Tribalism, Explained

Freaking humans. Yeah! Oh, thanks. I'm filming one right now. Yeah. Wait, really? What's your tribe? My tribe? Oh my... Hey. What's your tribe? That's a great question. What do you mean by what's your tribe? Your team, basically. What team groups do you associate with in your life? I guess the easy answer is America. Oh, all the beautiful people around here. All of our friends that we've made this week. My tribe is my family. Great answer. Jayden! Jayhawks. Rock Chalk Jayhawks. Probably just Kansans in general. I'm in the Socialist Circle on KU's campus. I'm in a fraternity, Delta Upsilon at KU there. There you go. Fraternity. A tribe called Cuesta. Pretty cool. My tribe is the human tribe. I'm a member of humanity. But there are other tribes within that that I sometimes identify with. I like to go to Burning Man, so Burners would be a tribe. My family's Jewish, so Jewish is a tribe. There are lots of overlapping tribes. Tribes generally trace their identity to their ancestry. So I'm also very interested in roots and where it is that people come from. Who's tribal? I'm Esther Beat, and I identify as a member of multiple tribes. And so do you because you are presumably also a human being. Huh? Wait. Are you not a human being? Oh, of course. I forget. I do get some other species that watch me from time to time. Hello! Well, we human beings are tribal. And by that I mean we love being a part of groups. Look around you. Everywhere you go, human beings are sorting themselves into teams. Tribalism is our tendency to form strong in-groups, a.k.a. us, and treat everyone outside that in-group, a.k.a. them, with suspicion, competition, or sometimes straight-up hostility. Tribe comes from the Old Latin word tribus, which means association with a group of people who all think they have common ancestors. You know, kin groups, or people related by blood, marriage, or adoption. Families, and extended families. But wait, why do we form in-groups to begin with? Oh come on, Sidney Sweeney. You know why. We're social creatures. But only up to a certain point. Throughout most of human history, we lived in tribes of maybe 100-150 people. Our ancestors survived by sticking together, sharing food, defending each other, scratching each other's backs, because going solo meant game over, man. If you got kicked out of the tribe, you didn't just lose your friends, you probably died. Over thousands of years, our brains have evolved to tie our own self-worth and safety to group identity. Our brains got pretty good at detecting us versus them. And also today, we divide the world into us versus them as a mental shortcut, which makes cooperating easy with our in-group, but unfortunately makes it difficult to trust everyone else. Pen birds of a feather, we should stick together. I know I said I'd never think I wasn't better alone. Yeah, that's Billie Eilish, but it's also homophily. Homophily is the idea that humans tend to associate and get along with those similar to them. What's your tribe? Yeah, well, just like Dwight D. Eisenhower, my proudest claim is being from Abilene, Kansas, my hometown. I think anytime I run into anyone that's from Abilene, we always stop and talk, even if I don't know who they are. What's your tribe? I'd probably say just like where I'm from. I'm from Sedgwick, Kansas. If I see someone from there, it's like I know you. Yep, despite us no longer being nomadic hunter-gatherers, but instead in huge modern societies filled with millions of human beings sitting on our couches watching YouTube videos, our brains still beg nearly all of us to belong to a tribe. The problem with that? Uh, the traits we use to draw the lines are often superficial. And these lines become dangerous in the modern world, because when we prioritize blind loyalty to our team over empathy toward our fellow humans, we stop looking at facts, we start dehumanizing outsiders, and we punish anyone inside our group who dares to question the narrative. Ultimately, it tears apart democratic institutions and makes it nearly impossible to solve big, global problems. Because instead of working together as one human species, we're too busy treating our neighbors like the enemy. So with all that said, in this video, let's look at all the biggest ways we form in-groups and out-groups. And let's do it Letterman style. Let's make it a top 10. Let's count down the top 10 ways people divide themselves into groups. These rankings come from my own observations of history, current events, and yeah, how I think people actually behave. Starting with number 10. We tend to divide ourselves by daily habits. And we tend to divide ourselves by who or what we are fans of. Quick question. What kind of car do you drive? Where do you buy your coffee? Do you tend to shop at Walmart or Target? Do you even lift, bro? Believe it or not, your answer to those questions says more about your tribe than who you voted for in the last election. What you eat or drink, the car you drive, the brands you wear, and even how you spend your Saturday mornings have become modern badges of belonging. Whether it's the carnivore diet, homesteading, van life, urbanism, slow living, CrossFit, digital minimalism, or fast fashion. If you do it enough, the connection is so strong that those who DON'T do what you do or buy what you buy probably think you're pretty weird, bro. When it comes to lifestyles, your tribe might be small, but your bond with that tribe is so strong that outsiders to that lifestyle may feel weird to you. Whether it's Android vs. iPhone Android is better. Kendrick Lamar vs. Drake Kendrick is obviously better. Or Minecraft vs. Roblox We tend to take our fandoms shockingly seriously. We literally riot over a game. Look at that. Those are fans of a team that just won a championship. I'm not joking. They won it all and they are still doing that. Yeah, sports is probably the best example of this. I'm a big Chiefs fan, perhaps obviously based on my jersey I'm wearing right now. Throughout my life, I've tried to give up being a Chiefs fan, but it's hard. I'm kind of stuck with them. I'm never gonna give them up, even though they've let me down. We are hardwired to find our team, to obsess over it, and to treat the other side like the ultimate rival, all over things that, at the end of the day, are just entertainment. Speaking of which, don't even get me started about the Raiders. Or Mizzou. Fandoms act as a quick shorthand for who you are and what you value, saying I'm a massive Lord of the Rings fan or I only listen to death metal. Has become so much more than entertainment. By wearing that shirt expressing your fandom, you are signaling to the world your taste, personality, and overall vibe. It gives you a prepackaged identity. People have literally become friends in real life since finding each other on my Discord server. That's pretty cool. When someone criticizes your favorite artist, show, or team, it triggers a defensive reaction because your brain perceives it as a personal attack on you or someone you care about. Speaking of which, let me address the fact that another YouTuber was talking trash about me. Don't worry. They didn't mean it. Maybe not nearly as much as we used to, but we tend to divide ourselves up based on our ethnicity. Now, as a citizen of a country that is just 250 years old, I don't necessarily have any strong ties to any one ethnicity. And I do think a growing number of human beings share this sentiment with me. Which is why ethnicity is only number 9 on this list. However, billions of other human beings do, especially throughout history. You see, ethnicity just means strongly identifying with a group based on the group's common ancestry, history, and traditions. Ethnic identity is powerful because it answers fundamental human questions like Who am I? and Where do I come from? and Who stands with me? Ethnicity's fuel is heritage. Those specific traditions passed down from prior generations. And the stories, man. Ethnic groups know their own history very well and are well connected with the momentum of the past. Often, ethnicity is stronger with those whose ancestors experienced greater hardship in the past or the present. You know, stuff like discrimination, persecution, or just generally collective catastrophe. When we perceive that our ethnic group is or has been treated unfairly by the wider society, we tend to identify more closely with our ethnic in-group. Basically, hardship frequently sharpens ethnic identity because belonging to the group becomes a way to cope, to make meaning of suffering, and to create a sense of continuity. And that way, me not having any strong ties to one ethnicity is a sign of privilege. I mean, most of my ancestors came from Northern and Western Europe, a part of the world that has conquered and colonized the vast majority of the rest of the world over the past 600 years. Yes, how lucky am I that I don't have any close association with any one ethnic group. One distinct example of an ethnic group is the preservation of a language, not because it's practical necessarily, but as a way to honor and remember a group's history and culture. We tend to divide ourselves up by how much education we got. Or get. Hopefully it's get. Hopefully you're still learning constantly. You're not done learning. You still have a lot to learn. I have a lot to learn. Please keep learning. Goodness gracious. No, no, you have not figured everything out. Indeed, one of the biggest lines dividing us is whether or not we went to college. Social scientists even call this the Diploma Divide. It's not just about getting a degree. It shapes where we live, how we vote, and even who we marry. You're married to me, correct? I am. And you have a college degree, correct? Why yes I do. As do I, see? College graduates tend to cluster in big cities, support long-established institutions, and vote for more left-leaning candidates, while non-college grads are more likely to live in rural areas, value more traditional trades, and not trust long-established institutions. It has created two distinct cultural worlds that rarely overlap, turning education into an increasingly distinct tribal characteristic in the 21st century. Often related to education, we tend to divide ourselves based on how much wealth we have. From medieval kings and castles and peasant villages to today's wealthy suburbs and rural trailer parks. Wealth has always created clear lines in society. Wealth concentrates in certain places, creating physical separation in which wealthy or poor folk rarely interact. And throughout history, revolts and revolutions have often been driven by a clash between the haves and have-nots. Even today, wealth often determines who someone will marry, or even hang out with. Hierarchies based on wealth, unfortunately, are still quite common, whether we realize it or not. I mean, 76 years after India banned discrimination based on its historical caste system, a social hierarchy often associated with wealth, the effects of the caste system are still deeply felt throughout the country. I mean, some of the most common ways people are grouped in the media? Lower class vs. middle class vs. upper class. The working class vs. the 1%. And let's keep it real here. Those often creating this division are the wealthy, with their expensive private schools and gated communities. They ain't just letting anybody hang out at the country club. We tend to divide ourselves based on our political views. Oh yeah, things are getting real now, son. Indeed, political tribes have become some of the loudest ways we sort ourselves. In many countries, people now choose news sources, friends, and even dating partners based on political views. We literally join teams in politics. Enter political parties. A political party is basically a big team that organizes to elect people to public office that generally share the same political views. Every country has them. Once someone adopts a political party's identity, they often defend it for the rest of their lives, even when specific policies shift. For example, I have family members that are lifelong Republicans. They've been Republicans since the 1970s. But the Republican Party of the 1970s is clearly dramatically different than the Republican Party of the 2020s. Party becomes a social identity more than a pure policy checklist. But political ideologies also cause us to join teams. Today, within the Democratic Party, for example, there are more ideological factions, like the Liberal faction and the Democratic Socialist faction. Political divisions have always existed. What's relatively new, though, is how thoroughly politics have seemed to take over everyday identity in many Democratic countries. Constant media consumption has turned political affiliation into a near-constant social signal. In fact, modern political division is often less about specific policies and more about just dislike of the other side. By the way, I'm the only one with correct personal political opinions. We tend to divide ourselves based on religious beliefs. It starts with the big questions. What's the meaning of life? Is there an afterlife? What caused the beginning of everything? From there, it goes to core belief systems. You've got theolistic religions, in which a core belief is that there is one supernatural creator. You've got polyistic religions, in which a core belief is that there are multiple supernatural creators. You've got non-religious folks, and atheists, or those who do not believe in a supernatural creator. Within the major religions of the world, there are further splits occurring over the nature of the divine, leadership, prophecy, and salvation. These differences determine what people consider true, sacred, or forbidden. Different interpretations of sacred texts lead up to hundreds or even thousands of different denominations within one major religion. Religion isn't just a belief. It's also a visible behavior. Dietary rules, dress codes, prayer schedules, holiday celebrations, gender roles, and rules about marriage or sexuality create everyday distinctions. These practices make group membership easy to signal and hard to fake. Buddy, for real, try it. Religion frequently organizes your social life. Who you marry, where you live, which schools your children attend, and which charities or mutual aid networks you join. Unfortunately, religious differences have fueled some of history's deadliest conflicts. On the other hand, they've also created lots of solidarity, charity, and cultural achievement by uniting OTHER types of tribes. The intensity of the division tends to rise when religious identity overlaps with political power, ethnicity, or especially control of territory or resources. This shared human tendency to find both meaning and belonging makes religious tribes very powerful. In fact, disagreements over what the ultimate truth means makes these boundaries quite durable. We tend to divide ourselves up based on how old we are, or how old we like to think we are. Most of our friends, the people we choose to hang out with, tend to be around the same age as us. Societies mark clear lines for life stages. These are reinforced by laws and by institutions that treat people differently according to how many years they have lived on this planet. Crossing each threshold changes what you are allowed or expected to do. Increasingly, we straight up be tribin' out with generations. A social generation is all the humans born around the same time and who experienced pretty much the same culture growing up. And when you were born has a bigger effect on WHO you are than even your own family. Who raised you? No joke, man. Despite plenty of variation within generational groups, people born in the same broad era tend to share the same values, ethics, and worldview. I mean, think about it. We can't go a single day without mentioning, oh that boomer, or this millennial, or that Gen Alpha. Actually, right now I seem to be surrounded by Gen Z. I go into more about why generations are such a big deal in this video, and if you haven't seen that video, then that's pretty sad, man. But you know what's even sadder? This. Yeah, that's really sad. In fact, that's one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Much of the generation divide is based on technology, because each generation grows up with different technology. Language, humor, music, dating practices, and even basic assumptions about privacy or work can feel alien across age lines. What one group sees as normal innovation, another may experience as loss of tradition or common sense. Dang kids these days. We tend to divide ourselves up based on our skin tones. You know, how much melanin we generally have. Yep, a biological trait caused by ultraviolet light from the sun and evolution has been one of the most persistent social sorting mechanisms in human history. Skin tone divisions intensified when humans began to travel long distances and began to conquer and build empires. Groups that had previously been geographically separated came into sustained contact, but often under unequal power. And one way to justify that unequal power? Saying that people with different skin tones were inferior. That's when humans created the idea of race, or a way to describe groups of people based on their physical traits. Now, there's no biological basis for race whatsoever. To be absolutely clear here, throughout history, socially dominant groups typically created different races to justify them being at the top of the social hierarchy. Genetic diversity is actually greater within traditional racial categories than between them. Talk about the research for this fine book here, The Anatomy of Colorism in America. What motivates you to research and write about this topic? The thing that probably guided me in the direction of this project the most was my research of the U.S. South and the institution of slavery and how persons were classified in so many physical ways by their skin tone, by their hair texture. We're all very familiar with the binary of racism between black and white in the history of America. Colorism is within the study of racism. It's that same system of advantage and disadvantage, but it's an intra-racial phenomenon where people of the same race are discriminatory and furthering that treatment or distreatment based on darkness and lightness in skin tone. Because skin color is an immediate cue, it's sadly been a pretty common way that we divide ourselves up. What surprised me the most was your chapter about Mormonism. I didn't realize they weren't even considered white. I would say that whiteness was able to be gained and lost as if it was this kind of transaction more so than a physical trait that someone either possessed or did not possess. Obviously, we think of, you know, someone as white and you can pinpoint it, you can look at them. That isn't really the case, that oftentimes whiteness can be purchased, that whiteness can be lost if you are not upholding the American moral code. In the case of the Mormons, as you mentioned, these are people who predominantly immigrate from Northern Europe, mostly from the British Isles. These are people who are the ideal stock of person that Americans are hoping will immigrate to the United States during this time, and as soon as they become Mormon and they embrace polygamy, they have that whiteness stripped from them and they are now seen and described as being non-white persons. Today, categories based on skin color persist even as intermarriage and migration lure the edges. We tend to divide ourselves based on our sex and gender. First, there's biological sex. You've got males and females. Typical development follows XY or XX chromosomes, with corresponding reproductive anatomy, hormone profiles, and secondary sex characteristics, although intersex biological variations for some do exist. Because biological sex is a fairly reliable, observable category, it's recorded at birth and used in medicine, criminal justice systems, and sports leagues. Related to this, average physical differences tend to occur due to biological sex. For example, males tend to be taller and stronger, on average. Most societies around the world have assigned somewhat different norms and expectations to males and females. Not saying that's right or wrong, just stating a fact here. Now, gender, on the other hand, is something we humans completely invented. A gender is a group association related to stuff a particular society associates with being male, female, or neither male nor female. That stuff being how we behave, how we express ourselves, our societal roles, etc. I'm cisgender, which means my gender aligns with my sex assigned at birth. But there's also transgender folks, or those whose gender is different from the sex assigned to them at birth, and non-binary folks, or those who don't strictly identify with either male or female. Modern Western societies have mostly relied on a strict gender binary, meaning everyone was either a man or a woman. However, many cultures around the world have long recognized more than two genders, and indeed, you can accurately predict a lot about a person based on their sex and gender. And yes, members of the same sex and gender often share the same interests, hold the same values, and spend a lot of time together. By the way, if you're watching this video right now, you probably identify as a male. One important difference when talking about this tribal connection compared to all others. Despite these huge tribes based on sex and gender, different sexes and genders regularly interact and hang out. And due to this, the different sexes and genders have a huge influence over one another. I'm a male. Did you know that? And for about half of my life, I spent most of my time with other males. But for a long time, I have lived with three females. And what can I say? I'm a changed man. We tend to divide ourselves up based on our nationality. GOD BLESS AMERICA And it's kind of crazy that nation is in the number one spot because the idea of a nation is relatively new, but yeah, so many human beings today would literally die for their nation. Nations are similar to ethnic groups in that they both involve identifying with a group based on the group's common ancestry, history, and traditions. However, nations are more political. They generally want the same laws and form of government. You can't say that about ethnic groups. I always think of this formula. Ethnicity plus politics equals nation. Please keep in mind that social scientists often argue about what the correct definitions of ethnicities and nations are. Regardless, we show national pride in so many freakin' ways. Flying our nation's flag on porches. Standing for the national anthem with a hand over the heart. Painting faces and screaming at the World Cup or the Olympics as if the athletes were family. We mark calendars with Independence Days and Veterans Days. Visit monuments and battlefields. Quote founding documents and get angry when we teach kids that our government did bad stuff in the past. We wear the colors. Eat national foods as if they were sacred. Correct tourists who mispronounce our nation's name. Donate after disasters at home while staying cooler about disasters abroad. And argue fiercely about who counts as a real member of the nation. Even quiet habits count. Choosing the domestic brand. Getting all teary-eyed at a flyover. Or simply saying, quote, WE when talking about a government you personally never met. To sum it all up, national identity often overrides individual identity these days. Hey. Oh, you've seen my videos? Oh, awesome. I was a moderator for your YouTube video. Oh you were a moderator? Was it on the YouTube channel or the... On both. Oh wow, well thank you for your service to doing that. In the 1970s, a scientist dude named Henri Tajfel wanted to see the absolute bare minimum it takes for humans to turn against each other. So he designed the ultimate test of tribalism, dividing participants into two random groups based purely on a coin flip. The participants had never met prior to the experiment, so had absolutely zero history and gained no personal reward from the experiment. And yet, when tasked with handing out real money, they consistently favored total strangers on their coin flip team over the other side. Even crazier, people routinely chose to make sure the gap between them and the other group was as wide as possible. It proved that humans don't need deep-seated hatred, scarce resources, or decades of bad blood to act tribal. Our brains will invent an us-versus-them mentality out of literally nothing. I love your journal. What are you doing out here? I'm asking people what's their tribe. My tribe, I'd have to say, is just kind, loving people. Oh, I love it. I'm with the righteous. My tribe would be righteous people. Not religious or anything of that nature. Just people who seek to do right. Right on. Throughout 95% of human history, aka the period of human history in which our ancestors were nomadic hunter-gatherers, our end groups were MUCH smaller in size. In the 1990s, another scientist dude named Robin Dunbar noticed a fascinating pattern in primates. The bigger an animal's brain, specifically the neocortex, which handles complex thinking, the bigger its social group. Wait, what? When he mapped human brain size onto that same evolutionary curve, the math predicted that humans can only comfortably maintain stable, meaningful relationships with around 150 people. Dunbar then checked the history books and data and found this magical number, now famously known as Dunbar's number, kept popping up everywhere, from ancestral hunter-gatherer clans and ancient Roman military units to modern Christmas card lists and farming villages. Essentially, once a community passes about 150 folks, we physically can't track everyone's reputation through casual gossip anymore, which is why humans had to apparently create laws just to keep society from falling apart. But hold up, today we have tribes way bigger than 150 people. So what the heck is up with that? Well, before Dunbar back in the 1980s, there was yet another scientist dude named Benedict Anderson, who introduced the concept of imagined communities to explain how millions of total strangers could possibly feel like one unified nation. Since our brains can't personally know millions of people, a huge group has to exist as an idea in our head. So, uh, yeah, it's not technically imagined because it's fake, but imagined because you'll never meet most of your tribe yet you still feel a deep comradeship with them. Hmm. It explains why this guy came up to me when I was wearing this Mahomes jersey when I was in Hawaii last year. Even though he didn't know me personally, he felt comfortable approaching me because I was wearing this jersey. You see, we immediately connected because we were both Chiefs fans. Anderson pointed out that the rise of mass-produced media in common languages allowed citizens across vast distances to consume the exact same stories at the exact time. This daily, shared ritual made people realize they were moving through history together, successfully tricking our ancient tribal brains into treating an entire continent of strangers as our own extended family. And this is what gives me freaking hope about the future of humanity. Beautiful. Yeah, you're talking to everybody. What's your tribe? People. All people. Oh my gosh, that's such a Mr. Beat answer. You definitely watch my channel. There's a lofty idea that I want to think that I believe, which is like planet Earth is my home and like the human race is my family. I don't think I get there most of the time. I like to think I believe that. Maybe. Just maybe, hopefully, one day humans will form just one tribe. Yeah, I sit. You got a problem with that? I sit all the time. I have to sit when I'm working on videos and stuff. You probably sit too, don't you? You're probably sitting right at this very moment watching this video. Yeah. 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