The tendency to give preferential treatment to those belonging to the one’s in-group over one’s out-group.
Attempted explanations for why this occurs include 1) groups conflicting over the same scarce resources and 2) the psychological drive to raise one’s self-esteem through a distinct social identity.
Links to this note
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Employees Picking Their Work from Home Days Leads to Inequality
Many companies are moving to a hybrid remote setup when it’s safe for employees to return to offices. Some will allow employees to choose when they work from home and when they work from the office. However, this leads to an in-group (people in the office) and an out-group (people working from home more often).
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The theory that belief is more significant than race in determining racial or ethnic discrimination.
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People Are Bad at Long-Term Thinking
People are generally bad at thinking and making decisions about long-term consequences. Gate’s Law observes that people overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term. People are motivated by loss aversion which leads to status quo preserving behavior and biases people towards keeping things the same.
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Some companies recently tried to separate business from politics so they can better focus on their mission. This has caused some understandable backlash because trying to be non-political is in-fact a political move, whether or not they intended it or not.
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Inter-Generational Partnership
Long term work on inter-generational problems (e.g. climate change) requires inter-generational partnership. Fostering these relationships is difficult because thinking long term is undervalued compared to solving short term problems and those in positions of power tend to be from the previous generation (Planck’s principle) which tends to favor themselves (i.e. in-group favoritism).
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Conservatives Justify Morality With Law and Liberals Justify Law With Morality
A confounding aspect of conservative politics is how they view the rule of law. Conservatives tend to see laws as being designed for certain kinds of people. In their mind, a terrorist is already a terrorist and if the same law is used to define one of their tribe as a terrorist it’s the left being fascist.
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A Weak Man Argument Recenters a Category to Defeat It
A ‘weak man’ argument presents a belief that only a small number of people have in order to defeat it. This is similar to a ‘straw man’, but a straw man presents a belief that no one has in order to defeat it. A ‘weak man’ is a more believable logical fallacy.
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Unstructured Groups Form the Basis for Elites
When there is no formal structure in a group of people that interact over any significant amount of time, informal structures appear. Informal structures are communication channels through networks of friends in the group that share similar beliefs and traits that give rise to influence. This is the nature of elites—a small group of insiders that exhibits informal influence over a larger group because they know how decisions are made.
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Privacy Is the Right to Be Imperfect
If everything is public or under surveillance, actions could have negative externalities. This puts more pressure on people to be perfect and project the values of the in-group. Privacy is a solution by providing space free from judgement individually or as small groups to explore ideas and take certain actions without fear of judgment.