![]() Suppose you are prejudiced against ogres, something you normally hide. To understand the dynamics of human group identity, including the resurgence of nationalism-that potentially most destructive form of in-group bias-requires grasping the biological and cognitive underpinnings that shape them.Īt every turn, humans make automatic, value-laden judgments about social groups. (The Swedes spent the seventeenth century rampaging through Europe today they are, well, the Swedes.) Still, humankind’s best and worst moments arise from a system that incorporates everything from the previous second’s neuronal activity to the last million years of evolution (along with a complex set of social factors). And although humans kill not just over access to a valley but also over abstractions such as ideology, religion, and economic power, they are unrivaled in their ability to change their behavior. If such is the violent reality of life as an ape, is it at all surprising that humans, who share more than 98 percent of their DNA with chimps, also divide the world into “us” and “them” and go to war over these categories? Reductive comparisons are, of course, dangerous humans share just as much of their DNA with bonobos, among whom such brutal behavior is unheard of.
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