RUNNING TOGETHER
As we lose the ability to listen to each other, democracy becomes less meaningful and closer to a census of the various tribes, who each vote based more on tribal loyalties than on a judicious balancing of priorities.
The biggest coalition of tribes wins, even if its candidate is a known child molester, or worse. The winner does not need to deliver economic or social benefits even to his own supporters as long as the supporters worry enough about the possibility of takeover by the other side; knowing that, he or she will do their best to stoke those fears. In the worst case, the winner can then use the power gained in this way to take control of the media to shut down any alternative voice, so there is no more competition to worry about. Prime Minister Orban has successfully done this in Hungary, and many others are not far behind.Moreover, there is an expanding circle of violence—against blacks, women, and Jews in the United States, against Muslims and lower castes in India, and against immigrants in Europe—that is probably not uncorrelated with the unabashed expressions of vituperation the current polarized climate permits, including by heads of state. The murderous mobs in India and Brazil, and the recent shooters and pipe-bomb senders in the United States or New Zealand seem to all emerge from those vortices of paranoid thinking, where the same falsehoods bounce back and forth. It has not yet reached proportions of a civil war or a genocide, but history suggests that it could.
As we have already seen, our reaction to the other is closely tied to our self-confidence. Only a social policy founded on respect for the dignity of the individual can help make the average citizen more open to ideas of toleration.
There are also possible interventions at the group level. Racism, anti-immigrant views, and the lack of communication across party lines originate, for many people, with an initial lack of contact.
Gordon Allport, a professor of psychology at Harvard, formulated what he called the contact hypothesis in 1954.81 This is the idea that under appropriate conditions, interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice. By spending time with others, we learn to understand and appreciate them, and as a result of this new appreciation and understanding, prejudice should diminish.The contact hypothesis has been intensively studied. A recent review identifies twenty-seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs) investigating Allport’s idea. Overall, these studies find that contact reduces prejudice, although the review calls attention to the importance of the nature of the contact.82
If this is right, schools and universities are obviously key. They bring together young people from different backgrounds in a single location, at an age when everyone is much more plastic. In one large US university, where roommates were assigned at random, a study found that white students who happened to end up with African American roommates were significantly more likely to endorse affirmative action, and that white students assigned roommates from any minority group were more likely to continue to interact socially with members of other ethnic groups after their first year, when they had full freedom in choosing whom to associate with.83
This process of socialization could start even earlier. A policy change in Delhi demonstrated the power of bringing together young children from very different backgrounds. Starting in 2007, elite private schools in Delhi were required to offer places to poor students. In an ingenious study on the impact of this policy change, randomly chosen children were given the responsibility to select teammates for a relay race.84 Some of them attended schools that had already admitted poor children, and some attended schools that had not done so yet. And, within schools, some children were in study groups with poorer children (based on the first letter of their first name), and some were not.
To help them decide who they wanted to partner with in the race, they were all given a chance to observe everyone else run a test race. There was, however, a catch. They had to agree to have a playdate with whomever they picked for their team. The study found that those students from affluent families who had not been exposed to poor students in their school avoided picking them, even when they were better runners, to avoid having to spend time with them. But those who’d had some exposure to children from less-well-off families in their schools, thanks to the new policy, were much more likely to pick the best runner even if the child was from a poor family, because the prospect of a playdate was no longer all that daunting. And those who were in a study group with poor children were even more likely to invite poor child to run and play with them. Familiarity performed its magic.