A House United

This Fourth of July, I find myself thinking about the wellbeing of the United States. We find ourselves politically polarized, with a populist President whose hobby is trolling the world on Twitter. Income inequality continues to grow, the people of the working middle class remaining where they are or becoming poor. Worries of global warming and technology getting out of hand fester beneath the ever-present slumbering form of nuclear war.

There are two general methods people believe will solve our problems. If you’re on the political left, you might think the government needs to get its act together, increasing taxes on the rich and on industries which harm the environment, and increase spending on the poor and organizations and institutions that foster creativity, like education. If you’re on the political right, you might think the government needs to pull back on regulations and taxes that keep businesses from utilizing the power of the market to its full potential.

On top of that, there is a gargantuan mess of social issues that our political groups have grabbed onto, so that if you disagree on what I just mentioned above, you probably disagree on the rest too. Regulation of weapons. Abortion. Equity for women, racial minorities, and LGBT+. For these and many more, the conversation rarely goes further than whether we are for it or against it, so that we can gauge whether the person we are talking to belongs to our group or the other group. This mindset is called tribalism, and it is a tragedy, because it treats important, complex, nuanced issues as nothing more than a means to determine sides.

There was a famous experiment called the Robbers Cave Experiment, named after the park it took place at, done by social psychologist Muzafer Sherif. At a summer camp, a group of boys did bonding activities, and came to like each other. A few days into the week, it was revealed that there was another group of boys at the park. This group had gone through the same program as the first group, but neither of the groups had known about each other. Now that they did, phase two of the experiment began.

The groups were given activities where they had to compete with one another. The group that won got the prize, and the group that lost got nothing. After a few days of this, the groups hated each other. They called each other names, stole, and even got violent. At this point, the experimenters knew it was time for phase three.

Phase three of the experiment had a series of crises come up, fabricated by the experimenters. These crises affected all of the boys in both groups, and the only way to solve them was for all of them to work together. After a few of these crises, the groups started getting along, despite the bad blood that had been brewing from phase two.

The Robbers Cave Experiment shows us that when we humans compete, we think negatively about each other, but when we cooperate, we think positively about each other. Of course, it is not conclusive that it applies to everyone, since all of the subjects were boys, and they had similar backgrounds. But the result feels right; we can put ourselves in the boys’ shoes, and see ourselves behaving the same way. Also, the Robbers Cave experiment was carried out 60 years ago, and all of the experiments in the field since then have agreed with its results.

Progressives and conservatives, however, are not the same, on average. In the Big Five Traits theory of personality, people with high openness to new ideas and experiences are more likely to be politically progressive—wanting to try new things to make the world better—and people with high conscientiousness are more likely to be conservative—wanting to make sure the world keeps running and doesn’t fall apart. And while it is not a hard and fast rule, and personality traits are malleable with effort, it shows that political orientation has a genetic component.

If you take a moment to think about what “progressive” and “conservative” mean; making things better, and not making things worse; you will see that both perspectives are absolutely necessary for keeping a society alive. There isn’t a right side and a wrong one here. We, the US—no, the world—need both conservative and progressive heads at the table in order to make it through our 21st century problems. The great human endeavor did not start on July 4, 1776, nor did it end. Let’s stop competing over the country, and take a serious look at the issues. Let’s listen to each other, and work together to create a country and a world where all people can live freely and safely to pursue their own happiness in whatever form it takes.