The Group-Status Lens

A way to look at tribalism

A lot of social behavior can be understood by looking through what I call the group-status lens. That is, people will adopt beliefs and behaviors that in their minds raise the status of groups to which they belong.

For example, people will adopt negative attitudes about other groups. Often, the group you hate has more in common with you than another group that you do not feel strongly about. David Friedman explains his hostility to Democrats in such terms.

The explanation of my inconsistent reaction is provided by Scott Alexander in “I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup,” one of the best of his many good essays. In it he points out that someone’s outgroup, the group for whom he feels and expresses strongly negative views, is typically made up not of people distant from him, geographically and intellectually, but of people close. The outgroup of the Nazis was not their Japanese allies or the Chinese the Japanese were fighting, it was German Jews, people with the same language and, in most respects, the same appearance and culture. The outgroup of American leftists is not Muslim fundamentalists but American conservatives.

Having negative feelings about groups that should seem similar (“near”) makes sense through the group-status lens. You judge the status of your group relative to near groups. Far groups do not matter to you as much.

Tribalism also can be viewed through a group-status lens. In fact, concern with group status is what tribalism is all about. If we did not care about group status, we would not become passionate about the symbols and beliefs that characterize our tribe.

One tribe can believe that being pro-vaccine for COVID raises the status of that tribe. Getting the vaccine shows that you are pro-social (even though it turns out that vaccination does not seem to prevent transmission). For the other tribe, being anti-vaccine raises the status of the tribe. It shows that we won’t be pushed around (even though it is for our own good).

Why was Dr. Fauci so adamant that there was no connection between funding for research and the appearance of the virus? Because the possibility of a connection would lower the status of the group of scientists with which he felt he belonged.

Why did journalists go along with Dr. Fauci’s views? Because it meant elevating their own status as well-educated people. But once it became ok for well-educated people to be open to the lab-leak hypothesis, journalists became less dismissive of it.

This relates to the phenomenon of “preference falsification.” Timur Kuran, who coined the term, recently spoke with Yascha Mounk.

you're a journalist, you start seeing a shift in the distribution of beliefs. More and more people are beginning to consider the lab leak explanation plausible, even if they're not all convinced. That then gives you an opportunity to become not just another crank who will be dismissed and will be stigmatized, but will be somebody who suddenly starts a cascade.

A cascade is when a belief that people have been treating as crucial for maintaining group status loses its charm. So there can be a sudden shift in beliefs.

In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the pigs are concerned with their status as a group. At first, they recite “Four legs good, two legs bad.” But later they start to walk on their hind legs. They now recite “Two legs good, four legs bad.” Although they have changed their position completely, they are consistent in seeking to raise the status of their group.

Any time you see a political or ideological conflict, try looking at it through the group-status lens. Group A is trying to raise its status, usually by attacking the status of Group B. Can you identify Group B, and can you articulate the strategy that Group A is using?

substacks referenced above:@

Timur Kuran on Why We Lie About Our Beliefs

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Trump as Fargroup