Ryhmäidentiteetti, ryhmälojaliteetti ja tehokkuus

Nature-lehti kuvailee sitä miten yhteiskunnan polarisaatio voi aiheuttaa sen, että tehottomat ratkaisut säilyvät pitkään, koska tietty mielipide tulee oleelliseksi osaksi ryhmän identiteettiä ja ko. mielipiteen kiistäminen asettaa ryhmän jäsenen lojaliteetin kyseenalaiseksi ryhmän muiden jäsenten keskuudessa:

"Culturally polarized democracies are less likely to adopt polices that reflect the best available scientific evidence on matters — such as climate change — that profoundly affect their common interests. ...

For members of the public, being right or wrong about climate-change science will have no impact. Nothing they do as individual consumers or as individual voters will meaningfully affect the risks posed by climate change. Yet the impact of taking a position that conflicts with their cultural group could be disastrous.

Take a barber in a rural town in South Carolina. Is it a good idea for him to implore his customers to sign a petition urging Congress to take action on climate change? No. If he does, he will find himself out of a job, just as his former congressman, Bob Inglis, did when he himself proposed such action.

Positions on climate change have come to signify the kind of person one is. People whose beliefs are at odds with those of the people with whom they share their basic cultural commitments risk being labelled as weird and obnoxious in the eyes of those on whom they depend for social and financial support.

... if the cost [for a person himself] of having a view of climate change that does not conform with the scientific consensus is zero, and the cost of having a view that is at odds with members of one’s cultural community [is] high, what is a rational person to do [if optimizing his own self-regarding utility function] ?

In that situation, it is perfectly sensible for individuals to be guided by modes of reasoning that connect their beliefs to ones that predominate in their group. Even people of modest scientific literacy will pick up relevant cues. Those who know more and who can reason more analytically will do a still better job, even if their group is wrong on the science."

Väitän että sama ryhmädynamiikka toimii Euroopan vihreiden ydinvoimanvastaisuuden perustana.

Nimimerkki Tiedemies esitti niinkin äärimmäisen käsityksen, että Oikeistolaisuus ja vasemmistolaisuus ovat ryhmäidentiteettejä, joilla on vain korrelaation omainen yhteys poliittisen päätöksenteon tms policy:n kanssa. Näin varmasti onkin. Pidän kuitenkin ihmistä identiteettiä luovana lajina. Identiteetin demonisoiminen jonkinlaisena sairautena on sama kuin demonisoisi ihmisten välisen ihastumisen silkkana irrationalismina. Ryhmäidentiteetin luomia tehottomuuksia on tietysti kuitenkin ehdottomasti syytä kritisoida case by case -periaatteella. On esimerkiksi äärimmäisen paha asia kyseenalaistaa luonnonsuojelua jonkinlaisena vihreiden puuhasteluna.

Ryhmä-identiteetti on kuitenkin ihmisyyden yksi perusta. Lainaan Bernhard Russelia: "Social cohesion is a necessity, and mankind has never yet succeeded in enforcing cohesion by merely rational arguments. Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conquest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible."