Aswin Alex

antagonism can emerge from arbitrary divisions

A deeper dive into the data, however, revealed that the participants displayed more brain activity while watching the pain of fans who liked the same team they did. They showed less brain activity when watching fans of a rival team. Their brains simply responded more to their ingroup

minimum amount of information required to trigger an ingroup bia

Although many participants reported that they cared for all people equally, brain imaging revealed a different story: people care about some more than others, and their subconscious selectivity was based on nothing more than a one-word label.

Strikingly, atheists showed the same ingroup bias as religious participants, suggesting the bias is not so much about religion as it is about the degree of affiliation to a group. Labels alone can spur bias.

the more empathic a participant claimed to be, the more she was biased in favor of her ingroup.

Remarkably, even though participants knew they had been randomly assigned, their brains showed the same patterns of ingroup allegiance and outgroup disregard. “Us” versus “them” does not need to be predicated on deep meaning: even arbitrary labels rapidly create bias.

, understand our own biases

build a better model of others

Theatre and books let people to step into the shoes of others, and with the printing press these stories spread widely.

learn and resist the tactics of dehumanisationlearn and resist the tactics of dehumanisation

, “blind” your biases

entangle group membership