Speaker 1: Understanding the levers involved in tribal psychology is enormously important
Speaker 1: for activists, for leaders, for politicians, And so this fatalistic,
Speaker 1: despairing trope about toxic tribalism, I think, is really not
Speaker 1: It really couldn't be more wrong.
Speaker 2: It's so great to have doctor Michael Morris on the show.
Speaker 2: Doctor Marris is a professor of Leadership at the Columbia
Speaker 2: Business School, and he also serves as a professor in
Speaker 2: the psychology department at Columbia. The topic of today's discussion
Speaker 2: is his new book, Tribal How the cultural instincts that
Speaker 2: divide us can help bring us together. Doctor Morris has
Speaker 2: a bit of a different take on tribalism than the
Speaker 2: prominent narrative. He argues that human tribal instincts are not
Speaker 2: bugs in the system, but are actually distinguishing features of
Speaker 2: our species that creates rich cultures that drive many of
Speaker 2: our greatest achievements. But are actually distinguishing features of our
Speaker 2: species that create rich cultures that I have many of
Speaker 2: our greatest achievements. In essence, doctor Marris argues that tribal
Speaker 2: psychology is our best hope for social change. We also
Speaker 2: discussed the three tribal instincts and practical implications for workplace inclusion,
Speaker 2: individual well being, uniting different tribes, and cultural change. More broadly,
Speaker 2: this was a really informative episode with a giant in
Speaker 2: the field of psychology. So without further ado, I bring
Speaker 2: you doctor Michael Marris. Doctor Michael Marris. So great to
Speaker 2: have you on the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott. It's an honor to be here, and
Speaker 1: it's great to see you again.
Speaker 2: Great to see you too.
Speaker 1: I mean, we have published a paper together since we
Speaker 1: last saw each other in person, So that's it. Gps P. GPSP.
Speaker 2: No one knows what that means, but it's a prestigious journal. No,
Speaker 2: but thank you so much for bringing me into that project.
Speaker 1: We drew on your foundation, you know, so it.
Speaker 2: Was thank you. I really admire you and your research.
Speaker 2: And I want to go through the thing that's kind
Speaker 2: of most top on your mind these days, which is
Speaker 2: tribal And you say tribalism is not necessarily a bad thing,
Speaker 2: because I do see everywhere these days it's like toxic tribalism, right,
Speaker 2: tribalism's ruining us all and you kind of have a
Speaker 2: counterintuitive approach to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the reasons to write this book is
Speaker 1: to try to counter the trope of toxic tribalism that
Speaker 1: has emerged, particularly in the last five years. And you know,
Speaker 1: we understand why. There's been a lot of group conflicts
Speaker 1: that are pretty upsetting, from the you know, the red
Speaker 1: and Blue tribes not you know, accepting election outcomes and
Speaker 1: political violence in our country, and then record racial protests,
Speaker 1: you know, inequality and justice suspicion, and then religious conflicts,
Speaker 1: whether it's somebody shooting up a synagogue or you know,
Speaker 1: in Sudan civil wars between Islamic and non Islamic tribes.
Speaker 1: It's understandable that people are looking for an answer, but
Speaker 1: the answer that's emerged, you know, and I could point
Speaker 1: to the pundits who who were most responsible. You know.
Speaker 1: Tom Friedman talked about the virus of tribalism that has
Speaker 1: infected our democracy, and Andrew Sullivan said that a deeply buried,
Speaker 1: evolved dribe has resurfaced to make us hate outsiders and
Speaker 1: feel blindly allegiant, you know, to one group. And the
Speaker 1: La Times came up with toxic tribalism, and you know,
Speaker 1: made the case that people, a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who died of COVID died because of tribalism because it
Speaker 1: was Biden's Biden's vaccine and they didn't want it. So
Speaker 1: I think that I'm rambling a bit, but I think
Speaker 1: that what's problematic about this trope is is not that
Speaker 1: tribal psychology is irrelevant to these things. It is relevant,
Speaker 1: but there's an almost despairing tone to it, a sort
Speaker 1: of fatalistic doom, saying that we were genetically predisposed to
Speaker 1: hate the other group and to not see reality clearly,
Speaker 1: and so the end is near. And I think I
Speaker 1: think every generation thinks the end is near, and so
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's accurate. And I don't think
Speaker 1: it's helpful.
Speaker 2: Wow, because you even go further you say it, you
Speaker 2: say that tribalism can unite us. That's like, that's like
Speaker 2: the obstinent of toxic Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, if you know, if you talk to a behavioral
Speaker 1: scientist or if you talk to an evolutionary theorist, what
Speaker 1: are the instincts that evolved that enabled humans to become
Speaker 1: humans to live in our particular form of social organization. Well,
Speaker 1: these are solidaristic instincts. These are in thinks that help
Speaker 1: groups coordinate, cooperate, establish continuity, and yes, as a side effect,
Speaker 1: occasionally bring them into conflict with other groups. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the ways that we establish in group identity
Speaker 1: as using out groups as a foil, right, And that's
Speaker 1: very salient. But within the larger picture of the human
Speaker 1: tribal instincts, it's kind of a footnote, you know what,
Speaker 1: these what the species that evolved to hate outsiders and
Speaker 1: lash out at them would not be as successful as
Speaker 1: species as ours. You know. In fact, there was a
Speaker 1: species like that, It was called Neanderthals, and they went
Speaker 1: extinct for a reason because this more cooperative species, you know,
Speaker 1: out survived them, out competed them. And so we need
Speaker 1: to remember that these group affinities, and these desires for identity,
Speaker 1: and these needs for meaning associated group member ship are
Speaker 1: largely adoptive and they have been harnessed by effective leaders
Speaker 1: throughout history. So it's it's not a cause for despair
Speaker 1: that people are enmeshed with their groups, you know. And
Speaker 1: one of the other fallacies is that that culture is
Speaker 1: somehow fixed, and you know, you and I have lived
Speaker 1: long enough to know that's not the case. You know,
Speaker 1: the culture of screens is something that we didn't grow
Speaker 1: up with, right. The culture of self driving cars is
Speaker 1: just coming to us. The culture of using they as
Speaker 1: a as a pronoun for a single person something we've
Speaker 1: seen changed in the last ten years. So the culture
Speaker 1: is constantly influx, and it's influx on a day to
Speaker 1: day level based on the environment you're in, and it's
Speaker 1: influx on a year to year level based on you know,
Speaker 1: how things evolve. And so I think that understanding the
Speaker 1: levers involved in tribal psychology is enormously important, you know,
Speaker 1: for activists, for leaders, for politicians, and so this fatalistic
Speaker 1: despairing trope about toxic tribalism, I think is really not
Speaker 1: It really couldn't be more wrong. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you look at Roy Baummeister's seminal paper
Speaker 2: on the need for belonging kind of laying out there
Speaker 2: that this is really a fundamental need. And Mark Leary
Speaker 2: I think was the co author on that, if I
Speaker 2: remember correctly, the need for belonging is such Wow, it's
Speaker 2: so deeply ingrained in us, and you can definitely see
Speaker 2: how if you're desperate for belonging that can lead to
Speaker 2: all sorts of maladaptive ways. Of getting belonging, like signing
Speaker 2: up with violent violent extremist groups for instance, or various extremes.
Speaker 2: So I do think that, like in the main you
Speaker 2: have a great point. And then it's also and it's
Speaker 2: also really interesting to look at it in the at
Speaker 2: the extremes when there's a real deficiency for belonging and
Speaker 2: such a craving for for for seeking an identity, And
Speaker 2: I think tribals can can truly run amok. It can
Speaker 2: truly run up run amok.
Speaker 1: It can. And it's a great point. And I really
Speaker 1: I appreciate.
Speaker 3: The pushback because it helps me clarify it was yes
Speaker 3: and not a respect Yeah, it was a yes, and
Speaker 3: but but good point.
Speaker 1: I think that's an important point, and I try to
Speaker 1: I try to describe that that these tribal instincts, like
Speaker 1: almost any instinct, can get caught in feedback loops and
Speaker 1: can underchange social conditions, get out of range and be dysfunctional.
Speaker 1: But it's not It still doesn't look like what the
Speaker 1: toxic tribalism pun it's are talking about, because when tribal
Speaker 1: psychology gets out of control and contributes to a conflict,
Speaker 1: the conflict is not starting from primal range rage. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not starting from hostility towards the other group.
Speaker 1: Hostilities may eventually arise when we get frustrated and we
Speaker 1: lose trust in another group, but it's not the root cause.
Speaker 1: And stating that that's the case is not helpful because
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It's not a diagnosis that shows us how
Speaker 1: to treat the disease.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, and I guess there's a lot more nuanced
Speaker 2: and we talk about the different tribal instincts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that, as you know, in research,
Speaker 1: we tend to split distinctions very fine, so we might
Speaker 1: we might distinguish forty tribals.
Speaker 2: I love doing that, but.
Speaker 1: You know, I work a lot with business leaders and
Speaker 1: with political campaigns, and what I've found over the years
Speaker 1: when I've tried to build a toolkit that works for people,
Speaker 1: that there's three major categories that are useful to distinguish,
Speaker 1: and they correspond to what the evolutionists distinguished and essentially
Speaker 1: their instincts to imitate peers, to emulate heroes, and to
Speaker 1: perpetuate traditions. And so the first of these, the peer instinct.
Speaker 1: We can recognize that in us today, the sideways glances
Speaker 1: at our classmates, our co workers, our neighbors, and the
Speaker 1: impulse to match their behavior and mesh with them and
Speaker 1: be similar. And this meshing instinct gave us the gift
Speaker 1: of coordination. When a group can act as a united force,
Speaker 1: it's more efficient at foraging, it's more efficient at self defense.
Speaker 1: And so that was the first way in which we
Speaker 1: went beyond other primate species and we developed this way
Speaker 1: of learning what the norm is in the group and
Speaker 1: this impulse to match it. And it's largely adaptive, and
Speaker 1: it produces conformity, and we're all on the lookout for conformity.
Speaker 1: Conformity can be problematic, it can reduce independent thinking, but
Speaker 1: the same conformity is also what enables us to stand
Speaker 1: on the shoulders of giants and work collectively, told to
Speaker 1: build a house that neither of us could build alone.
Speaker 1: You know that we know. And the important thing is
Speaker 1: not just that I know something and you know something,
Speaker 1: but I know that you know it. You know so
Speaker 1: I can coordinate with you because I know that this
Speaker 1: is shared knowledge within our group. So that's the peer instinct.
Speaker 1: It's this capacity to use shared knowledge as a basis
Speaker 1: of coordination.
Speaker 2: And that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing. That enables us to have, you know,
Speaker 1: the smooth functioning of organizations and society. You know, you
Speaker 1: can imagine what traffic conditions would look like if drivers
Speaker 1: were not conforming to what other drivers are doing. You know,
Speaker 1: when you look at a busy highway, it's it's quite
Speaker 1: amazing that there aren't more accidents. And it's because you know,
Speaker 1: at a very deep level, you know, the inner conformist
Speaker 1: is stronger than the interactivists or the inner creative. And
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. It enables us to live in
Speaker 1: large groups and mesh with each other in a way
Speaker 1: that reduces collisions of all kinds, whether they're cognitive collisions
Speaker 1: or you know, vehicular collisions. Okay, And that's something we've
Speaker 1: had for like two million years in our species, and
Speaker 1: it's really the basis of human culture.
Speaker 2: In what ways can the peer instinct instinct be a negative?
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of creativity okay, right, because like you don't
Speaker 2: want to just conform, You want to like do not
Speaker 2: conform right for creativity.
Speaker 1: So yeah, a lot of a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have tried to optimize their lives for creativity choose the
Speaker 1: route of exile. You know me. Yeah, I mean, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Warren Buffett moved back to uh, Nebraska for
Speaker 1: a reason. He doesn't want the noise of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: Can't stand people, can't stand piers.
Speaker 1: You know, there's all sorts of character. Georgia O'Keefe, you know,
Speaker 1: moved down to New Mexico partially for the for the landscape,
Speaker 1: so partially to get away from the New York arts
Speaker 1: scene so she could be more original. And it's a
Speaker 1: real dangerous universities because you know, we live, we work,
Speaker 1: cheek and jowl with people in our same disciplines and
Speaker 1: it becomes very ingrown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So where does that leave us? Then it's okay,
Speaker 2: It's okay to buck the pure instinct for your art.
Speaker 1: It's totally fine because you know as an artist, as
Speaker 1: an artist, coordination with other people is not so important.
Speaker 1: Like if you're on a soccer team, coordination with other
Speaker 1: people may be more important than individual creativity, but if
Speaker 1: you're a painter, not so much. You know. In the
Speaker 1: end of my book, I try to talk about the
Speaker 1: problematic conflicts of our time, and I try to show
Speaker 1: that for several examples you can see which of the
Speaker 1: tribal instincts has gotten out of control and contributed to this.
Speaker 1: And I argue that the conflict in our politics between
Speaker 1: the red tribe and the Blue tribe is largely a
Speaker 1: case of the peer instinct running amok. And I call
Speaker 1: it epistemic tribalism because it's a matter of We're getting
Speaker 1: all of our news from our neighbors who are ideologically sorted,
Speaker 1: and our social media communities, which are ideologically and algorithmically sorted,
Speaker 1: and so we feel like we're thinking rationally and gathering information,
Speaker 1: but it's very corrupted by an our side bias. And
Speaker 1: so we then look at the other side and they
Speaker 1: seem crazy. Their ideas seem crazy because their ideas are
Speaker 1: so different from our own, and we're not aware that
Speaker 1: our own ideas are, you know, shaped by the community.
Speaker 1: We think of them as reality. And so and there
Speaker 1: are all these efforts now to try to bridge the
Speaker 1: red Blue divide, and I applaud those, but I think
Speaker 1: some of them are wrongheaded because they don't take into
Speaker 1: account the group affinities in the group psychology. I can
Speaker 1: tell you, I can give you an example, an example. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of our post toxic Columbia is working on this
Speaker 1: there's a set of foundations and organizations that are kind
Speaker 1: of like red bridging the red Blue divide, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them have names like Hello from the Other Side,
Speaker 1: or the Town Gown Rift or you know, Red Blue
Speaker 1: meet Up something, and they're making very salient that when
Speaker 1: you come to these you're going to be paired with
Speaker 1: somebody who is from the other side, and that puts
Speaker 1: people on defense and it can even lead to polarization
Speaker 1: of attitudes because I'm stealing myself against any of these ideas.
Speaker 1: But then there's another set of organizations and one of
Speaker 1: them is called Coffee Party USA or Make America Dinner Again,
Speaker 1: or you know. Some of them are about outdoor activities.
Speaker 1: And these activities are chosen because they crosscut liberals and conservatives,
Speaker 1: and so you show up and they deliberately make sure
Speaker 1: that it's a bipartisan group that shows up. But you
Speaker 1: don't talk about politics. You talk about you know, hiking,
Speaker 1: or you talk about coffee, or you talk about you know,
Speaker 1: Tuscan cuisine. And what people have found is that the
Speaker 1: latter type are more effective at depolarization, at reducing negative
Speaker 1: attitudes about the other side, and at producing new friendships
Speaker 1: that actually last beyond the event, because you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're drawing on an identity that people actually have, like
Speaker 1: I'm a foodie or I love coffee, or I'm an
Speaker 1: outdoors person, and allowing for common identity to you know,
Speaker 1: build a bridge, and people eventually realize that their new
Speaker 1: friend is a Republican or a Democrat. But that's okay,
Speaker 1: and that's that's that's how that's how it works, when
Speaker 1: it works.
Speaker 2: Did you feel an impulse to do anything on Columbia's
Speaker 2: campus when we recently had essentially a shutdown because of protesters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, like a lot of the faculty, I.
Speaker 2: Was we could apply some of your research, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a there's a tradition at Columbia
Speaker 1: and other universe cities of professors standing in between the
Speaker 1: protesting students and the police. And I definitely went as
Speaker 1: many days as I could and did that and also
Speaker 1: tried to listen, you know, to what both sides were saying,
Speaker 1: because you know, we had two very ardent groups. You know,
Speaker 1: we had the sort of the sort of pro Israel group,
Speaker 1: and we probably have a stronger Israeli contingent on our
Speaker 1: campus than any other American University. And then we had
Speaker 1: this more diffuse, you know, anti genocide group they would
Speaker 1: call it, they would call themselves. And I tried to,
Speaker 1: you know, listen to both groups, and there was some
Speaker 1: effort to, you know, have professors talk to the groups.
Speaker 1: I wasn't central in that. And then I've also played
Speaker 1: a role in the last few weeks. We in the
Speaker 1: final days of the president who resigned, I was asked
Speaker 1: to lead a workshop about tribalism and managing tribalism for
Speaker 1: the president and the deans of each of the school,
Speaker 1: of the law, school, of the med school, the Social
Speaker 1: work school, some of which were unaffected, some of which
Speaker 1: were very effective. So social work school was a real hotspot.
Speaker 1: You know, arts and science is also a real hotspot.
Speaker 1: And then before the event could take place, we had
Speaker 1: a succession event, so we had a new president and
Speaker 1: on her second day and awkward second Well, it actually
Speaker 1: made the event a lot less awkward, you know, I
Speaker 1: would in the first version of it, I would have
Speaker 1: had to say mistakes were made last year, but I
Speaker 1: was able to be a little bit more direct about
Speaker 1: what I saw as some of the problems, some of
Speaker 1: the yeah, inflection points last year that at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the year, I was proud of both groups. I
Speaker 1: thought it was a teaching moment. It brought back nostalgia,
Speaker 1: you know, the South Africa apartheid protests when I was
Speaker 1: in college, you know, thirty years ago, which I think,
Speaker 1: you know, are something that everyone at Columbia should be
Speaker 1: very proud of. That they started at Columbia, they spread
Speaker 1: to campuses across the country. It was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that South Africa let Mandela go, you know, these
Speaker 1: worldwide campus protests, and it had a consequence. It wasn't
Speaker 1: meaningless student activism. And I think the students today are
Speaker 1: inspired by that example. And if the country of South
Speaker 1: Africa cared about Ivy League protests, I think the country
Speaker 1: of Israel would care. You know, they're much more connected
Speaker 1: to the elite American universities than South Africa ever was.
Speaker 1: So I think that at the beginning of the year,
Speaker 1: until you know, maybe April or something, I thought of
Speaker 1: it as a very positive development. I thought, maybe inconvenient
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, but still positive. But then
Speaker 1: it turned it turned into people.
Speaker 2: Taking over buildings doesn't seem best method.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think in the in the aparth I protest.
Speaker 1: They did something exactly right, which is that they they
Speaker 1: occupied Hamilton Hall because Hamilton Hall was occupied during the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, so it's a symbol. But they occupied it symbolically,
Speaker 1: like I think, by surrounding it, you know, not by
Speaker 1: going inside and breaking furniture. And the people who went
Speaker 1: inside and broke furniture were largely anarchist groups that were
Speaker 1: not really the core. You know. But both both sides,
Speaker 1: the anti genocide campaign and the pro Israel campaign, both
Speaker 1: sides have gotten co opted by outside groups in ways
Speaker 1: that have led that have led them to say a
Speaker 1: lot of regrettable things. You know, some of my colleagues
Speaker 1: are among the leaders of the Israel groups and suddenly
Speaker 1: they're you know, at least Stephonic is retweeting their tweets
Speaker 1: more than anybody else. And you should you should ask
Speaker 1: yourself when you thought you were a liberal, progressive person
Speaker 1: and suddenly the right wing is is your fan, You
Speaker 1: should ask yourself what's happening? You know. So, but you know,
Speaker 1: none of us are professional political activists. Where it's a
Speaker 1: combination of nineteen year old students and nerdy grad students
Speaker 1: and the occasional professor, So we shouldn't expect that these
Speaker 1: protests operate seamlessly and without stupid things being said. You know,
Speaker 1: we should give everyone a break. I think their heart
Speaker 1: is in the right place for the most part, and
Speaker 1: it spills over into ugly forms. But when you think
Speaker 1: about these these conflicts that have inspired the toxic tribalism trope,
Speaker 1: left right political conflict, racial ethnic conflict, and then sectarian conflict,
Speaker 1: this involves all three of them. So all of the
Speaker 1: frustrations and sentiments that have been built up over the
Speaker 1: past decade have kind of collapsed together in ways that
Speaker 1: people aren't fully conscious of. And it's somewhat opportunistic that
Speaker 1: the red and the Blue tribes have seized upon this
Speaker 1: conflict as one more thing to fight about. So it's
Speaker 1: it's definitely a difficult matter and more controversial, certainly more
Speaker 1: controversial than than the South Africa apartheid conflict, which was
Speaker 1: in somebody's pushing against an open door nobody university.
Speaker 2: It was hard to disagree that that's bad.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. Vietnam. I think in hindsight we tend to
Speaker 1: look at it as though everyone agreed the war was
Speaker 1: a bad thing. But I think if you you look
Speaker 1: at original documents from the time, that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: You know, most of the country was in favor of
Speaker 1: the war, and you know a lot of people at
Speaker 1: universities were too.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about your second instinct, the hero instinct. I'd
Speaker 2: love to hear your thoughts about that one and whether
Speaker 2: you think that's a good one. You think all three
Speaker 2: are good and may all evolved because they're adaptive. Adaptive
Speaker 2: adopt is not always good.
Speaker 1: Well, we shouldn't expect that evolution designs perfect mechanisms that
Speaker 1: always operate flawlessly. They operate adaptively more often than not,
Speaker 1: and then they spread through the population. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they are you know, just like our taste
Speaker 1: for sugar, right, we evolved that because that helped us
Speaker 1: get nutrition in the old days, but it can lead
Speaker 1: to diabetes and neighborhoods that have a lot of oodigas, right,
Speaker 1: So it's not perfect.
Speaker 2: So yeah, tell me your thoughts about the hero instincts.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you know, the hero instinct was the sort
Speaker 1: of second wave of adaptations in our kind that made
Speaker 1: it fundamentally different from other kinds, and it showed up
Speaker 1: about a half a million years ago when our forebears.
Speaker 1: At that time, you suddenly see signs of things like
Speaker 1: hunting wooly mammoths and other large game that were very
Speaker 1: dangerous to hunt and where often the lead hunter paid
Speaker 1: the ultimate price so that the larger group could have
Speaker 1: this windfall of protein. At the same time, you see
Speaker 1: things like advances and tool making that somebody would toil
Speaker 1: for months to make a perfect spear or a perfect
Speaker 1: fish net. You know that maybe somebody else would use
Speaker 1: and get the credit for, but they would do it
Speaker 1: because they wanted to contribute to a group. It's when
Speaker 1: you start to see the skeletons of people with handicaps
Speaker 1: who survived to the age of adulthood, and that only
Speaker 1: happens if someone else is taking care of them. And
Speaker 1: so these pro social instincts evolved around this time, and
Speaker 1: pro social instincts are a puzzle for evolutionists because how
Speaker 1: does the noble savage pass on his genes. You know,
Speaker 1: for a while people thought, you know, the evolution rewarded selfishness,
Speaker 1: but we've realized that there are mechanisms and evolution for
Speaker 1: pro social instincts to pass on and uh the way
Speaker 1: it shows up in our psychology that we can recognize
Speaker 1: today is you know, somewhat paradoxical because it's you know,
Speaker 1: we even intellectuals like you and I, we we catch
Speaker 1: ourselves reading human interest articles about whether Tim walls you
Speaker 1: know where sponsors are briefs or you know what uh
Speaker 1: Elon Musk eats for breakfast, or uh we want to
Speaker 1: know about what work out the MVP of the NFL does.
Speaker 1: And it's it's not so clear that we're learning anything
Speaker 1: adaptive from this reflexive emulation of people with status, but
Speaker 1: we are. We are wired for it, and it's why,
Speaker 1: you know, celebrities are celebrities. You know, you like Mike
Speaker 1: Encapsuletes the hero instinct, right, you like Mike, Yeah, when
Speaker 1: in when in doubt emulate you know so so but
Speaker 1: what Holmes was not the first tech executive to wear
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs' black turtlenecks and that that didn't lead to
Speaker 1: a successful product, you know, but it you know, and
Speaker 1: others have imitated his diet or imitated his meditation practice, right,
Speaker 1: So it's something that even very smart people do. And
Speaker 1: we can laugh at it in the same way that
Speaker 1: we laugh at conformity, but it plays a very important
Speaker 1: role in that this this impulse to emulate, even when
Speaker 1: it takes sacrifice and work to do so, the behaviors
Speaker 1: of successful and high status people. It allows for innovations
Speaker 1: to spread because more people in the rising generation will
Speaker 1: adopt the practice, whether it's driving an electric car or
Speaker 1: doing a podcast, you know, as opposed to an old
Speaker 1: fashioned form of you know, publicizing research. You know, And
Speaker 1: there are people like there are innovators like yourself, and
Speaker 1: then you gain status, and there's young young graduate students
Speaker 1: looking to your example who are going to want to
Speaker 1: be podcasters, and a new form comes into into circulation.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's adaptive for individuals because individuals gain
Speaker 1: esteem and status and tribute from doing things that are
Speaker 1: contributions to the group. And it's adaptive for the group
Speaker 1: because it allows for collective level learning, tribal learning, and
Speaker 1: so status seeking may seem like a silly example of
Speaker 1: human folly, but it's an adaptive impulse, you know, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. It helps groups succeed. And then the final
Speaker 1: one you want me to do, the final one, It
Speaker 1: may seem like the most primitive of all of them,
Speaker 1: but the final one to perpetuate traditions to what's a
Speaker 1: cult is the ancestry ancestor instinct and the teacher and
Speaker 1: me wants to start with the name of it, very
Speaker 1: good headlines. This is more like in the last one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years, relatively recently, things happened where suddenly you
Speaker 1: started to see the elders in communities being listened to
Speaker 1: very carefully. Groups would discover artifacts from previous generations and
Speaker 1: then you know, replicate the crafts or the art or
Speaker 1: the weapon making in those artifacts from the past. So
Speaker 1: people became very curious about the ways of the past,
Speaker 1: even ways of the past that weren't immediately relevant. And
Speaker 1: this allowed for the perpetuation across generations of symbolic traditions
Speaker 1: like art and religion, you know, as well as making
Speaker 1: tools that were more complex then I would necessarily understand.
Speaker 1: So blindly replicating what I saw the previous generation do
Speaker 1: was a better way to perpetuate those tools than me
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out or trying to understand it
Speaker 1: from my common sense. And so you know, we have this,
Speaker 1: we have this impulse in us for rote learning and
Speaker 1: wrote repetition, and you know, we've we've all done it,
Speaker 1: and we know that it comes with a set of
Speaker 1: emotions and a set of motivations, whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: you know, reading the Torah out of our mitzvah, or
Speaker 1: doing a piano recital of Beethoven or learning a ballet step.
Speaker 1: You know, these things are we learned by rote. We
Speaker 1: don't really know. It's a little arbitrary, why do we
Speaker 1: do it this way or not that way? But there's
Speaker 1: a deep sense of connection not just to a community
Speaker 1: at this point in time, but to a tradition that
Speaker 1: spans generations, and it serves very deep sidecological needs, including
Speaker 1: our needs related to fears of mortality because transcendence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if we feel that we are part of something that
Speaker 1: has lasted a long time, it probably will extend into
Speaker 1: the future a long time. And so we gain a
Speaker 1: kind of symbolic immortality from our are reveling in traditions.
Speaker 1: And so this was also very adoptive for groups because
Speaker 1: it created tribal memory and groups didn't have to reinvent
Speaker 1: the wheel every generation because there was this impulse to
Speaker 1: hang onto things and and the hero instinct energy could
Speaker 1: instead go into building on the base of what people
Speaker 1: had done in the previous generation. And when all three
Speaker 1: of these things came together, the peer instinct, the hero instinct,
Speaker 1: and the ancestor instinct, our species crossed a rubicon that
Speaker 1: is called cultural accumulation. Cultures started accumulating every generation and
Speaker 1: tuning themselves to the and so we had differentiation and
Speaker 1: we had cultural growth. And then people became wiser and
Speaker 1: more capable without anyone becoming more brainy as an individual
Speaker 1: because they could tap into a larger, larger pool of
Speaker 1: inherited wisdom. And that, more than any gain in brain size,
Speaker 1: is why we are different from Neanderthals and why we
Speaker 1: are so different from chimps. You know that we we
Speaker 1: are the beneficiaries of inherited knowledge, and ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of what we know we inherited. We didn't figure it out.
Speaker 2: Ourselves, yes, And you know, on the one hand, that's great.
Speaker 2: You know, on the other hand, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: inherited knowledge that's crap. You know that we don't that
Speaker 2: we want to stop keep inheriting over and over and orient.
Speaker 2: So that's my segue into this really cool part of
Speaker 2: your book where you talk about cultural how where you
Speaker 2: talk about how cultural change can be contagious and so
Speaker 2: sometimes we want some real cultural We want to break
Speaker 2: out of this rut of our ancestors. Our ancestors weren't
Speaker 2: always wise, you know.
Speaker 1: No, then there's more inertia than you know. The cultures
Speaker 1: of most groups served what they needed ten years ago
Speaker 1: instead of serving what they needed.
Speaker 2: Or even like, you know, like five fifty thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Like, so tell me a little bit about how cultural
Speaker 2: change can be contagious and give me, you know, like
Speaker 2: describe the hitting syndrome, okay, which is related to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I start the I start my book with an
Speaker 1: extended story about a Dutch soccer coach named Who's Hitting
Speaker 1: And he was well known for somehow being able to
Speaker 1: turn around teams that were struggling, and even teams in
Speaker 1: countries where he didn't even speak the language. You know.
Speaker 1: He went to Turkey, he went to Spain, and at
Speaker 1: the time soccer was very enmeshed in an almost national
Speaker 1: character belief. And you still hear this when the World
Speaker 1: Cup comes, you know, the sportscasters will be like, notice
Speaker 1: the teutonic discipline on this German team and the graceful
Speaker 1: samba like play of the Brazilian team, and the tidy
Speaker 1: efficient British mentality and the Italian you know esthetics, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of this notion that the people from
Speaker 1: this country can only play one way and the people
Speaker 1: from that country can only play another way. And that
Speaker 1: never rang true to Hitting because you know, he had
Speaker 1: played in various countries as a player, and he thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, players are adaptable, and you can mold players
Speaker 1: and you and so he was asked relatively relatively at
Speaker 1: the last minute, just just a year and a half
Speaker 1: before the World Cup to coach the South Korean team
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two when they were the host
Speaker 1: of the World Cup and they had bid to be
Speaker 1: host at a time when their economy was doing great
Speaker 1: and their team was doing great, you know, in the
Speaker 1: in the mid to late nineties, and then they hit
Speaker 1: the you know, the Korea Crisis of the late nineties,
Speaker 1: which was very humiliating and kind of brought down their economy.
Speaker 1: And then around the same time, their soccer team started,
Speaker 1: you know, bombing out of the Asia Cup, and you know,
Speaker 1: they were usually a regional power and they weren't even winning,
Speaker 1: you know, in their local competitions, and so they were
Speaker 1: desperate and they're like Okay, well, let's try to bring
Speaker 1: in this Dutch wonder kind and maybe he can work
Speaker 1: his magic. And at first it looked like a terrible
Speaker 1: decision because he didn't even know who the stars were
Speaker 1: in Korea. He he didn't make much effort to kind
Speaker 1: of learn about the soccer culture of Korea, which was
Speaker 1: very well established, and he arranged that they He negotiated
Speaker 1: for three things when he took the job. He asked
Speaker 1: for complete control over the roster, which wasn't traditional there
Speaker 1: because usually the soccer officials, you know, would choose some
Speaker 1: of the roster and choose it based on social considerations
Speaker 1: rather than strictly play considerations. He asked for the Korean
Speaker 1: soccer club season to be suspended so that he could
Speaker 1: have his players for much longer than any of the
Speaker 1: other World Cup coaches. And he asked for a budget
Speaker 1: to bring the world's best teams to Korea for exhibition games.
Speaker 1: And so they lost all of those exhibition games by
Speaker 1: big scores. He sort of cloistered away his team in
Speaker 1: these training camps, cut off communication to the outside. The
Speaker 1: Korean sports press was in a panic, you know that
Speaker 1: the only thing they saw of their team was like
Speaker 1: losing six nothing, losing five to nothing, you know, and
Speaker 1: they weren't able to watch what was going on in
Speaker 1: the practices. But what he thought he needed to do
Speaker 1: was to first break the old culture that existed. So
Speaker 1: his first training camps, instead of holding them in Korea,
Speaker 1: where people are constantly reminded of Korean social norms like
Speaker 1: to be deferential to people who are senior to you,
Speaker 1: he held them in the United Emirates at an international
Speaker 1: soccer facility, where players professional identities as soccer players came
Speaker 1: to the fore rather than their Korean identities as being
Speaker 1: you know, differential, polite, you know, members of the Korean quality.
Speaker 1: And then he worked really hard to kind of build
Speaker 1: the team culture, to remold the team culture around sort
Speaker 1: of egalitarian norms among teammates, which was different from what
Speaker 1: the team culture has had been. The team culture had
Speaker 1: been that the veterans eat dinner at one table and
Speaker 1: the rookies eat dinner at a separate table. And so
Speaker 1: in the short term he did things to kind of
Speaker 1: de emphasize the norms so that people could learn new tactics,
Speaker 1: and then he slowly built these new social routines that
Speaker 1: ultimately led to new relationships and the new ways of
Speaker 1: interacting on the field. And then when the Korean team
Speaker 1: was unveiled at the World Cup, they were extraordinary because
Speaker 1: they were able to play this cutting edge soccer strategy
Speaker 1: that nobody expected and they made it to the semi
Speaker 1: finals and it was unprecedented and you know, a great
Speaker 1: inflection point for the country because it was an emotional
Speaker 1: moment of we are capable, we can beat the world's best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so deep cultural change is possible, and like, what
Speaker 2: can we do about changing the culture surrounding politics right now?
Speaker 2: Because it just it feels like the culture right now
Speaker 2: is that Democrats and Republicans are more polarized. It's almost
Speaker 2: like the culture is like they must be polarized. You know,
Speaker 2: we can't even imagine a world where they're not extremely polarized.
Speaker 2: So I'm just wondering what can we do to kind
Speaker 2: of change that culture. Yeah, use tribalism for our advantage,
Speaker 2: my friends.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, no, I know in the spirit of your book,
Speaker 1: I know what you're asking, and I've been I do
Speaker 1: work in the political campaigns. I am part of a
Speaker 1: group that for many elections has advised the democratic side
Speaker 1: and some of the tools of tribalism or the levers
Speaker 1: of tribalism are symbols and ceremonies and symbols are really important.
Speaker 1: So one of the ways that Trump built this Maga
Speaker 1: coalition was they read Maga hat. You know, people could
Speaker 1: go to a rally, everyone wear their hat. He kind
Speaker 1: of tapped into a blue collar, very middle American thing
Speaker 1: of wearing baseball caps and it, you know, it gave
Speaker 1: people a sense of our group is similar, even though
Speaker 1: you know, the Republican coalition is odd bedfellows. It's these
Speaker 1: Wall Street people and these main street people, and they
Speaker 1: don't have that much in common. Trump doesn't have that
Speaker 1: much in common personally with most of his followers. But
Speaker 1: the red cap brought them together. And so I think
Speaker 1: one really adept move recently was the the Harris Walls
Speaker 1: Camo cap. You know, and Tim Walls as a selection
Speaker 1: was very adept because he's he's a person who looks
Speaker 1: like he's actually gone hunting in his life rather than
Speaker 1: just claiming to be a hunter. I've heard him described
Speaker 1: as an RAI candidate because he he looks like a
Speaker 1: guy who's gone camping, and so I think he he
Speaker 1: looks like a member of the sort of middle American
Speaker 1: blue collar tribe. There are people who are going to
Speaker 1: be drawn to that coalition just because he looks like
Speaker 1: one of them, he talks like one of them, and
Speaker 1: then the cap is a kind of symbol that can
Speaker 1: be effective.
Speaker 2: So what can we do to change the culture.
Speaker 1: Well, we need to We need to recognize that every
Speaker 1: individual is a member of many tribes and not all
Speaker 1: of those identities are salient at any given moment. And
Speaker 1: we need to look at community memberships that cross cut
Speaker 1: the red blue divide and find ways to activate those identities.
Speaker 1: So I think teachers of America, right, Tim Wallas is
Speaker 1: a teacher, sports, coaches of America, hunters of America, parents
Speaker 1: of America. You know, these are these are the kinds
Speaker 1: of identities that can bring some people to the fore.
Speaker 1: The redeeming factor about tribalism is that there are many
Speaker 1: tribes inside each of us, and we must not forget
Speaker 1: that and think that we are only red and blue.
Speaker 1: You know, the red and blue identities. It's a relatively
Speaker 1: new thing. And you know, two generations ago, there was
Speaker 1: as much diversity within the Democratic Party and Republican Party
Speaker 1: as there was between them, because there were the Southern
Speaker 1: Democrats and the Northern Democrats, and you know, people at
Speaker 1: that time didn't know what party their colleagues and their
Speaker 1: neighbors were, aside from the occasional xilot who puts a
Speaker 1: long sign up every couple of years. And it has
Speaker 1: become this mega identity only only in the last generation,
Speaker 1: as as some other salient identities have faded. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't live in ethnic neighborhoods so much anymore, mostly
Speaker 1: for the good. Most people are not members of religious
Speaker 1: congregations anymore, which you know, I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: good or bad, but those were the kinds of local,
Speaker 1: like minded tribes that gave people a sense of epistemic
Speaker 1: security a few generations ago. And with the residential sorting
Speaker 1: and then the sorting into online communities, the political tribes
Speaker 1: are serving a function that they never did before, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, shoring up your daily sense of identity. And
Speaker 1: so that's something that hopefully will shift and hopefully people
Speaker 1: will just grow tired of it, or enough people will
Speaker 1: parody it that people will want to have more creative
Speaker 1: identities rather than just I'm a blue tribe member, I'm
Speaker 1: a red tribe member.
Speaker 2: Yeah, blending, yeah, really big into transcendence and universalism values.
Speaker 2: You know, the Schwartz circumplex imbly into universalism values. And
Speaker 2: so I'm always trying to think of, well, how can
Speaker 2: we transcend tribalism? So it was very interesting to read
Speaker 2: your book, and it well, I love reading books like
Speaker 2: yours that make me think, that make me even rethink
Speaker 2: my own You know, I don't have rigid anything ideas
Speaker 2: about anything, and you know I had really prior reading
Speaker 2: your book, really been raw. Raw. We need to transcend tribalism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see that, because tribalism is usually associated
Speaker 1: with parochialism as an opposite of universalism. Right, And the
Speaker 1: whole spirit of universalism is let's leave behind these primitive
Speaker 1: reflexes of ethnic affinity and religious affinity and let's be
Speaker 1: more abstract and think about what we value and or say,
Speaker 1: I identify with huge in kind, and I think that,
Speaker 1: you know, we have to recognize that our deepest motivations
Speaker 1: and our deepest feelings of meaning come from thick identities,
Speaker 1: come from identities of people that we that we interact
Speaker 1: with and that we know a lot about that. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't have to be parochial. The when we think
Speaker 1: about cosmopolitanism, when we think about a city that's cosmopolitan,
Speaker 1: like New York or Paris, it is composed of neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that are very different from each other. And that is
Speaker 1: part of the magic of cosmopolitanism that I can I
Speaker 1: can go to Korea Town and then i can go
Speaker 1: a few steps and I'm in the East village, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's a very different vibe. You know, it's a
Speaker 1: different tribe vibe here and a different trib vibe there.
Speaker 1: But there is a spirit of curiosity and mutual learning
Speaker 1: between the groups. And that's what cosmopolitanism is. So cosmopolitanism
Speaker 1: is not the absence of tribalism. It's not the absence
Speaker 1: of you know, it's not people just shedding tradition. It's
Speaker 1: a selective retention of tradition combined with curiosity and openness.
Speaker 1: There's a form of universalism like you know Esperanto. You know,
Speaker 1: the Esperanto movement in the mid twentieth century. They invented
Speaker 1: an artificial language that had sort of the least common
Speaker 1: denominator of all the languages of the world, and they said,
Speaker 1: we really need need to get beyond this tower of
Speaker 1: babble of people speaking different languages. We've invented the perfect language, Esperanto.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have any tradition of poetry, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have a tradition of you know, family memories or anything.
Speaker 1: But it would be a lot more efficient. Maybe we
Speaker 1: could get the un behind it, and then you know,
Speaker 1: basically it may take a generation, but we'll all speak esperanto.
Speaker 1: The world would be a better place. Right didn't happen?
Speaker 1: We can't even use the metric system. I don't think
Speaker 1: we can go sweak esperanto. And so there is there
Speaker 1: is a kind of you know, there's a kind of
Speaker 1: inefficiency and hanging on to things, not all of which
Speaker 1: are adaptive. That is an inherent part of tradition. But
Speaker 1: I think that we shouldn't we shouldn't be an enemy
Speaker 1: of tradition, you know, like or like when Mao, when
Speaker 1: Mao tried to have a cultural revolution to destroy all
Speaker 1: the olds. You know that we're holding society back. A
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of good things get thrown out
Speaker 1: with the bad things when you try to when you
Speaker 1: try to throw away tradition. So no conservative, well, I
Speaker 1: think that the conservatives have a point. They do agree.
Speaker 1: I agree, you know, I mean, these things that have
Speaker 1: been around for a long time, we don't know, we
Speaker 1: can't always immediately see the value of them, and especially
Speaker 1: when we're young, we can't always see it. But many
Speaker 1: of these things that have been around for a long
Speaker 1: time serve institutional purposes that are not so obvious on
Speaker 1: the on the surface. So you know, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: think we shouldn't approach tradition with a wrecking ball, you know,
Speaker 1: we should approach it with skepticism and humor, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So last question I have for interview how how
Speaker 2: should we re how should we rethink workplace discrimination in
Speaker 2: light of your ideas in the book? Are you right
Speaker 2: about that in the books?
Speaker 1: I do? I do. I think that, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the major conflicts of our time that has been
Speaker 1: frustrating is is the inequality Ethnically, there is inequality that
Speaker 1: is undeniable, and then then there's a question about what's
Speaker 1: what motive is driving this inequality, and there's often a
Speaker 1: presumption that the motive is hostility towards the outgroup that
Speaker 1: is trying to, like, you know, I'm trying to keep
Speaker 1: the non whites down, and that's why the non whites
Speaker 1: have not moved up in an organization. And I think
Speaker 1: that that certainly used to be the case, you know,
Speaker 1: it was overt. But the best survey evidence we have,
Speaker 1: you know, from anonymous surveys, you know, suggests that outgroup hostility,
Speaker 1: racial animis is not dead. But it's a it's a
Speaker 1: small it's a fringe for most people. It's a small
Speaker 1: group of people. Yet the inequality is not going away.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's in many ways as present as
Speaker 1: it was a generation or two ago. Interesting, So it's
Speaker 1: time to think, Okay, maybe there's a different motivation that's
Speaker 1: contributing to that inequality or that discrimination. And what I
Speaker 1: argue is is that the tribal motivation, that maybe the
Speaker 1: biggest cause of it is in group love rather than
Speaker 1: outgroom hate. We have impulsive, uncon conscious drives to be
Speaker 1: generous to people who are similar to us, you know, ethnically, religiously,
Speaker 1: and that is something that reproduces inequality. And a lot
Speaker 1: of organizational procedures like hiring for cultural fit or building
Speaker 1: referral systems into recruiting, they've turbocharged this in group favoritism.
Speaker 1: So I would say that you know, we we we're
Speaker 1: looking at the problem wrong. You know, we we put
Speaker 1: so much. You know, Google spends a billion dollars a
Speaker 1: year on these anti bias workshops, and yet two percent
Speaker 1: of their technical employees are people of color. So it's
Speaker 1: obviously not working, and I think it's it's not really
Speaker 1: addressing the real problem. The real problem is that you
Speaker 1: have people hiring people just like themselves because they're similar.
Speaker 1: It's not because of animist towards people who are different.
Speaker 1: So we need to take a really close look at
Speaker 1: our policies and the policies that are enabling in group favoritism,
Speaker 1: because that's the mechanism for most of this discrimination. Inequality,
Speaker 1: not the kind that makes everybody feel bad because you're
Speaker 1: you feel falsely accused of being a racist, right because
Speaker 1: most most of these people are not racists.
Speaker 2: You know, isn't an implication of that that if we
Speaker 2: did manage to get rid of the inequalities, and let's say,
Speaker 2: even it when in the opposite direction where those who
Speaker 2: are considered minorities are the majority, Now, wouldn't they when
Speaker 2: the same thing had recreate itselves, and then we certainly, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Certainly would happen, and it does happen. You know, for
Speaker 1: every ethnic group there's a country in the world where
Speaker 1: they are the majority. Yea, there is the same kind
Speaker 1: of discrimination. What happens in those.
Speaker 2: Weed to be wary of that? Yeah, yeah, every in
Speaker 2: any direction.
Speaker 1: Right, And it just doesn't It doesn't intuitively look like
Speaker 1: the problem because it doesn't involve any negative intent or
Speaker 1: negative feelings. It looks like generosity, right. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like I interview you and you remind me of a
Speaker 1: younger version of myself, and so I give you an
Speaker 1: extra fifteen minutes and then I have more good things
Speaker 1: to say about you, and it all feels like it's
Speaker 1: coming out of good heartedness. But it can be just
Speaker 1: as much of a problem as malice or hostility.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a great point. It's a really great point, Michael.
Speaker 2: And might a wow to call you, but your first
Speaker 2: name doctor, doctor.
Speaker 1: I think we know each other.
Speaker 2: We're a first name basis for each other. You are
Speaker 2: a legend in the field and have done so much
Speaker 2: at Columbia and the Business School, and you've been thinking
Speaker 2: about these topics longer than maybe I've been born.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how old you are, but you're
Speaker 1: definitely younger.
Speaker 2: Than for a long time, and I really want to
Speaker 2: give you a hearty congratulations on this book, which really
Speaker 2: allowed you to put all these ideas you've been thinking
Speaker 2: of for so many years into a single book and
Speaker 2: really got me thinking, maybe even rethink thinking some of
Speaker 2: my old ideas about self transcendence. And so I must
Speaker 2: thank you very much and also thank you for being
Speaker 2: on my podcast.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Scott. I mean, I've been wanting to
Speaker 1: write a book that translates these ideas for some time.
Speaker 1: I think I talked with you about it, probably a
Speaker 1: decade ago. And maybe you're one of my role models
Speaker 1: for someone who's been a top researcher and also invested
Speaker 1: a lot of work. And it is a lot of
Speaker 1: work to become a translator of the ideas, and there's
Speaker 1: too few of those, and too many of the ideas
Speaker 1: never reach a broad audience because there aren't people who
Speaker 1: know how to articulate them. So thank you for having
Speaker 1: me on the show, and thank you for being an example.
Speaker 2: Thank you