Our Tribal Minds Can Badly Distort Our Perception of Reality

If you’re like me, you have friends or family members that don’t seem to inhabit the same planet that you do.

Despite being as educated as you, as intelligent as you, as experienced as you, with the same strong moral compass as you, some people close to you simply don’t perceive the political world the way you do.

If you are sitting with a friend watching news coverage of events like Jan 6, the Epstein files, the war with Iran or the latest political scandal, based upon your politics, the two of you might have entirely different takeaways from the same information. An event that is an obvious political witch hunt to you could look like powerful evidence of misconduct to your friend—or vice versa.

It might seem that modern political disagreements are rooted in contemporary events, but evolutionary psychology suggests that the origins of widely diverging views of reality go back much farther...

...to the stone age when homo sapiens lived in small groups of hunter gatherers.

Why our ancient brains think maintaining “tribal” identity is so important

Perception of politically charged news is driven by our individual politics, which are in turn part of our larger group identity (e.g. political party, race, gender).[5,6]

And our ancient, unconscious need to maintain a strong group identity can alter our perception of reality. Here’s why.

Evolutionary psychologists assert that many modern motivations grow out of ancient, deeply ingrained “evolved adaptations” that helped our ancestors thrive and survive in their tribes and clans, persist due to the slow pace of evolution relative to rapid changes in civilization and technology.[1]

Among the most important of evolved adaptations are those that help us thrive in groups, such as language, cheater detection, a theory of mind (understanding another’s motivation and intent) ability to interpret facial expressions and tone of voice, and, pertinent to this discussion, affinity group formation.[1]

Fitting into a group meant gaining access to scarce resources, better mate selection, and better opportunities for offspring The opposite was lso true: not fitting in risked ostracism and denial of crucial resources with potentially existential consequences [1]

And to fit in, a clear identity was required.

Maintaining a strong identity may not be as important as it was in ancient times, but our ancient brains don’t know that.

How identity drives perception

Because we innately need to maintain a strong sense of identity, when new information challenges the foundation of that identity, we feel what social psychologist Leon Festinger called cognitive dissonance, a collision between contradictory views or beliefs. [2]

For example, if we strongly identify with political party A, news that Party A’s leader committed a crime could create tension and discomfort, with an inner monologue that might say, “Party A are the good guys, but one of us did something bad, so maybe we’re not the good guys. Maybe I’m not a good guy.”

To avoid the discomfort and anxiety from that inner conflict, we reduce dissonance by adjusting our perception of the news from ‘My leader broke the law’ to… ‘That was an obvious political hit job.” Such a shift in perception would normally occur so swiftly (to protect our equanimity) that we wouldn’t even know we had made it [3,4] At a conscious level we’d simply think from the start ‘political hit job.’

Identity Essential Reads

When Should You Review Your Life?

You Didn’t Write That Chapter

Lab research reinforces this idea.

Giessner & van Knippenberg evaluated how followers judge a leader's effectiveness after a major failure or performance drop. [5]

They found that when a leader is perceived as an in-group prototypical leader (someone who strongly represents "us"), followers grant them a "license to fail". Followers evaluated a failing in-group leader as almost equally effective as a successful one. However, when a non-prototypical or out-group leader failed, their ratings plummeted. [5]

According to Giessner et al, followers attribute an in-group leader's mistakes to bad luck or situational factors, while attributing an out-group leader's identical mistakes to incompetence or bad intentions.[5]

What this means for you

The foregoing discussion implies that, if you strongly identify with a specific group, your perceptions of news and events that reflect on that group are bound to be distorted, just as perceptions of those in opposing groups are likely to be biased in the opposite direction.

Bear that in mind next time you sit on the couch watching the news with a friend of the opposite persuasion.

Their perception of reality may be distorted. But because both of your brains still live in the stone age--probably not more distorted than yours.