12 ms·

Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group

135 points by sohkamyung 4y ago

leculette 4y ago
relative utility is a vice
syzarian 4y ago
A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests, white flight from major cities, municipalities closing down public swimming pools, disappearance of social clubs, etc. Community services were shut down in favor of the "free market" and we've seen the rise of pay as you go government services. Even obviously true notions like "it takes a village" were derided. Collectivism and the notion of "community" were greatly reduced in response to desegregation. The nation self immolated its social fabric in response to desegregation. EDIT: In the last sentence I wrote above “nation” should have been written as “white people of the nation”.
- zrail 4y ago
  > The (white people) self immolated the social fabric of the (white people) in response to desegregation. It's important to note that Black people never had access to those things to start with. They were destroyed out of spite and moved to private clubs that could get away with not admitting Black members.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangerlibrary 4y ago
    And when they managed to build them, white people burned them to the ground out of spite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
    - yucky 4y ago
      - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
        According to the Wikipedia page your account is wrong. Do you have other sources? It says there was a single gunshot from an ambiguous source resulting from a conflict on which a white man tried to forcibly disarm a black man who was there only to try and protect the jailed man from being lynched and was willingly leaving after being persuaded that there was no need for their protection.
        yucky 4y ago
        This leaves out the crucial fact that the police were not threatening to lynch anybody, they had the guy in jail and told the protestors who were threatening him to piss off. Then a group of armed black men escalated the situation further by entering the police station with guns which was not allowed. Predictably, someone tried to wrestle the gun out of a hand of one of the people in the armed mob that just tried to illegally take over the police station. That man was shot and killed by one of the black men, and then the riot started. It's important to tell this part since it unsurprisingly always seems to get left out. That doesn't absolve any of the white people who then went on to participate in the riot or who originally wanted the guy lynched, but during that riot a significant number of men on both sides of the riot were killed (I believe it was 26 black people, 10 white people or roughly in line with those estimates). Now, one could look at it and say well if someone didn't try to disarm one of the black men who had stormed the police station armed, then the riot never would have happened. And that's true. One could also say that if the group of white men outside of the police station weren't yelling about lynching the guy, then nobody would have stormed the police station and thus no riot. That is also true. So in reality there really is blame to go around. My point is, on every telling of this story it gets further and further from the truth. Another interesting point that gets lost is there were more than TWICE as many white people lynched in Oklahoma than black people.[1] The point is with stories like this we need to let the data and first hand accounts tell the story, not emotion. If you go off emotion you'll be believing 800 people were killed and the whole town was firebombed by the US army. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race...
  - syzarian 4y ago
    Yes. I made an edit to my comment as a result of you pointing this out. I did not chose my words carefully in my last sentence. Thank you for pointing this out.
- AnonCoward42 4y ago
  Because the white club is one uniform group. In that case I don't even need any more details, since this is such an obvious oversimplification and frankly speaking even racist. "The white response" ...
  - Spivak 4y ago
    It really isn’t. You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something bad that was directly related to their membership in that group and you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them. We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this. And the response was directly related to their whiteness and racism. So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ? Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ? That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.
      - Spivak 4y ago
        If you say, “you’re a white man and therefore you must like Weezer” that’s the prejudice you’re describing. But if you say white men like Weezer you see how that’s an entirely different statement, right? One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.
        thegrimmest 4y ago
        > white men like Weezer This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  > White union workers voted against their labor interests What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it? Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?
  - tokai 4y ago
    I'm not into the subject but this article covers race and unions in the US. Might be relevant. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-...
  - mannykannot 4y ago
    > Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group? This is beside the point. From the paper: However, real-world decision-making often entails making choices where harm is unavoidable (7, 8). Groups may have to choose between in-group losses and out-group gains, a circumstance that has not been previously studied and reveals that individuals’ decisions cannot be explained by existing theories. > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? Often we do, because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think. It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.
    - flanked-evergl 4y ago
      > This is beside the point. From the paper: I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made. Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests". In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group. If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification. > > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? > Often we do Do we have any for the specific instance in question?
- blueflow 4y ago
  Implied in this: White and black people are distinct, different groups. Good luck approaching these issues with that preconception.
  - ambicapter 4y ago
    Are you saying that in the US during the Civil Rights era, they weren't?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - scottLobster 4y ago
    Uh, they quite literally were under the law back when segregation existed. Yes there were rich black people and white people who marched with MLK. Zoom out to a population level however and they were clearly distinct groups and treated as such. Good luck understanding the world while refusing to apply historical perceptions to historical issues.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      The historical perception is part of the problem.
      - scottLobster 4y ago
        So are posters who want to grandstand about something other than the comment they're responding to. Original comment cited a historical example relevant to the posted article. You responded that the comment implied (in the present) that whites and blacks are two different groups, which they never did except in a historical context. Therefore you either disagree that historically whites and blacks were two separate groups in post-war America (good luck arguing that) or you're trying to contort the conversation to a discussion of "the problem" whatever that is in your mind.
        4y ago
- runsWphotons 4y ago
  lol
- mikewarot 4y ago
  >A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to In picking an example, you're forced to be reductive. Rather than considering the content of the character, all the comments are focused on the color of its skin. We could be having a productive conversation about how working class run societies and government (The basic core of the US experiment in self rule) were divided and conquered by the Owner class. But instead, we'd rather pick apart the example. This is far, far too common here on HN. It leads to a reduction of the value of HN as a whole. PS: What's the HN shorthand to name syzarian's comment that I'm replying to?
  - syzarian 4y ago
    Indeed. And the way the ruling class divided the working class in the U.S. was by using race as the talking point instead of class. I do maintain though that this was especially easy to do because with desegregation white working class Americans had a target to blame that wasn’t the ruling class.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
    Class reductionism doesn't provide a concrete example of "harming their own group rather than help the Other" as much as the changes the U.S went under in response to the end of Jim Crow.
  - wittycardio 4y ago
    You're offended that someone is using white as a descriptor ?
    - lamontcg 4y ago
      You're engaging in the same behavior.
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us" talks about this in detail - she refers to it as "drained pool politics." It's a great read. https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561 https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561
- refurb 4y ago
  White flight was more about racial unrest and riots. I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.
  - UI_at_80x24 4y ago
    >I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse. The quality of life declined BECAUSE the majority of tax-payers left causing city services to fail.
    - refurb 4y ago
      No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.
    - rajin444 4y ago
      They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation. That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.
      - syzarian 4y ago
        Do you know what the violent crime rate of poor blacks was vs. poor whites in 1950s/60s?
      - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
        No, I think you have the timeline backwards. Crime didn’t rise before white flight happened. Crime rose after white flight happened because there was no longer any funding for the social programs that helped keep crime down. Remember it was still legal to deny black people financial opportunities solely for their blackness at the time, so white people actively denied black peoples business loans and other necessary financial funding to build those programs that white people had happily funded for themselves.
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
This is evident in America where you'll find some people take a position against free or subsidised healthcare and other social support, because some undeserving person (who is not in their group) might get it.
- martin_a 4y ago
  I don't think this is limited to America or healthcare. We're seeing these effects in corporate life, too: A charging station for EVs has been put up for the company and client EVs. I'm the first employee to have received "free access" to the charger as a benefit instead of more money. (to be fair: I'm the only one with a pure EV until now, too). Now people are voting against putting up more chargers and enabling employees to charge for a smaller fee than normal, because "there's no normal gas pump being installed". Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations. But before somebody with another car gets "something nice", people prefer getting nothing at all now.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    But this isn't so much a foot shoot. The gas-guzzling employees are voting (why is there voting anyway?) for "I get nothing, you get nothing" over "I get nothing, you get something" - perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere. The described action would be more like "remove all parking lots instead of letting martin_a charge his car in a space" - which would harm the guzzlers to own the EVs.
    - tomstokes 4y ago
      > perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere. This is exactly what’s going on. People know that these expenditures ultimately come out of the company’s operating budget, which diminishes the funds available for other things. Installing EV chargers is a great environmental move in my personal opinion, but we can’t pretend it’s unrelated to discussions come raise/bonus time when people are told that their raises are smaller than expected because budgets are stretched this year. The EV chargers may be a tiny contributor, but they’re still an unbalanced distribution of the company’s funds based on something completely unrelated to performance. People are keenly aware of these things.
bell-cot 4y ago
That I have seen, this behavior is smaller-scale than "group". Given a (metaphorical) chance to shoot themselves in the foot, in order get somebody they don't like shot in both feet - a whole lotta people will instinctively go for it.
- mhb 4y ago
  Could be, but that has nothing to do with this study.
temptemptemp111 4y ago
emmelaich 4y ago
I'm not sure that the harm to the in-group is actually known to be a harm. It could be a sincere but erroneous belief that (what we perceive as harm) is not perceived as a net harm by that group.
DougN7 4y ago
In my opinion we’re seeing exactly this with the US Senate race in Georgia right now.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  What you're seeing in Georgia is a terrible candidate put up against someone who if not for outside influence would not have been there to start.
  - tomrod 4y ago
    I'm having trouble parsing your sentence. For others not in the US, the state of Georgia has a legislature runoff face where a Texan is running against a Georgian. The Texan appears to have failed to establish residency (does not actively live in the state they are campaigning to represent) and, being a popular sports figure, has been a source of a lot of discussion around mental health and traumatic brain injury in politicians due to the candidate's many gaffes and apparent hypocrisy (paying for an abortion while claiming to want to support a general ban). The other, the incumbent and a local church pastor, comes from the nominally left-wing party and thus is the target of right-wing propaganda despite representing a lot of the values the median right-wing voter likes. Sports-in-politics are weird and no one is happy from it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - brodouevencode 4y ago
      To clarify what I mean: in the 2020 Senate runoff it was between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler. Despite what some people want to claim, Georgia is still a very red state, and has had Republicans at the helm for nearly 20 year. Even the Democrat leaders of yore (Zell Miller, Max Cleland, etc.) would be considered to the right of Joe Manchin - blue dog Democrats. Loeffler was going to win, but Donald Trump tried to wield his influence on the election, which did two things 1) turned off would-be Republican voters and 2) riled up Democrat voters. Prior to the rally to support Loeffler her numbers were up - pretty far up too. Warnock's win was a referendum on Trump. But apparently that wasn't enough - Hershel Walker is Trump's hand picked candidate, and is not a very good one besides that. He's probably going to suffer the same fate. Walker has popular social appeal as you correctly point out - he was an all star running back for the University of Georgia and everyone in the state over the age of 30 knew his name even prior to his political career. But as I say, he's a terrible candidate.
valeg 4y ago
yeah, "beat your friends, so your enemies will be scared of you" proverb
- datavirtue 4y ago
  That's going on my wall at work.
paradoxyl 4y ago
Explains the globalist-technocrat Western leader trash response to the Multipolar world. Hate on China and Russia, abuse your own citizens.
- TOMDM 4y ago
  Yeah man anyone upset with Russia at the moment are just haters
- AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
mindv0rtex 4y ago
Explains Putin's approach to ruling over Russia rather well.
- ilyt 4y ago
  That's a deeper problem. Rule by fear and you will be surrounded by yes-men that only say the good stuff. Allow corruption and everyone, including your closest, will indulge as it becomes a way of life, and at worst, ingrained in culture (from my experience post-socialist Poland also had a lot of that sentiment that you have to pay up if you want to get things actually done, as it was rampant before). Do both and you have what is happening, "surprise" after "surprise" when what you thought you had in equipment turns out to be actually bricks in someone's villa.
mcdonje 4y ago
Interesting study with relevant findings. I'd like to see it replicated in Asian and African countries to see how much of it is universal vs cultural. If it turns out to not be universal, that would raise more questions to study.
brodouevencode 4y ago
The key word here is "opposing", not "another", "separate", or "sovereign". Meaning their values are at odds with yours. So the response should be "duh".
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  It's even more of a "duh" when you remember that for most of our species history, "opposing" meant "trying to kill you". Denying that people power is an obvious choice. The real problem is how the public is directed into defining "opposition" nowadays.
- flanked-evergl 4y ago
  An actual great example of this is sanctions, and EU, at detriment to their themselves economically, is cutting their ties with Russia.
booleandilemma 4y ago
Is that true for student loans? I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet the group of people who have paid off their loans are against bailing out the group who hasn't.
ballenf 4y ago
The article's conclusions depend entirely on the definition of harm and seems to ignore the particular group's perception of it. For example one citation used in support of the conclusion is conservative's opposition to getting the COVID vaccine. That group perceived harm in getting the vaccine (whether right or wrong). The article claims the group opposed the vaccine merely as a reaction to the vaccine push from outside the group. So maybe the conclusion would be stronger if stated as "groups have a hard time making rational calculations of harm when facing a perceived threat from an outside group". Doesn't really change it too much, but it seems quite unsupported in its assumption that these groups actually perceived themselves to be harming themselves.
- rapht 4y ago
  Exactly. Also related is the definition of "net negative outcome": is that relative to a prior situation (i.e. could be a very good situation becoming a little less good) or to a value framework common to both groups allowing for an absolute interpretation?
nasir 4y ago
One international example of this is when there was the nuclear negotiations going on between Iran and the other superpowers a few years ago. While the negotiating team was working hard to come to a compromise and finalise the deal, there was severe lobbying and backstabbing going on within the country to undermine those efforts. This went as far as discrediting the negotiators and even making up criminal cases for them even though they were instructed by the top authorities to finalised the deal.
lettuce0 4y ago
Makes sense. The impact to the in-group of helping the opposing group is more difficult for them to control or predict over harming one of their own. Fear of the unknown.
Rickasaurus 4y ago
It seems to me if they modeled it as an infinite series of games instead of a single game they might find it's about denying your opponents resources for the next round. You also should consider things proportionally in terms of the resources of each group, one may be willing to take a bigger total loss that is smaller proportionally to disarm another group. (I admit I only read through the abstract though)
- ohCh6zos 4y ago
  That was my thought. If I thought my opponent could only survive a few turns I might be willing to take losses to prevent them from surviving more turns.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    This is the same strategy as a company operating at a loss in order to put competitors out of business. I think a lot of people will be tempted to say "that's obvious, you dummy!" but that's what good social science research does: it gives us a systematic explanation and principles of understanding for how people behave in groups.
FeepingCreature 4y ago
Not having read the article, the headline makes sense to me. Harming your ingroup is easier to predict. Who knows what advantage helping the outgroup will give it?
vcryan 4y ago
On an individual level, this is a caution to not identify or over-identify with a particular group because it clouds judgement.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  In much of the real world, you don't get a chance to choose identifying/over-identifying with a particular group. People will do it for you.
smeej 4y ago
If you see aiding the other group as a moral evil, of course you'd rather incur costs yourself or to your group rather than participate, even in a small way, in supporting something you believe to be evil. I don't want to distract from the generic point with a specific example, but it's easy for me to think of causes I would spend 10x of my own or my group's resources to prevent that other cause from receiving a benefit.
V__ 4y ago
A lot of comments look at this from a political/party point of view, which is understandable. But could this also be looked at from a group survival point of view? Let's look at Ukraine right now. In the short-term a deal with Russia might ease the pain of Ukrainians which are troubled by the harsh winter, but by "harming" themselves right now, they might survive better in the long run? Edit: I didn't want to start a political discussion about the war, just ask whether this behaviour might be evolutionary beneficially from a group survival point of view. Since war has been part of human history.
- umvi 4y ago
  Like settling with a patent troll vs. fighting an expensive and lengthy legal battle. Sometimes people "self harm" on principle...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rank0 4y ago
  That one is a tough calculation imo. My worthless opinion is that Ukraine and the west should’ve negotiated right at the beginning by guaranteeing no NATO membership. Even if Ukraine wins in the end, the country has become a smoldering pile of rubble. There was even such a deal on the table in the early stages that the west pretty much killed… At this point though idk what diplomatic solution exists. Deescalation should be everyone’s #1 goal atm.
  - kybernetyk 4y ago
    - ilyt 4y ago
      As is/was most post USRR countries. It's a national disease that's hard to heal, and it was also kept there by the Russian influences
    - rank0 4y ago
aritmo 4y ago
It took me some time to understand the title. Better summary: Individuals that are dissatisfied with their own group, prefer to harm it directly than join some other opposing group.
aaron695 4y ago
LaundroMat 4y ago
This reminds me of a study a teacher once referred to. MBA students were asked to choose between two strategies. These strategies basically came down to either hurt the competition but hurt themselves in the process too or hurt no-one and generate more profits for their own company. Most students chose to hurt the competition and inflict damage to themselves.
bannedbybros 4y ago
gumby 4y ago
I used to think that "zero sum" thinking was the worst possible, but now I see that some people really have a "negative sum" mentality. Crikey!
- pontifier 4y ago
  Explains a lot of counterintuitive behavior that just defies all of my prior attempts to understand. WTF is wrong with people.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

135 points by sohkamyung 4y ago

relative utility is a vice

A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests, white flight from major cities, municipalities closing down public swimming pools, disappearance of social clubs, etc. Community services were shut down in favor of the "free market" and we've seen the rise of pay as you go government services. Even obviously true notions like "it takes a village" were derided. Collectivism and the notion of "community" were greatly reduced in response to desegregation. The nation self immolated its social fabric in response to desegregation. EDIT: In the last sentence I wrote above “nation” should have been written as “white people of the nation”.

zrail 4y ago
> The (white people) self immolated the social fabric of the (white people) in response to desegregation. It's important to note that Black people never had access to those things to start with. They were destroyed out of spite and moved to private clubs that could get away with not admitting Black members.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dangerlibrary 4y ago
  And when they managed to build them, white people burned them to the ground out of spite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre
  - yucky 4y ago
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      According to the Wikipedia page your account is wrong. Do you have other sources? It says there was a single gunshot from an ambiguous source resulting from a conflict on which a white man tried to forcibly disarm a black man who was there only to try and protect the jailed man from being lynched and was willingly leaving after being persuaded that there was no need for their protection.
      - yucky 4y ago
        This leaves out the crucial fact that the police were not threatening to lynch anybody, they had the guy in jail and told the protestors who were threatening him to piss off. Then a group of armed black men escalated the situation further by entering the police station with guns which was not allowed. Predictably, someone tried to wrestle the gun out of a hand of one of the people in the armed mob that just tried to illegally take over the police station. That man was shot and killed by one of the black men, and then the riot started. It's important to tell this part since it unsurprisingly always seems to get left out. That doesn't absolve any of the white people who then went on to participate in the riot or who originally wanted the guy lynched, but during that riot a significant number of men on both sides of the riot were killed (I believe it was 26 black people, 10 white people or roughly in line with those estimates). Now, one could look at it and say well if someone didn't try to disarm one of the black men who had stormed the police station armed, then the riot never would have happened. And that's true. One could also say that if the group of white men outside of the police station weren't yelling about lynching the guy, then nobody would have stormed the police station and thus no riot. That is also true. So in reality there really is blame to go around. My point is, on every telling of this story it gets further and further from the truth. Another interesting point that gets lost is there were more than TWICE as many white people lynched in Oklahoma than black people.[1] The point is with stories like this we need to let the data and first hand accounts tell the story, not emotion. If you go off emotion you'll be believing 800 people were killed and the whole town was firebombed by the US army. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race-state-and-race/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1175147/lynching-by-race...
- syzarian 4y ago
  Yes. I made an edit to my comment as a result of you pointing this out. I did not chose my words carefully in my last sentence. Thank you for pointing this out.
AnonCoward42 4y ago
Because the white club is one uniform group. In that case I don't even need any more details, since this is such an obvious oversimplification and frankly speaking even racist. "The white response" ...
- Spivak 4y ago
  It really isn’t. You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something bad that was directly related to their membership in that group and you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them. We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this. And the response was directly related to their whiteness and racism. So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ? Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ? That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.
    - Spivak 4y ago
      If you say, “you’re a white man and therefore you must like Weezer” that’s the prejudice you’re describing. But if you say white men like Weezer you see how that’s an entirely different statement, right? One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.
      - thegrimmest 4y ago
        > white men like Weezer This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).
flanked-evergl 4y ago
> White union workers voted against their labor interests What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it? Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?
- tokai 4y ago
  I'm not into the subject but this article covers race and unions in the US. Might be relevant. https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-flagitiosum-etiamsi-nulla https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-...
- mannykannot 4y ago
  > Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group? This is beside the point. From the paper: However, real-world decision-making often entails making choices where harm is unavoidable (7, 8). Groups may have to choose between in-group losses and out-group gains, a circumstance that has not been previously studied and reveals that individuals’ decisions cannot be explained by existing theories. > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? Often we do, because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think. It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.
  - flanked-evergl 4y ago
    > This is beside the point. From the paper: I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made. Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests". In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group. If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification. > > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions? > Often we do Do we have any for the specific instance in question?
blueflow 4y ago
Implied in this: White and black people are distinct, different groups. Good luck approaching these issues with that preconception.
- ambicapter 4y ago
  Are you saying that in the US during the Civil Rights era, they weren't?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- scottLobster 4y ago
  Uh, they quite literally were under the law back when segregation existed. Yes there were rich black people and white people who marched with MLK. Zoom out to a population level however and they were clearly distinct groups and treated as such. Good luck understanding the world while refusing to apply historical perceptions to historical issues.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    The historical perception is part of the problem.
    - scottLobster 4y ago
      So are posters who want to grandstand about something other than the comment they're responding to. Original comment cited a historical example relevant to the posted article. You responded that the comment implied (in the present) that whites and blacks are two different groups, which they never did except in a historical context. Therefore you either disagree that historically whites and blacks were two separate groups in post-war America (good luck arguing that) or you're trying to contort the conversation to a discussion of "the problem" whatever that is in your mind.
      - 4y ago
runsWphotons 4y ago
lol
mikewarot 4y ago
>A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to In picking an example, you're forced to be reductive. Rather than considering the content of the character, all the comments are focused on the color of its skin. We could be having a productive conversation about how working class run societies and government (The basic core of the US experiment in self rule) were divided and conquered by the Owner class. But instead, we'd rather pick apart the example. This is far, far too common here on HN. It leads to a reduction of the value of HN as a whole. PS: What's the HN shorthand to name syzarian's comment that I'm replying to?
- syzarian 4y ago
  Indeed. And the way the ruling class divided the working class in the U.S. was by using race as the talking point instead of class. I do maintain though that this was especially easy to do because with desegregation white working class Americans had a target to blame that wasn’t the ruling class.
- x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
  Class reductionism doesn't provide a concrete example of "harming their own group rather than help the Other" as much as the changes the U.S went under in response to the end of Jim Crow.
- wittycardio 4y ago
  You're offended that someone is using white as a descriptor ?
  - lamontcg 4y ago
    You're engaging in the same behavior.
dangerlibrary 4y ago
Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us" talks about this in detail - she refers to it as "drained pool politics." It's a great read. https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561 https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561
refurb 4y ago
White flight was more about racial unrest and riots. I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  >I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse. The quality of life declined BECAUSE the majority of tax-payers left causing city services to fail.
  - refurb 4y ago
    No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.
  - rajin444 4y ago
    They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation. That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.
    - syzarian 4y ago
      Do you know what the violent crime rate of poor blacks was vs. poor whites in 1950s/60s?
    - SamoyedFurFluff 4y ago
      No, I think you have the timeline backwards. Crime didn’t rise before white flight happened. Crime rose after white flight happened because there was no longer any funding for the social programs that helped keep crime down. Remember it was still legal to deny black people financial opportunities solely for their blackness at the time, so white people actively denied black peoples business loans and other necessary financial funding to build those programs that white people had happily funded for themselves.

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago

This is evident in America where you'll find some people take a position against free or subsidised healthcare and other social support, because some undeserving person (who is not in their group) might get it.

martin_a 4y ago
I don't think this is limited to America or healthcare. We're seeing these effects in corporate life, too: A charging station for EVs has been put up for the company and client EVs. I'm the first employee to have received "free access" to the charger as a benefit instead of more money. (to be fair: I'm the only one with a pure EV until now, too). Now people are voting against putting up more chargers and enabling employees to charge for a smaller fee than normal, because "there's no normal gas pump being installed". Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations. But before somebody with another car gets "something nice", people prefer getting nothing at all now.
- bombcar 4y ago
  But this isn't so much a foot shoot. The gas-guzzling employees are voting (why is there voting anyway?) for "I get nothing, you get nothing" over "I get nothing, you get something" - perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere. The described action would be more like "remove all parking lots instead of letting martin_a charge his car in a space" - which would harm the guzzlers to own the EVs.
  - tomstokes 4y ago
    > perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere. This is exactly what’s going on. People know that these expenditures ultimately come out of the company’s operating budget, which diminishes the funds available for other things. Installing EV chargers is a great environmental move in my personal opinion, but we can’t pretend it’s unrelated to discussions come raise/bonus time when people are told that their raises are smaller than expected because budgets are stretched this year. The EV chargers may be a tiny contributor, but they’re still an unbalanced distribution of the company’s funds based on something completely unrelated to performance. People are keenly aware of these things.

bell-cot 4y ago

That I have seen, this behavior is smaller-scale than "group". Given a (metaphorical) chance to shoot themselves in the foot, in order get somebody they don't like shot in both feet - a whole lotta people will instinctively go for it.

mhb 4y ago
Could be, but that has nothing to do with this study.

temptemptemp111 4y ago

emmelaich 4y ago

I'm not sure that the harm to the in-group is actually known to be a harm. It could be a sincere but erroneous belief that (what we perceive as harm) is not perceived as a net harm by that group.

DougN7 4y ago

In my opinion we’re seeing exactly this with the US Senate race in Georgia right now.

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brodouevencode 4y ago
What you're seeing in Georgia is a terrible candidate put up against someone who if not for outside influence would not have been there to start.
- tomrod 4y ago
  I'm having trouble parsing your sentence. For others not in the US, the state of Georgia has a legislature runoff face where a Texan is running against a Georgian. The Texan appears to have failed to establish residency (does not actively live in the state they are campaigning to represent) and, being a popular sports figure, has been a source of a lot of discussion around mental health and traumatic brain injury in politicians due to the candidate's many gaffes and apparent hypocrisy (paying for an abortion while claiming to want to support a general ban). The other, the incumbent and a local church pastor, comes from the nominally left-wing party and thus is the target of right-wing propaganda despite representing a lot of the values the median right-wing voter likes. Sports-in-politics are weird and no one is happy from it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  - brodouevencode 4y ago
    To clarify what I mean: in the 2020 Senate runoff it was between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler. Despite what some people want to claim, Georgia is still a very red state, and has had Republicans at the helm for nearly 20 year. Even the Democrat leaders of yore (Zell Miller, Max Cleland, etc.) would be considered to the right of Joe Manchin - blue dog Democrats. Loeffler was going to win, but Donald Trump tried to wield his influence on the election, which did two things 1) turned off would-be Republican voters and 2) riled up Democrat voters. Prior to the rally to support Loeffler her numbers were up - pretty far up too. Warnock's win was a referendum on Trump. But apparently that wasn't enough - Hershel Walker is Trump's hand picked candidate, and is not a very good one besides that. He's probably going to suffer the same fate. Walker has popular social appeal as you correctly point out - he was an all star running back for the University of Georgia and everyone in the state over the age of 30 knew his name even prior to his political career. But as I say, he's a terrible candidate.

valeg 4y ago

yeah, "beat your friends, so your enemies will be scared of you" proverb

datavirtue 4y ago
That's going on my wall at work.

paradoxyl 4y ago

Explains the globalist-technocrat Western leader trash response to the Multipolar world. Hate on China and Russia, abuse your own citizens.

TOMDM 4y ago
Yeah man anyone upset with Russia at the moment are just haters
AntiRemoteWork 4y ago

mindv0rtex 4y ago

Explains Putin's approach to ruling over Russia rather well.

ilyt 4y ago
That's a deeper problem. Rule by fear and you will be surrounded by yes-men that only say the good stuff. Allow corruption and everyone, including your closest, will indulge as it becomes a way of life, and at worst, ingrained in culture (from my experience post-socialist Poland also had a lot of that sentiment that you have to pay up if you want to get things actually done, as it was rampant before). Do both and you have what is happening, "surprise" after "surprise" when what you thought you had in equipment turns out to be actually bricks in someone's villa.

mcdonje 4y ago

Interesting study with relevant findings. I'd like to see it replicated in Asian and African countries to see how much of it is universal vs cultural. If it turns out to not be universal, that would raise more questions to study.

brodouevencode 4y ago

The key word here is "opposing", not "another", "separate", or "sovereign". Meaning their values are at odds with yours. So the response should be "duh".

marcosdumay 4y ago
It's even more of a "duh" when you remember that for most of our species history, "opposing" meant "trying to kill you". Denying that people power is an obvious choice. The real problem is how the public is directed into defining "opposition" nowadays.
flanked-evergl 4y ago
An actual great example of this is sanctions, and EU, at detriment to their themselves economically, is cutting their ties with Russia.

booleandilemma 4y ago

Is that true for student loans? I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet the group of people who have paid off their loans are against bailing out the group who hasn't.

ballenf 4y ago

The article's conclusions depend entirely on the definition of harm and seems to ignore the particular group's perception of it. For example one citation used in support of the conclusion is conservative's opposition to getting the COVID vaccine. That group perceived harm in getting the vaccine (whether right or wrong). The article claims the group opposed the vaccine merely as a reaction to the vaccine push from outside the group. So maybe the conclusion would be stronger if stated as "groups have a hard time making rational calculations of harm when facing a perceived threat from an outside group". Doesn't really change it too much, but it seems quite unsupported in its assumption that these groups actually perceived themselves to be harming themselves.

rapht 4y ago
Exactly. Also related is the definition of "net negative outcome": is that relative to a prior situation (i.e. could be a very good situation becoming a little less good) or to a value framework common to both groups allowing for an absolute interpretation?

nasir 4y ago

One international example of this is when there was the nuclear negotiations going on between Iran and the other superpowers a few years ago. While the negotiating team was working hard to come to a compromise and finalise the deal, there was severe lobbying and backstabbing going on within the country to undermine those efforts. This went as far as discrediting the negotiators and even making up criminal cases for them even though they were instructed by the top authorities to finalised the deal.

lettuce0 4y ago

Makes sense. The impact to the in-group of helping the opposing group is more difficult for them to control or predict over harming one of their own. Fear of the unknown.

Rickasaurus 4y ago

It seems to me if they modeled it as an infinite series of games instead of a single game they might find it's about denying your opponents resources for the next round. You also should consider things proportionally in terms of the resources of each group, one may be willing to take a bigger total loss that is smaller proportionally to disarm another group. (I admit I only read through the abstract though)

ohCh6zos 4y ago
That was my thought. If I thought my opponent could only survive a few turns I might be willing to take losses to prevent them from surviving more turns.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  This is the same strategy as a company operating at a loss in order to put competitors out of business. I think a lot of people will be tempted to say "that's obvious, you dummy!" but that's what good social science research does: it gives us a systematic explanation and principles of understanding for how people behave in groups.

FeepingCreature 4y ago

Not having read the article, the headline makes sense to me. Harming your ingroup is easier to predict. Who knows what advantage helping the outgroup will give it?

vcryan 4y ago

On an individual level, this is a caution to not identify or over-identify with a particular group because it clouds judgement.

x86_64Ubuntu 4y ago
In much of the real world, you don't get a chance to choose identifying/over-identifying with a particular group. People will do it for you.

smeej 4y ago

If you see aiding the other group as a moral evil, of course you'd rather incur costs yourself or to your group rather than participate, even in a small way, in supporting something you believe to be evil. I don't want to distract from the generic point with a specific example, but it's easy for me to think of causes I would spend 10x of my own or my group's resources to prevent that other cause from receiving a benefit.

V__ 4y ago

A lot of comments look at this from a political/party point of view, which is understandable. But could this also be looked at from a group survival point of view? Let's look at Ukraine right now. In the short-term a deal with Russia might ease the pain of Ukrainians which are troubled by the harsh winter, but by "harming" themselves right now, they might survive better in the long run? Edit: I didn't want to start a political discussion about the war, just ask whether this behaviour might be evolutionary beneficially from a group survival point of view. Since war has been part of human history.

umvi 4y ago
Like settling with a patent troll vs. fighting an expensive and lengthy legal battle. Sometimes people "self harm" on principle...
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rank0 4y ago
That one is a tough calculation imo. My worthless opinion is that Ukraine and the west should’ve negotiated right at the beginning by guaranteeing no NATO membership. Even if Ukraine wins in the end, the country has become a smoldering pile of rubble. There was even such a deal on the table in the early stages that the west pretty much killed… At this point though idk what diplomatic solution exists. Deescalation should be everyone’s #1 goal atm.
- kybernetyk 4y ago
  - ilyt 4y ago
    As is/was most post USRR countries. It's a national disease that's hard to heal, and it was also kept there by the Russian influences
  - rank0 4y ago

aritmo 4y ago

It took me some time to understand the title. Better summary: Individuals that are dissatisfied with their own group, prefer to harm it directly than join some other opposing group.

aaron695 4y ago

LaundroMat 4y ago

This reminds me of a study a teacher once referred to. MBA students were asked to choose between two strategies. These strategies basically came down to either hurt the competition but hurt themselves in the process too or hurt no-one and generate more profits for their own company. Most students chose to hurt the competition and inflict damage to themselves.

bannedbybros 4y ago

gumby 4y ago

I used to think that "zero sum" thinking was the worst possible, but now I see that some people really have a "negative sum" mentality. Crikey!

pontifier 4y ago
Explains a lot of counterintuitive behavior that just defies all of my prior attempts to understand. WTF is wrong with people.

deleted 4y ago

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