Tribalism Sucks

In an earlier post, I outlined what I called the extremist group fallacy. This is a logical fallacy in which group G is observed as having an attribute (or exhibiting a behavior) A, but in actuality A is attributable only to a subgroup of G. That subgroup is X: the extremists.

G is an easily identifiable group, whereas X is elusive. X has or does A so much that it elevates the rate of A for G. Therefore statistics show that G disproportionately has or does A more than the rest of the population P. These statistics may mislead and let observers conclude that being in G causes A (causality fallacy is at play as well). It could be that if we remove X from G, the remainder of the group (G-X) actually has A just as much as P.

Here’s a made-up example: tanning bed users (G) are observed as having higher rates of skin cancer (A) than the rest of the population. This makes us want to conclude that tanning beds cause cancer. In actuality, tanning addicts (X) will naturally seek out tanning beds because the real sun just isn’t enough to satiate their addiction. So they are an extremist subgroup within G who, due to their excessive UV exposure no matter the source, are very likely to get skin cancer. Tanning beds are blamed as causing skin cancer, but the real culprit is extreme and obsessive tanning.

Extremist subgroups and their annoying or erratic behavior cause a lot of problems. They get a lot of attention from the media because of their behavior. They become an unlikable caricature of their group, which foments tribalism. Here are some examples:

When people dislike this group (G): They may actually dislike this behavior or these attributes (A) exhibited by an extremist group (X):

conservatives corporate greed, racism, evangelicalism
liberals militant progressivism, political-correctness, Marxism
Christians corrupt leadership, self-righteous judgmental people
atheists smug elitism, amorality
millennials entitled, naive youth with fragile egos

In these cases, the extremists are a minority within the group—a very loud minority. It’s so easy to overestimate the predominance of X within G.

How do you mitigate this?

I don’t think you can do it by statistically educating people, because people only believe statistics that support their preexisting worldview. There’s one way to help people realize that their caricature of a group is inaccurate: force them to interact with those people.