Did the end of the Cold War lead to today’s political division?
Us vs. them, king of the hill, so says the research
Something that is hard-wired into us as humans is the idea of us belonging to an in-group and others belonging to an out-group. We do everything we can to identify ourselves with our chosen in-group, and we dehumanize the “others.” Our goal becomes one of completely destroying the other. To do so, we have to dehumanize them. After all, if they are like us, we may experience qualms in our attempts to kill them.
You can see how this instinct served us well from an evolutionary standpoint. After all, when we were living in caves, we often had just a second to decide when someone was running toward us if they were friend or foe. If foe, they might kill us, so it’s better to be on your guard, ready to kill the other to save your own life. If friend, however, you hate to make that mistake.
So we adopt certain biases and prejudices, what are called cognitive heuristics. They are essentially shortcuts our mind uses to categorize things and people. It might be the way a person looks, the color of their skin, tattoos on them, the way they talk, the way they dress… you get the picture. Our ability to make snap judgments as to whether someone was friend of foe helped us survive to the modern era.
