Mental Tripwires
In a virtual group conversation a while ago, someone mentioned a potentially negative observation about the people in my ethnicity.
The friend immediately caught himself, and I actually assured him that it's fine because I've had that same observation before. However, I was surprised that I felt really strong (albeit unexpressed) outrage for a split second, even though I agreed with the observation. It was as if the observation triggered a tripwire in my brain.
After the conversation, I pulled the said friend aside and had a talk about how he shouldn't say the same things to people he's not familiar with, even though it might contain truth to it. He was very receptive, and things went over well.
However, my split-second of outrage continued to bother me after the conversation. After thinking about this for a while, I remembered that I've read something about this before. The idea was that in societies comprised of distinct groups, there is a really strong incentive to swiftly & harshly punish any verbal criticism to the group you belong to, because it can become a rally point for outside groups If a group enforces punishment efficiently, then it can maintain the illusion of its ideas being the majority opinion even if it is in fact in the minority. This is a really useful dynamic to tap into evolutionarily speaking.
The problem is that I don't think this dynamic is nearly as useful nowadays. After understanding my mental tripwires, I see a lot of people acting on that same bias in the public sphere. When someone comes up with a constructive point, the mental tripwire immediately causes the opposing group to read the worst possible meaning into it, and descend upon that person with pure unbridled wrath.
After this happens a few times, the public space becomes a place where the people who are the most willing to communicate gets punished the most; where constructive conversations cannot take place; and where resentment builds under the surface. Note that the premise is that the point is constructive, and that sort of point is much more likely to stick compared to nonconstructive points.
After thinking about this for some time, my belief now is that when I become angry about a statement that threatens a group that I am in, I should work on my anger first, and then ascertain whether that statement is indeed true.
Barring extreme circumstances like imminent hate-based prosecution, that's probably a much better approach than to feed the flames.
— Categorized under: #psychology, #sociology, #communications