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I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: Contact: The consequences of growing up amid diversity just discussed bring us to the effect

I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: Contact: The consequences of growing up amid diversity just discussed bring us to the effects of prolonged contact on Us/Theming. In the 1950s the psychologist Gordon Allport proposed “contact theory.” Inaccurate version: bring Us-es and Thems together (say, teenagers from two hostile nations in a summer camp), animosities disappear, similarities start to outweigh differences, everyone becomes an Us. More accurate version: put Us and Thems together under narrow circumstances and something sort of resembling that happens, but you can also blow it and worsen things. Some of the effective narrower circumstances: each side has roughly equal numbers; everyone’s treated equally and unambiguously; contact is lengthy and on neutral territory; there are “superordinate” goals where everyone works together on a meaningful task (say, summer campers turning a meadow into a soccer field). How do we bring people who disagree back together? Technology is really good at getting people to do things which are individually gratifying so how do we encourage individuals to do something which is individually difficult but will have a strong positive effect on society?

rhcom2 9y ago
It kind of assumes good faith actors too doesn't it? One person participating in bad faith just to jerk around the "Thems" would worsen things.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Yes, although I like the idea of superordinate goals because I think it eliminates a lot of attempts at bad faith participation. Republicans and Democrats can be aware of their differing views and meet together and get along and chat about their families and maybe a policy decision if they're meeting at church or to play recreational kickball or whatever, if you put those same people together in line at the polling station you'd get a very different result. Maybe the problem is that we have a tendency to only discuss our differences under the worst possible circumstances. But how do you overcome that? I'm not sure, this article gave me a lot to think about.
  - jpfed 9y ago
    (One incredibly minor detail that emerged during the Scalise shooting incident is that Congressional Democrats and Republicans play baseball together... but each party gets its own team. A better way to overcome division would have been to have teams composed of a mix of parties)
QAPereo 9y ago
In my experience, the people who are best at tech, are the least likely to grok human nature. Pixel Buds and Google Glass result.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
maxerickson 9y ago
Is it obviously a technology problem?
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  I'd say technology is a contributing factor but obviously not the only one.
  - TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    I think this is like saying gasoline was a contributing factor to a house fire. Social media and its constant bombardment of drama, stress, and politics has done more to amplify divisions within our country than anything ever before seen in the world.
anigbrowl 9y ago
Forced anonymity perhaps? Suppose you're a Striper and I'm a Dotter (from the deadly enemy Stripe and Dot tribes), but we both like to play guitar. Well if you show up on my guitar forum I'll be 'who let that filthy Striper in here?!' and will interpret even innocent participation as attempts to stripe up the place, regardless of whether I have been trying to take it over for the Dots or not. But if we're just Guitarfan_1172 and Guitarfan_3654 then we can chat about guitars and build bonds that transcend the decor war, as long as neither of us goes off topic and starts discussing patterns. Of course the problem is that the positivity is latent and confined to the interior of the guitar forum, unless we meet in battle and then become aware of our mutual guitar friendship which will cause us to re-evaluate our whole worldview. Think of it as a poker-like game where you have public and private cards. Your public dot or stripe cards are your loyalty to your design tribe, and the # of stripes or dots across all your cards indicate your degree of group identification. But you also have hidden cards reflecting various private interests. Let's say when you battle another player you're required to reveal one set of hidden cards if any other have the same or more points (or some other ratio) than your public loyalty cards. In this example you really love guitar and have to reveal your guitar cards. If the other player has the same cards they must also reveal theirs, or perhaps the revelation depends on the strength of their affiliation. Of course, by revealing your similarity of interest maybe you lose points among your own (stripe/dot) peer group because you have something in common with an enemy player... You see where I'm going with this. Of course, any modeling of relationships and disruption built on this framework assumes that tribal affiliation is fundamentally arbitrary, eg as an accident of birth. If it turns out that the Stripers really and truly want to slice up their enemies or that the Dotters really and truly want to punch holes in them then mutual interest in guitars/crochet/pokemon may never be sufficient to overcome their differences. Thus a good deal depends on whether the enemies are opposed to each other by default or have made a conscious choice to fight each other, in which case that's likely to predominate over all other factors.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
  Hmm that's interesting. I could imagine some social network which asks you for basic but controversial details about yourself and treats those as your hidden cards, say religious affiliation, political beliefs, etc. and non-controversial details about yourself. It would match you up with potential friends based on the "seen cards" (non-controversial facts) and would schedule the release of hidden card information to the match over time. In that sense it would be almost like forcing the progression of friendship, sometimes your hidden cards match and you're both happy, sometimes they don't and you have to work through it.
otakucode 9y ago
The first thing to always keep in mind is that intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors has historically been the single most devastatingly destructive motivation. Far more destructive than war, famine, disease, or other means of human suffering and death. It gave us eugenics, concentration camps, political purges, the obesity epidemic, and all manner of other ills. It backfires consistently and almost always. It is quite literally the most dangerous game that you can play. Unintended consequences are only something you can ignore if you can claim ignorance of their possibility head of time. We do not have that luxury. We have history. That being said, the solution is a fairly simple one. Stress critical thinking. In all things. In personal life most especially, but also in other actions. Encourage people to recognize their inescapable biases and to resist them because those biases are irrational and provide no actual benefit. There are unfortunately strong indications that this might not work, however, and that differing brain structures might actually be at play. Some people might have brains that are essentially hard-wired into an in-group/out-group way of processing the world which is inescapable. And seeking to change that would be seeking to change their fundamental character as people, clearly a morally wrong thing to do. But, we were never guaranteed that this whole 'society and civilization' thing was going to be simple or easy... so I guess we can't ask for our money back.
- watwut 9y ago
  I will take obesity epidemics over famine, war or some of historical epidemics. Also, holocaust was extension of war itself - the ultimate attempt to kill perceived enemies. For that matter, so was Rwanda genocide.
  - otakucode 9y ago
    Why would you think that there are such choices? The obesity epidemic did not come about out of a desire to avoid famine. It came about because the American Heart Association took flimsy scientific evidence that high levels of saturated fat in the diet increased risk of heart disease and then sought to reduce the American intake of saturated fat. They succeeded. They successfully reduced the percent of the average Americans dietary calories which came from saturated fat by 15% which was their goal. Unfortunately, removing saturated fat from foods makes them taste like cardboard. So to combat that, food makers added salt and sugar to restore some flavor. As a result, the total amount of calories consumed on average ballooned, diabetes became an epidemic, and even the heart disease they were intending to avoid through their efforts reached all-time high levels along with a host of other health problems. No one was starving, and famine wasn't the alternative. The alternative was educating the public and leaving them with the choice, a situation which is less totally effective but more flexible and seemingly less prone to large scale unintended consequences. I won't get into genocides in too much detail, but the concentration camps were an outgrowth of eugenics, an attempt to improve human health and well-being through "scientific" engineering of the gene pool. It was based, however, upon fundamentally incorrect ideas about how genetics and evolution work, flaws which were known at the time but which were ignored because the idea of rounding up anyone not liked and wiping them out was apparently too alluring for them to step back and say 'we don't have sufficient evidence this would even work'.
wefweoiu23j 9y ago
I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. Women of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. Men of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. These are facts of reality. Our culture makes it such that women are more likely to be on the receiving end. But it doesn't make the fact that both sexes in various backgrounds are victims. How do we help people with emotional or health issues? We don't unless they can pay for it. Oh, you mean wealth inequality may play into "Us vs Them?" mentalities? Another example: Everyone race, gender, and creed has been some victim of society in the past. Irish slaves, African slaves... I knew my great-grandfather on my dad's side; 100% Chippewa Indian with papers to prove it, family documents that went back 3 generations prior to HIM being born, not me. When suddenly everyone has a historical claim, but society only recognizes the claims of a minority because it can be traced back along arbitrary legal lines (which include by todays standards some pretty horrific violence and theft)... well you have a ripe field for "us vs them" when it comes to which claim. But since almost anyone can make a claim, and since the special elite we do "prefer" can't show except through cherry-picked historical examples, any reason they should be lifted higher than others. Or that they're divine... Change all conversations to focus on the similarities.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- blattimwind 9y ago
  > I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. > Change all conversations to focus on the similarities. > (GP) I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: But so far social media is completely reliant on us-vs-them, in- vs out-group differentiation. It would seem that social media already changed dozens of societies across the globe to the worse in the matter of a just few years. At this point it would probably be a huge success if "social media" were able to heal the massive damage it has caused so far.
  - weberc2 9y ago
    Not just social media either, but traditional media as well.
ebspelman 9y ago
One interesting thing I took away from the article - most of the scientific evidence cited by Professor Sapolsky is built on fMRI analysis of reactions to faces. Given that most of our online interactions are completely text-based, what cues are we using to determine if someone is Us or Them? Do the same emotion-first impulses apply when our entire perception of another person's identity is based on the content of their written words?
- mjevans 9y ago
  Those who speak fluently and with correct grammar in the language being used and those that do not.
hkmurakami 9y ago
Not technology, but we can start by not self segregating in where we live, not even just on a national or state level, but at the neighborhood level.
tomjen3 9y ago
Why would I want to integrate them? They have some insanely hurtful views, which they stick to no matter the evidence, and society doesn't need them, they need fewer of them and more of us.

rhcom2 9y ago

It kind of assumes good faith actors too doesn't it? One person participating in bad faith just to jerk around the "Thems" would worsen things.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Yes, although I like the idea of superordinate goals because I think it eliminates a lot of attempts at bad faith participation. Republicans and Democrats can be aware of their differing views and meet together and get along and chat about their families and maybe a policy decision if they're meeting at church or to play recreational kickball or whatever, if you put those same people together in line at the polling station you'd get a very different result. Maybe the problem is that we have a tendency to only discuss our differences under the worst possible circumstances. But how do you overcome that? I'm not sure, this article gave me a lot to think about.
- jpfed 9y ago
  (One incredibly minor detail that emerged during the Scalise shooting incident is that Congressional Democrats and Republicans play baseball together... but each party gets its own team. A better way to overcome division would have been to have teams composed of a mix of parties)

QAPereo 9y ago

In my experience, the people who are best at tech, are the least likely to grok human nature. Pixel Buds and Google Glass result.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

maxerickson 9y ago

Is it obviously a technology problem?

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
I'd say technology is a contributing factor but obviously not the only one.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  I think this is like saying gasoline was a contributing factor to a house fire. Social media and its constant bombardment of drama, stress, and politics has done more to amplify divisions within our country than anything ever before seen in the world.

anigbrowl 9y ago

Forced anonymity perhaps? Suppose you're a Striper and I'm a Dotter (from the deadly enemy Stripe and Dot tribes), but we both like to play guitar. Well if you show up on my guitar forum I'll be 'who let that filthy Striper in here?!' and will interpret even innocent participation as attempts to stripe up the place, regardless of whether I have been trying to take it over for the Dots or not. But if we're just Guitarfan_1172 and Guitarfan_3654 then we can chat about guitars and build bonds that transcend the decor war, as long as neither of us goes off topic and starts discussing patterns. Of course the problem is that the positivity is latent and confined to the interior of the guitar forum, unless we meet in battle and then become aware of our mutual guitar friendship which will cause us to re-evaluate our whole worldview. Think of it as a poker-like game where you have public and private cards. Your public dot or stripe cards are your loyalty to your design tribe, and the # of stripes or dots across all your cards indicate your degree of group identification. But you also have hidden cards reflecting various private interests. Let's say when you battle another player you're required to reveal one set of hidden cards if any other have the same or more points (or some other ratio) than your public loyalty cards. In this example you really love guitar and have to reveal your guitar cards. If the other player has the same cards they must also reveal theirs, or perhaps the revelation depends on the strength of their affiliation. Of course, by revealing your similarity of interest maybe you lose points among your own (stripe/dot) peer group because you have something in common with an enemy player... You see where I'm going with this. Of course, any modeling of relationships and disruption built on this framework assumes that tribal affiliation is fundamentally arbitrary, eg as an accident of birth. If it turns out that the Stripers really and truly want to slice up their enemies or that the Dotters really and truly want to punch holes in them then mutual interest in guitars/crochet/pokemon may never be sufficient to overcome their differences. Thus a good deal depends on whether the enemies are opposed to each other by default or have made a conscious choice to fight each other, in which case that's likely to predominate over all other factors.

frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
Hmm that's interesting. I could imagine some social network which asks you for basic but controversial details about yourself and treats those as your hidden cards, say religious affiliation, political beliefs, etc. and non-controversial details about yourself. It would match you up with potential friends based on the "seen cards" (non-controversial facts) and would schedule the release of hidden card information to the match over time. In that sense it would be almost like forcing the progression of friendship, sometimes your hidden cards match and you're both happy, sometimes they don't and you have to work through it.

otakucode 9y ago

The first thing to always keep in mind is that intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors has historically been the single most devastatingly destructive motivation. Far more destructive than war, famine, disease, or other means of human suffering and death. It gave us eugenics, concentration camps, political purges, the obesity epidemic, and all manner of other ills. It backfires consistently and almost always. It is quite literally the most dangerous game that you can play. Unintended consequences are only something you can ignore if you can claim ignorance of their possibility head of time. We do not have that luxury. We have history. That being said, the solution is a fairly simple one. Stress critical thinking. In all things. In personal life most especially, but also in other actions. Encourage people to recognize their inescapable biases and to resist them because those biases are irrational and provide no actual benefit. There are unfortunately strong indications that this might not work, however, and that differing brain structures might actually be at play. Some people might have brains that are essentially hard-wired into an in-group/out-group way of processing the world which is inescapable. And seeking to change that would be seeking to change their fundamental character as people, clearly a morally wrong thing to do. But, we were never guaranteed that this whole 'society and civilization' thing was going to be simple or easy... so I guess we can't ask for our money back.

watwut 9y ago
I will take obesity epidemics over famine, war or some of historical epidemics. Also, holocaust was extension of war itself - the ultimate attempt to kill perceived enemies. For that matter, so was Rwanda genocide.
- otakucode 9y ago
  Why would you think that there are such choices? The obesity epidemic did not come about out of a desire to avoid famine. It came about because the American Heart Association took flimsy scientific evidence that high levels of saturated fat in the diet increased risk of heart disease and then sought to reduce the American intake of saturated fat. They succeeded. They successfully reduced the percent of the average Americans dietary calories which came from saturated fat by 15% which was their goal. Unfortunately, removing saturated fat from foods makes them taste like cardboard. So to combat that, food makers added salt and sugar to restore some flavor. As a result, the total amount of calories consumed on average ballooned, diabetes became an epidemic, and even the heart disease they were intending to avoid through their efforts reached all-time high levels along with a host of other health problems. No one was starving, and famine wasn't the alternative. The alternative was educating the public and leaving them with the choice, a situation which is less totally effective but more flexible and seemingly less prone to large scale unintended consequences. I won't get into genocides in too much detail, but the concentration camps were an outgrowth of eugenics, an attempt to improve human health and well-being through "scientific" engineering of the gene pool. It was based, however, upon fundamentally incorrect ideas about how genetics and evolution work, flaws which were known at the time but which were ignored because the idea of rounding up anyone not liked and wiping them out was apparently too alluring for them to step back and say 'we don't have sufficient evidence this would even work'.

wefweoiu23j 9y ago

I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. Women of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. Men of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. These are facts of reality. Our culture makes it such that women are more likely to be on the receiving end. But it doesn't make the fact that both sexes in various backgrounds are victims. How do we help people with emotional or health issues? We don't unless they can pay for it. Oh, you mean wealth inequality may play into "Us vs Them?" mentalities? Another example: Everyone race, gender, and creed has been some victim of society in the past. Irish slaves, African slaves... I knew my great-grandfather on my dad's side; 100% Chippewa Indian with papers to prove it, family documents that went back 3 generations prior to HIM being born, not me. When suddenly everyone has a historical claim, but society only recognizes the claims of a minority because it can be traced back along arbitrary legal lines (which include by todays standards some pretty horrific violence and theft)... well you have a ripe field for "us vs them" when it comes to which claim. But since almost anyone can make a claim, and since the special elite we do "prefer" can't show except through cherry-picked historical examples, any reason they should be lifted higher than others. Or that they're divine... Change all conversations to focus on the similarities.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
blattimwind 9y ago
> I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. > Change all conversations to focus on the similarities. > (GP) I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: But so far social media is completely reliant on us-vs-them, in- vs out-group differentiation. It would seem that social media already changed dozens of societies across the globe to the worse in the matter of a just few years. At this point it would probably be a huge success if "social media" were able to heal the massive damage it has caused so far.
- weberc2 9y ago
  Not just social media either, but traditional media as well.

ebspelman 9y ago

One interesting thing I took away from the article - most of the scientific evidence cited by Professor Sapolsky is built on fMRI analysis of reactions to faces. Given that most of our online interactions are completely text-based, what cues are we using to determine if someone is Us or Them? Do the same emotion-first impulses apply when our entire perception of another person's identity is based on the content of their written words?

mjevans 9y ago
Those who speak fluently and with correct grammar in the language being used and those that do not.

hkmurakami 9y ago

Not technology, but we can start by not self segregating in where we live, not even just on a national or state level, but at the neighborhood level.

tomjen3 9y ago

Why would I want to integrate them? They have some insanely hurtful views, which they stick to no matter the evidence, and society doesn't need them, they need fewer of them and more of us.