Sharing an article: ingroups and outgroups

Interesting study

This might be an interesting follow-on read... pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../

agreed ::-) hehe - yes I am taking position on that !

I think there's another side to descision making and thats not feeling the need to take a position on something. I've often been asked about something that's more of a position than a choice, a choice is something like would you like a cup of tea, or go to the cinema, a position is where you stand on something moral or political, something like that. 

There are a few things I don't feel the need to take a position with and I get really cross with people who want me to take a position, they usually get cross with me too, because a they see it I'm refusing to play, I'm refusing to take a side, to be in a group or out of one and into another. I guess I'm also showing that it's not always nessercary to have a fixed opinion or any opinion at all on something, particularly if it dosen't concern me that much, this upsets multiple applecarts.

I've been told not chosing a side is refusing to choose, refusing to decide and that it shows I have a poor desicion making process. I don't, I've just learned that I don't always have to have one and often my feelings will be pretty meaningless, like I don't care who wins th world cup, I don't like football, so I have no skin in the game, so why should I want or need to choose?

Hi all.

I'm typing this whilst being held on a tel. call wait to speak to a real person - 25 minutes at present and being told it will be another 14!

I would like to share some further thoughts on this topic whilst listening to the canned Beethoven on the line...

As I understand it the likelihood is - brief interlude as call is answered! -  that for neurotypical people the "fast wiring" in the brain that connects the frontal lobe and social centres maybe means that they are much more likely to make decisions based upon in-group/out group behaviour.

Without that fast wiring (maybe one might even call it a "short circuit" from a neurodiverent perspective - there is a lot more effort required to make a decision about with whom and what ideas one associates oneself...

So, autistic people rely on deliberate" bottom-up" processing rather than "top-down" social heuristics.

This is not just on my personal experience and observations - this is backed by hard science in the form of behavioural data.  Autisitic people are better at making significantly more consistent, rational choices.  Albeit at quite a lot of effort - literally using more energy to do so.- with the scientific data showing more time required to come to a decision and being prone to what is termed "choice paralysis".

So, neurotypical brains are designed to protect the group at all costs - even if it involves "bending" the truth.  The neurodivergent brain "lacks" this mechanism - so as a consequence it "benefits" from a more egalitarian, rule bound and bias resistant world-view.

Interesting indeed.

Phased

I have yet to see a left-wing leaning democratic government - not a Communist dictatorship - separate small children from their parents and incarcerate them in squalid conditions, without adequate supervision or safeguarding,as has happened in Trump's USA. Or shoot unarmed citizens, offering no threat to anyone, in their cars as happened in Minneapolis. The two are not comparable in outcome.

All political parties exist by othering the others, it dosen't matter whether they're right or left wing or even centre parties.

As I feel very different from most peope on here, I feel that I'm often alone here too, I dont feel part of somekind of autustic umbrella, or if I am then I'm definately on the edge catching the drips. Here feels like any other group I've been involved in, I'm not part of its mainstream and I'm unwilling to try and make myself "fit in". I often feel I'm to weird for the weirdos!

The left are playing exactly the same game, just many seem blind to it. They also seem surprised when it is done back to them 

As a thread in a Autistic Society Website I am inclined most to focus upon the in-group/out-group perspective of autism.  Almost tribal and potentially founded on very significant biologically "hard wired" differences in thinking and behaviour.

Agreed biases are part of what is involved in the separation being aware of these is the start of being able to "make one's own mind up" about something perhaps.

Interesting terminology "independence + party" implying people have to get together to be independent! 

Human society "works" and perpetuates (and I use that terms without prejudice...) because of groups (even down to 2 people needed to make another - for now at least!)  - to some extent competition between groups increases rate of change in capability of the groups.

Ultimately integration eg grouping and cross grouping provides the capacity for greatest achievement.  (hehe but I'm autistic - a tag that comes initially from "autos" meaning self-centred... what would I know about groups! emanningis   - that's me using irony!    )

Best wishes

    :-)   

I think that the primitive  human instinct to see 'us and them' is dangerous and arch manipulators of this propensity towards tribalism can be very dangerous indeed. I am thinking of people like Hitler, Trump and Farage.

I just had a quick skim of the article and I don't have an in group, only out groups, but then I'm not really a group person, I've spent so much time on the outside looking in that it dosen't bother me any more, it used to, until I realised that these ideas only really effect those to whom groups are important and I don't really care all that much.

I was thinking of 2:

1. Autistic community is healthy precisely because outgroups tend to be aggressive or demeaning (im guilty of group behaviour here and should at least break down the outgroup)

2. UK seems to use the USA as outgroup (sometimes) and also migrants (part of it), but the parties seem to very strongly show these biases (all of them).

3. The independence parties are another example (i support in this case).

How about you Phased 

agreed emanningis - any particular group correlations that you have in mind?

Am inclined to consider this from an neurodivergent/neurotypical perspective myself perhaps.

Thanks

Phased