August 27, 2021
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Why do we rally around some social issues and not others?
The answer involves experiments with strange results and a dive into the absurd
There are people all around us fighting for the interests of people like us. These are the women crying out for abortion rights in Poland. Black Lives Matter protesters fight to end police brutality against people of color in the United States. LGBT people demanding marriage equality around the world. But why are these people so concerned about these issues and not about others involved in their own group?
One possible answer is painfully obvious. When people in our group are suffering, we speak up. People tend to think and act in ways that benefit their group. It’s called solidarity or in-group favoritism, depending on how you feel about it. This is true even if the grouping is largely meaningless. For example, we give preferential treatment to people who like the same pictures as us. Or according to this little word: In-class experiment, I agree on whether a hot dog is a sandwich. Social categories such as gender and race are far more meaningful than consensus on sandwich questions. It would make sense if people preferred social changes that best benefit their social group.
Indeed, when a social movement takes up an issue, that issue almost always has a disproportionate impact on members of that social movement. Suffragettes campaigned for women’s votes, not for veterans’ disability benefits. However, there are many cases where group and task combinations are missing. Black and Hispanic Americans are exposed to far more air pollution than whites, but that hasn’t yet translated into a black lung movement. And even though gay and bisexual Americans are three times more likely to be sexually assaulted than straight people, the LGBT #MeToo wave has yet to occur.Groups, on the other hand, are not only Fight for “what’s yours.” Lesbian and gay support for miners is just one example.
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So, do groups primarily address issues when it is in the group’s interest, or do they do so for other reasons? To answer this question, I asked approximately 500 men and women to participate in an online experiment. Some randomly selected participants were given information that linked the problem to their social group. For example, some male participants learned the following facts: American men are twice as likely as women to die in a car accident. Some female respondents found out that women are 30% more likely to be poor. These particular questions were the result of my long quest to find issues that are actually biased towards one gender. However, the information had to be news to the participants. In other words, combinations like women and sexual harassment were out.
The results of the experiment were puzzling. Learning this information did not change the participants’ opinions. They had no further concerns about this issue. It failed to move up a single spot in the rankings of important social issues. They are not going to support any more government spending on this issue. I repeated the experiment with 700 black, Latino, and white participants. there is nothing. We recruited LGBT participants. there is nothing. Perhaps the effect existed only for those who truly identified with the group and considered it a central part of themselves? That wasn’t the case. Just knowing that an issue affects your group is not enough to worry you.
Of course, there are many social groups in the world who are interested in the issue. How can this be reconciled with the results of the experiment? Perhaps the problem is somehow tied to the group’s core identity. This also applies to topics such as same-sex marriage and the ban on Muslim head coverings. Key figures may also need to rally groups behind the issue, as Martin Luther King, Jr. did for the civil rights movement. Perhaps it would be helpful to have a common enemy. Or maybe people need to feel that caring about this issue is already the norm within their group. We already know that group norms influence political behavior. For example, black Americans vote Democratic in part because they feel social pressure from their communities to vote Democratic.
Finally, statistics alone may not be enough to get people interested. We know that stories are often more powerful than numbers in changing opinions because they influence emotions. Perhaps you need to know members of harmed groups: women who have been harassed, black people who have been harmed by police, etc. Political scientists are increasingly discovering how political opinions are rooted in emotions and social relationships. They are not rational responses to the world.
I care about the #MeToo movement, and I feel like it’s natural because I’m a woman. But not all American women agree with me. And in 10 years, my niece will probably wonder why I didn’t focus my energy on the depression epidemic. Depression is a deadly disease that affects women twice as much as men. Ultimately, the list of issues that I care about “as a woman” is arbitrary and a product of many experiences, examples, and interactions in my life.
What about you?