-groups (Balliet et al. 2014; Tajfel and Turner 1979), biased moral reasoning (Ditto et al. 2009; Clark et al. 2019), and ideologically motivated reasoning (Ditto et al. 2018; Kahan