On a recent road trip, Mercedes and I listened to the book, The Coddling of the American Mind.
You probably know what the book is about: college students these days act very fragile when confronted with different ideas, and try to suppress expression of these views on campus.
I thought the book was great, but I also have a few complaints, and that is what I want to discuss here. Basically, one of the main pillars of the book is that people have a tendency to engage in emotional thinking that helps them identify with their in-group (i.e., their political tribe) but makes it harder to think rationally. They point out certain “cognitive distortions” that such people tend to have, and argue that practicing rational thinking (specifically, cognitive behavior therapy) can help overcome these distortions.
The thing is, I agree with this, mostly. I just think it misses something very important. To understand my complaint, let’s set up a simplified framework for how the human mind works, and why it works that way. Note that this is a purposefully oversimplified model, but I think it can help.
Humans have two modes of thinking: “selfish mode” and “collective mode.” Selfish mode is useful for engaging in mundane tasks and performing a rational cost-benefit analysis. Collective mode is good for organizing large groups of people. When in collective mode, we are susceptible to slogans and symbols that make us feel like we are a part of something bigger than ourselves. But in order to enable large group cooperation, when we are in collective mode our brain suppresses certain kinds of selfish and individualistic thinking.
In a primitive society, people mostly existed in selfish mode. They hunted, gathered, ate, slept, etc. when they wanted to and avoided doing things that would get them killed for no reason. But occasionally, big threats would arise that needed an additional boost of collective cooperation (say, a war) and these threats triggered the occasional shift into collective mode. In collective mode people were more willing to do risky things like take up arms against a neighboring tribe. But people that couldn’t be shifted into collective mode tended to lose out to those who could when the time came to fight.
The reason I tell this rather simplified story is just to establish that while “collective mode” does suppress certain kinds of rational thinking, it isn’t really understood as a cognitive distortion. Collective mode is a necessary part of human cognition that enables collective action.
Now let’s add the internet to this equation. Let’s suppose that internet memes is capable of triggering a shift into collective mode. So modern people who spend a lot of time on the internet might end up spending more time in collective mode than our ancient ancestors did. And when we are in collective mode we might do things that look dumb from the perspective of individual self interest (e.g., we might protest a campus speaker that could trigger some intellectual growth if we engaged with their ideas).
So I would prefer not to frame the problem in terms that people are making cognitive errors. The problem is that people spend too much time in a natural and useful psychological mode because we are exposed to a lot of stimulation on the internet. And I should note that one reason why we get exposed to this stimulation is because it feels good to be in collective mode.
Ok, so my interpretation of the problem is ever-so-slightly different than that of the Authors, but what about my prescribed solution? It’s different too. Granted, I am a big fan of rational thinking, but I don’t think individual people trying to be rational are going to be able to resist the urge to engage in collective thinking. I just don’t.
So what we need to do isn’t to construct internal thought filters (i.e., suppressing irrational thoughts), but to construct external filters. That is, I think people spend too much time in collective mode not just because they are exposed to more collective triggers, but because they have reduced social filters.
Specifically, I think that having a small group of diverse people (i.e., people who don’t always agree with you) to bounce ideas off of makes it harder to get carried away in collective mode. Our small group social structures act as an important part of our immune system for ideas.
So let me distinguish between a few levels of social structure:
- A band is a social structure composed of a small group of people such as an extended family (i.e., up to 50 people, including children and adults) held together by interpersonal relationship.
- A tribe is a larger structure composed of a number of bands that is held together by identity or ideology.
Also, the tribe is the thing that joins together periodically when people are in collective mode. In a modern society our tribes are unusually large because of modern communication technology. But our bands are unusually small. Specifically, most people’s families have been reduced to the minimum viable family size, the nuclear family, for a variety of social and economic reasons. But when the band is diminished, the role of the tribe expands to fill the void.
So people are 1) subject to an unusual amount of tribal stimulation, and 2) immuno-compromised when it comes to filtering out triggers for switching to collective mode. for selecting when to engage in collective mode are reduced because our band structure is diminished.
Thus, my prescription for reducing tribalism is to reinforce our the band structure of our social lives. It isn’t something we can just think ourselves out of. We need other people to think things through with us.
