Group Identity

Looking for evidence that people have only a light grasp on objective reality? You Are Not So Smart delivers insights into how people really think, with the less than cheering subtitle "A Celebration of Self-Delusion".

A recent post was about the human tendency to be exclusive rather than inclusive in social groups:

Every human gathering and institution from the Gay Pride Parade to the KKK works to remain connected by developing a set a norms and values which signals to members when they are dealing with members of the in-group and help identify others as part of the out-group. The peculiar thing though is that once you feel this, once you feel included in a human institution or ideology, you can’t help but see outsiders through a warped lens called the illusion of asymmetric insight.
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So, you pick a team ... [and] you spend a lot of time a lot of time talking about how dumb and uncouth the other side is. You too can become preoccupied with defining the essence of your enemies. You too need the other side to be inferior, so you define them as such.

There is a lot more which is fascinating in this article, but I pulled out these two paragraphs for a couple marketing-related reasons.

The first is social media. The original rallying cry was 'Connect with everyone!' This created some highly entertaining but nightmare scenarios. (You've probably heard the stories. They go roughly: A man has something in his personal life that would be embarrassing in his professional life. He incautiously friends his boss and/or co-workers and ends up fired. Much hand-wringing ensues.)

Now it's 'Connect with everyone, divided into groups!' This is an improvement and will lead to less hand wringing, maybe.

What social media wasn't explicitly created for was exclusion (because, from the companies' point of view, it's all about getting as many sign ups as possible, i.e. inclusion). I'm honestly not sure what an app built with exclusion in mind would look like (something like an exclusive nightclub?), but I think it's one reason online interactions have a different flavor than in person. (Though as the "exclusion" version would probably be pretty unpleasant, I can't miss it too much.)

The second marketing-related point? The Yorkie, of course:

They could have gone with "The candy bar for everyone!" (inclusive), "The candy bar for blokes" (not explicitly exclusive), but instead went with "It's not for girls!" (explicitly exclusive).

A little silly, and sexist, but probably psychologically astute.