[00:00:00] Speaker A: I would never minimize the great suffering that Poland has gone through.
But as a child who was partially German, the whole scene felt grotesque.
Why would people think I would spit in their face?
I stood in the hall with the other students, but I didn't sing the song.
I couldn't.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: Hello, this is Joseph Scholz, and welcome to the Deep Culture Experience podcast where we explore the science and psychology of intercultural understanding. And I am here with Sanne Bozma. How are you doing today, Sanne?
[00:00:47] Speaker C: I'm really well, Joseph. It's so nice to be here with you. Although I'm actually in my closet turned into recording booth right now.
Who knew that clothes would make for good acoustics?
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, as you can see, I have my big foam mattress wrapped around my desk. Cause that is my high tech recording environment. And you know, these days podcasts are increasingly going to video and I'm thinking, I don't know about that.
Also, I have been posting on Instagram and I interviewed Rob, our sound engineer, and posted that on Instagram because he is the one voice that we never hear. We hear everyone on the team, but not Ro. So I was happy to have him there. And please look for us on Instagram. Just look for JiiPodcast.
You'll find us.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: So the title of this episode is Culture and Conflict.
And this is kind of a continuation of last month's episode.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: And when we were making that episode, we said that culture and cooperation is part of human nature.
But one thing we didn't talk about, the kind of unanswered question was, if cooperation is part of human nature, is conflict and violence also part of human nature?
[00:02:06] Speaker C: We'll dig into the evolutionary psychology of collective conflict. For example, is violence among humans similar or different from other primates?
And what psychological mechanisms get triggered by conflict? And also, why do communities get locked into these cycles of violence?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: And we'll hear stories from the podcast team and they remind us that these questions are not theoretical. They impact people everywhere.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: And that brings us to part one.
Naturally violent.
So let's start with a simple question.
What is our most basic human nature?
Are human beings fundamentally cooperative and caring? Or are human beings basically competitive and violent?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: And of course, some people assume the best about human nature. So when the Beatles are singing all you need is love, dun dun dun dun dun. All you need is love.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, or John Lennon. All we are saying is give peace a ch.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Oh, sounds so easy.
But of course, not everyone agrees with that. I grew up Catholic. I was taught that human beings are born sinful. We're constantly in danger of being led into evil or temptation.
[00:03:37] Speaker C: So people may lean one way or the other. Humans are good or humans are bad.
But let's explore what science says.
And broadly speaking, there's pretty clear consensus that both of these things are true. Our fundamental nature is cooperative and caring and also competitive and conflicted. Here's a quote from an article in Evolutionary Anthropology.
The human species presents a paradox.
No other species possesses the propensity to carry out coalitionary lethal attacks on adult conspecifics, coupled with the inclination to establish the peaceful relations with genetically unrelated groups. What explains this seemingly contradictory feature?
[00:04:23] Speaker B: Well, that's a mouthful. Let's start with the good news.
Human beings establish peaceful relations with genetically unrelated groups. And this is remarkable. Most typically, animals cooperate with members of their species that are genetically related, which makes sense. We have evolved to pass on our genes.
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Humans go beyond this.
We also form alliances, trading networks, and we have developed great civilizations. We collaborate to create new technologies. There are worldwide religious communities as well. And other animals aren't like that. For example, ants cooperate in huge colonies, but usually not with ants from other colonies that are not genetically related.
So that's the first point. The article is making humans cooperate a lot compared to other species.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: But of course, human beings are violent in a way that animals typically aren't. We carry out coalitionary lethal attacks on adult conspecifics. I love that word, adult conspecifics. And that means coordinated violence on other adults of our own species. And this is referring to planned violence, like against outsiders, like a raiding party or attacking people who come into your territory, or waging war.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: So what we have here are two competing truths. Human beings can be highly cooperative and peaceful, but also competitive and violent, or both.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: And the title of that article captures this. It's Janus faced, the co evolution of War and Peace in the Human Species. And Janus faced refers to opposite things that are two sides of the same coin.
[00:06:14] Speaker C: I am super interested in how humans have learned to cooperate. And we could do a whole other episode about that. We'll put that on the list for a future episode.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: But today, let's dig a bit deeper into the idea that conflict is part of human nature.
Scientists used to believe that collective violence was unique to humans.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: This started to change in the 1970s.
Famously, the primatologist Jane Goodall had been studying chimpanzees in western Tanzania since the 1960s.
Starting in the 1970s, a group she had been studying split into two.
A larger group and a smaller breakaway group.
What happened Next was something researchers had never seen. The larger group started moving into the territory of the smaller group.
They would attack and even kill individuals there.
Eventually, the smaller group was destroyed and their territory was taken over.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: And this was shocking because the dominant group was not attacking strangers. They were ganging up on individuals they knew. They had grown up together, they had played together, they had groomed each other. And here's a quote from Jane Goodall.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: During the first 10 years of the study, I had believed that the Gombe chimpanzees were, for the most part, rather nicer than human beings. And then suddenly we found that chimpanzees could be brutal, that they, like us, had a darker side to their nature.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: And if you want to get a feel for this totally up close and personal, check out the documentary Chimp Empire.
A film crew collaborated with scientists who had been studying chimpanzees in Ugand.
They captured on film the kind of group aggression that Jane Goodall witnessed. Essentially groups of chimpanzees who had previously been living together who were battling for territory.
So here's a brief clip.
The Westerners attack.
And the centralers meet them head on.
The Westerners are pushing the centralers back.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: Even just seeing this clip is remarkable.
It's almost like a battlefield.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: And the documentary shows what led up to this. How one group split into two, competition for resources, how vulnerable individuals were killed, who was leading each side.
[00:09:48] Speaker C: And it's weird and kind of scary and also familiar to see the loving side of chimps, but then also the aggressive side.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: Right, because you see baby chimpanzees play or climb all over their mother or adults, grooming each other, very gentle and peaceful.
But then within the group, there's pretty aggressive competition for leadership. And then as a group, they coordinate, they go on patrols. They will attack and kill individuals that they catch alone.
[00:10:20] Speaker C: So that tells us something about human nature.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Although I can also imagine listeners saying, yeah, but wait, we've come a long
[00:10:29] Speaker C: way, but let's ask a more concrete question.
How violent is the world right now?
[00:10:36] Speaker B: And we did some research. We found some numbers. In 2025, there were five major armed conflicts that caused more than 10,000 deaths each.
19 high intensity conflicts with between 1,000 and 10,000 deaths each.
And that doesn't include things like drug cartel violence or gang violence.
There were also 18,000 plus riots, 12,000 instances of mob violence.
[00:11:03] Speaker C: That's a.
Oh my goodness, that's just disturbing. So for the moment, let's accept the idea that violence comes naturally to humans, at least. Sometimes. But then how did we evolve to be both cooperative and violent?
Here's another quote from the article. In evolutionary psychology, peace and war have both deep roots, and they co evolved through an incremental process over several million years.
Having first inherited the skills to engage in cooperative hunting, they gradually repurposed such capacity to execute coalitionary killings of adult conspecifics.
On the other hand, they underwent a process of cumulative cultural evolution and subsequently of self domestication, which led to heightened cooperative communication and increased prosocial behavior within and between groups.
[00:12:04] Speaker B: Let's summarize a bit. The researchers don't agree on the details, but the basic idea here is that on the one hand, our ability to cooperate within a group, like with hunting, was repurposed to attack others. But at the same time, we became more pro social.
[00:12:23] Speaker C: I was fascinated to learn about human beings being domesticated, which sounds weird, but the same kinds of evolutionary changes that happen with pets has also happened with humans. I mean, our bodies have become lighter boned, we have smaller jaws, and there is also less difference between the size of males and females.
And that points to less violence than the past.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: And that's the thing. This comparison with chimpanzees can take us only so far.
This is where culture comes in, because we're both very similar and very different from chimpanzees. We have language and abstract thinking, but that did not eliminate our competitive instincts, our territoriality. It just expanded into the symbolic realm.
In the documentary Chimp Empire, there was a fig tree in the territory that the chimpanzees were fighting for. It was a fruit bonanza for the group that controlled it. So no wonder that they both wanted it. It's the kind of thing that you'd expect them to fight over, but this is how we're both similar and different from chimpanzees, because human beings also fight for fig trees, for territory, control of resources, petroleum, whatever.
But we do something that chimps don't do.
We also fight over psychological territory.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: You see that in business all the time, like the boss's desk is always bigger. Now, of course, you cannot eat a big desk or sleep on it, but it means something and the boss will fight to keep it. And of course, their corner office, right?
[00:14:09] Speaker B: Chimps don't live in a world of symbols. They may form pair bonds, but they don't have weddings.
They teach their offspring, but they don't memorize multiplication tables.
We live in a world of ideas and symbols and we treat those things as territory.
So in a meeting, if you Have a suggestion and someone says, that's a stupid idea.
You experience that as an attack.
[00:14:38] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. Your body reacts with a threat response. Your blood pressure goes up, maybe there is a spike of testosterone. And even though ideas are not fakes, you can't eat them. They are abstractions.
But their experience is something I have to defend.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: And this again brings us back to culture. When we identify with something as a group, it becomes part of our psychological territory, our country, our ethnicity, our religious community. We have to defend it as though it were a fig tree.
[00:15:12] Speaker C: And that brings us to part two worlds apart.
[00:15:26] Speaker B: So we've been talking about chimpanzees, evolution, but let's stay a bit closer to home in modern humans. Let's talk about about the relationship between culture and conflict.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: So here's a quote from the Relationship between Culture and Conflict, a multidimensional analysis by Faisal Ali.
Conflict is an inevitable aspect of human existence, rooted in diverse factors ranging from competition over resources to ideological differences.
Culture, comprising shared beliefs, customs, language and traditions, profoundly influences how individuals perceive, interpret and respond to conflict.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: So basically, culture influences how we make sense of conflict, how we resolve conflict, what we do about it.
[00:16:23] Speaker C: Right. And so this article makes a point about cultural norms.
They are, quote, the unwritten rules that guide people's actions, beliefs and values, creating a shared understanding of acceptable behavior. However, when cultural norms collide, conflicts may arise as different groups or individuals adhere to divergent sets of expectations.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: And when norms collide, we often don't realize that the source of the conflict is cultural because our reactions come from our gut.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Or we may know rationally that something is cultural, but we still react in a very deep way. And that's something podcast team member Vanessa Eisenberg has experience with. Let's take a listen.
[00:17:16] Speaker D: Cultural difference creates conflict that's hard to manage.
This is because our feelings often run deeper than the surface. Cause I experience this with a Dutch friend.
My background is British, and I'm used to indirect communication being considered more polite, a way to create smoother relations.
For example, if I make a suggestion and someone says, I'll think about it or I'm not sure or I'll have to see, I understand without needing to be told directly that they're not really interested.
So no hurt feelings.
To my Dutch friend, however, this was confusing.
If you say you're not sure, it means that you're not sure.
For her, direct communication was almost a sign of trust.
She might simply say, I don't want to go, or I don't like that idea.
Simple and straightforward.
Even though I knew this difference was cultural, it still felt rude to me.
But telling her that it upset me didn't help.
From her perspective, she was simply being honest while I was being passive and evasive.
This created tension between us.
I struggled with the feeling that I was being too sensitive, but it's hard to go beyond our gut reactions.
Eventually, I had to accept that it was okay to feel hurt, even though it was never her intention to hurt me.
And she also had the right to feel frustrated with me, despite my own good intentions.
[00:19:14] Speaker B: Well, Vanessa is so honest and I sympathize. She knows that what was bothering her is cultural, but it is still hard.
Logic is no match for culture.
[00:19:27] Speaker C: Yeah, that really resonates with me.
So my husband Armen's background is Armenian, whereas I was completely raised in the Netherlands.
We have been together since we were teenagers. We love each other, we have a family, but there are still these little things, cultural differences that still bother me. Things as simple as how you ask for the remote. Like, he will say, give me the remote, which is normal in Armenian. It shows trust. You don't need to sugarcoat things. But I would rather he would say, could you please give me the remote? Because that's polite in Dutch.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: And you two have been together for a long time. And the fact that you've been together, the fact that you have goodwill for each other, the fact that you care, doesn't automatically mean that you don't react to these differences. These things run deep.
And I think there's a trap as well, because if you tell your Dutch friends about this interaction, they will agree with you, right?
[00:20:33] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.
Some of them would even be like, what? How could he treat you with so much disrespect?
[00:20:40] Speaker B: And then that's like this critical turning point, because that turns the personal into the collective, and it becomes a case of us versus them.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: And podcast team member Emre shared a story which illustrates our tendency to experience cultural difference in terms of us versus them. Let's listen.
[00:21:04] Speaker E: When I was in the United States, I worked the evening shift at a Factory together with 20 or so other Turkish students.
The work was quite boring, so by 11:30pm when we finished, it was a relief to hang out and chat together. On the way home.
One day, however, a policeman approached us.
He asked for someone who spoke English, which was me.
He explained that neighbors had complained about the noise we make.
I was surprised.
I told him that nobody had said a thing to us.
He said, they didn't need to.
I said, shouldn't somebody Warn us before calling the police.
That's how it's in my country, he said, I understand, but you have to abide by the rules here.
I apologized, and he left.
My friends and I were not only surprised, we were annoyed.
A neighbor had called the police.
Who could it be?
That's uncalled for.
In Turkey, being a neighbor is kind of sacred.
There is even a saying by the prophet Muhammad, Those who sleep with a full stomach while the neighbor is hungry are not one of us.
Neighbors look out for each other.
You share food. You attend their weddings or funerals.
If there is a problem, you deal with it directly.
It's a sign of trust and connection.
Skipping that step, calling the authorities instead felt like a betrayal.
I know now the person who called the police was not being rude.
It is just conflict is handled differently in the United States.
People often rely on an objective third party, so nobody has to take things personally.
But cultural differences like this can trigger strong responses.
We felt offended by the bad neighbor.
We assumed the worst.
Hopefully the neighbor wasn't doing the same about us.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: So, first of all, I have to say we have heard so many stories from Emre on this podcast, and he always has more.
[00:23:45] Speaker C: I know. Go, Emre.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: So I was thinking, Emre's situation ended okay. But imagine if Emre's friends figured out who called the police and they decided to get back at them, and maybe things escalate.
It's not hard to imagine this kind of thing feeding on itself.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: When an us versus them dynamic gets reinforced, things can really spin out of control, and the whole world starts to become us versus them.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: And this is something that podcast team member Graciela Harb has experience with.
[00:24:22] Speaker F: In a time of conflict, we tend to divide the world into us versus them.
I experienced this during the war in Lebanon.
At the time, many schools in Beirut shifted to online learning.
They did not want to take risks, and many students had left the country already.
Some schools, though, insisted on remaining open.
I found, however, that the decision to keep the school open was not just about education or safety.
It seemed to carry another message, too.
We're not the ones being targeted.
We are not part of this war.
So life here in the school should continue normally.
I found this in the WhatsApp group shared by parents at my children's school.
In fact, I expected the discussion to be about practical questions like, is it safe to send the children?
What about families who have left Lebanon?
Would online learning work for everyone?
But the discussion quickly became something else.
Questions of loyalty and disloyalty, fairness and unfairness so wanting the school to continue normally could be seen as refusing to identify with the group directly and involved in the war.
And at the same time, asking for online learning could identify you with the threatened community.
So surprisingly, the war turned an ordinary parental decision into a marker of identity.
So there we were, all parents in the same school, all worried about our children, all dealing with the uncertainty of war.
Yet very quickly, people became divided.
They became judged based on which side of their decision they stood on.
And the question was no longer simply, should I send my child to school?
Underneath it was another question, who are we in relation to this war? And perhaps even are you one of us or one of them?
[00:27:40] Speaker C: First of all, this is truly heartbreaking. I mean, schools are closing because of war, and then parents are trying to keep their children safe.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Our understanding is that Graciela is not under immediate threat, but our thoughts go out to everyone suffering there and in the region.
[00:28:00] Speaker C: So one way culture contributes to conflict is by encouraging us versus them thinking.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: And there are also cultural differences in how we react to conflict. This can have a multiplier effect, and that's something that podcast team member Leah Thorhild Liana Harsgarnes has discovered firsthand. Leah's from Norway, but lived and worked for many years in the Philippines. She's a fluent Tagalog speaker, and she talks about being annoyed with a Filipina colleague at work work and their different reactions to this conflict.
Let's listen.
[00:28:40] Speaker G: I remember once being a bit annoyed with a Filipina teammate.
Although it was nothing too serious, I thought it wasn't the right time to deal with it.
A lot was going on, so I waited a week until things were less busy.
When I did say something, however, she got upset.
She told me she felt hurt.
Not because I had been annoyed, but because I had kept it to myself.
From her perspective, I had pretended everything was okay when it wasn't.
I don't think Filipinos would necessarily address the issue directly, but but they might somehow communicate to the other person that something was wrong, giving them an opportunity to respond or repair the situation.
To me, things were okay.
I was just waiting for the right time.
In the Philippines, sharing your feelings is a sign of trust.
At the same time, conflict is often handled indirectly.
There is a saying, batopa tosa langit and tamaan wagma galit.
It means throwing stones at the sky. Whoever gets hit shouldn't get mad.
This refers to raising a concern about someone without naming them.
If you react, then it could be you.
Filipinos are often comfortable saying they feel hurt.
Expressing hurt and seeking repair is a common dynamic among people who are close.
This can be quite indirect. On social media, it's not uncommon for people to post quotes, sayings, Bible verses, prayers or memes in order to voice a concern without naming anyone, hoping the message will reach the people involved.
Or they may approach a mutual friend or use a taga pamagitan, a mediator, someone who's close to all parties.
This helps ensure that the relationship doesn't go from hurt to damaged.
Being indirect isn't the same as being avoidant.
In Norway, to say you are hurt, it implies something serious, almost beyond repair.
We tend to communicate things directly, but shy away from emotional conflict.
Being in control of your feelings is seen as a sign of maturity.
Perhaps that's why, for me, waiting to talk to my colleague felt like a way to reduce conflict, to become a bit removed from the situation.
And clearly it didn't work.
Conflict touches on deep levels of cultural difference, how we express feelings, how we build trust, who we are close to.
We may feel offended or have strong feelings.
Adjusting our reactions can be difficult, and goodwill isn't always enough.
I am happy to report, however, that in the end, my colleague and I did work things out. Thoughts.
[00:32:46] Speaker C: I am glad things worked out in the end for Leah. I have also felt cultural differences in how my partner Amen and I react to conflict. For me, if you're really upset, you have to really keep yourself under control. Like, don't raise your voice. But for a man, showing your emotion means you care.
To keep things under control is really cold.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: And once these dynamics get established, it can be hard to get out of them.
And this is also something that Graciela has experienced in Lebanon.
[00:33:21] Speaker F: When I got married, I moved into a new neighborhood.
I had many things in common with its residents.
I looked similar, I shared the same religion. We were all Lebanese living in the same building.
And yet I soon discovered that at deeper levels of identity, there were differences as well.
For example, there were large posters of political figures hanging from the balcony of the apartment I was going to move into.
I asked for them to be removed. I did not want them displayed from my home.
And I still remember, however, the mocking smile of my neighbor.
It was the first sign that although we might share many things, there were expectations about what belonging should look like.
Language was another example.
My home is trilingual.
We use Arabic, English and French, and code switching comes very naturally to us.
One day a neighbor heard me speaking English with my son in the elevator.
He told me that I should be strengthening classical Arabic with my children rather than a foreign language, because, as he said, this is our identity.
Little by little, I began to realize that despite all we shared, I could be seen as not belonging.
In fact, in the face of conflict, group identity can develop in opposition to the other.
In a sense, that being with us means being against them.
This is a natural reaction to perceived threat because we take comfort and find safety in the collective.
When that happens, however, similarities and individual choice are easily ignored.
Boundaries become important.
Throughout my experience with the neighbors, I felt that ordinary choices can become loyalty tests, and that can feed the cycle of conflict.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Wow, so these are some powerful words. Being with us means being against them. Ordinary choices can become loyalty tests.
[00:36:50] Speaker C: And there's something else, though, that really sticks with me. She says, we take comfort and find safety in the collective.
In other words, conflict binds people together. It creates solidarity. It feels good, even as it creates the feeling of us versus them.
[00:37:08] Speaker B: And this is almost like a dirty little secret, right? Having a common enemy is very motivating. I mean, think of something like rooting for your country at the Olympics.
The solidarity of soldiers on the battlefield.
The psychology of us versus them is linked closely to the psychology of solidarity.
And this us versus them thinking is terrible for people caught in the middle, and even more so when it's a child. And that's something that podcast team member Jessica Janda understands. When she was 8, she moved from Germany, where she was born, to her father's hometown in a region of southern Poland called Silesia.
Let's listen.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: Silesia has a conflicted history.
It has belonged longer to other countries than Poland and has German, Czech, and Austrian influence.
It possesses its own dialect called Silesian.
My dad's family would never say, they are polished.
They are Silesian.
Adjusting to life in the village was hard.
It felt like everyone needed to have a label.
German, Polish, Silesian.
People asked me, where are you from?
When I explained my Polish, German, Silesian heritage, they labeled me according to their cultural logic.
Oh, you were born in Germany. You're not really one of us.
Oh, you speak Polish so well. You are one of us.
Or, wow, so many years abroad and you still speak like a Silesian. You're really our girl.
I tried to fit in, but never fully belonged.
Simply naming an object differently could make me a laughingstock.
In elementary school, a friend started making fun of me, telling others I had called the correction Pan by the brand name, even though it wasn't that brand.
But that was what everyone did in Germany.
The roots of these conflicts run deep.
There are people in Poland who hold grudges Against Germans for World War II, Silesians who hold grudges against Polish people for historical injustices, Polish people who see Silesians as disguised Germans, and German people who see Polish people as thieves.
From a child's perspective, this could feel surreal.
On Polish Independence Day, we had to sing nationalistic songs.
One of the songs was called Rota the Oath, and it includes the following.
We are the Polish nation, the Polish people.
The Germans won't spit in our face nor Germanize our children.
Our host will arise in arms.
The spirit will lead the way.
We will arise when the golden horn sounds.
I would never minimize the great suffering that Poland has gone through.
But as a child who was partially German, the whole scene felt grotesque.
Why would people think I would spit in their face?
I stood in the hall with the other students, but I didn't sing the song.
I couldn't.
Culture is a deep part of us.
It's at the center of who we are.
But what do you do when the core of who you are is itself the source of conflict?
[00:41:27] Speaker C: I just found her story really heartbreaking.
And it reminded me of Graciela's experience, actually getting caught in a collective conflict that you did not choose, but that you can't escape from.
[00:41:41] Speaker B: And that brings us to part three, collective conflict.
So here's something I was thinking about.
These stories from the team. They're all very personal, very individual, but at the same time, they're very collective. They show how typical we are.
For example, the frustrations that Vanessa felt with her Dutch friend.
Other Brits could easily relate.
And I like to think of it like a superorganism. And maybe this sounds a bit like science fiction, but stick with me. Vanessa is one node in a network, one tentacle, so to speak, of the collective.
It's like Vanessa is reacting on behalf of the British superorganism, and her friend is one tentacle in the Dutch cultural superorganism.
[00:42:44] Speaker C: We see this in Emryst's story, too, right?
[00:42:47] Speaker B: He and his friends had a similar reaction to the neighbor calling the police.
That's the superorganism processing an encounter collectively and responding in a unified way.
[00:42:58] Speaker C: And that makes sense in terms of evolutionary psychology.
So here's a quote from the article the Evolutionary Psychology of War, Offense and Defense in the Adapted Mind by Anthony Lopez.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Between group conflict activates a host of motivational and inferential output from adaptive psychological mechanisms designed to organize and focus members within groups in conflict.
[00:43:28] Speaker C: So, in other words, certain psychological mechanisms get triggered by group conflict. For example, after their interaction with the police, emre and his friends talked about the neighbour as a group. They felt unfairly treated, planned what they should do about it.
And all of this happened spontaneously.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: And we see this all the time. Political scientists talk about the rally around the flag effect. For example, in 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the twin towers in New York by Al Qaeda, President George Bush saw his approval ratings go from 51% to 90%, according to Gallup polls. And it wasn't just the president. Congress's approval rating went from 42% to 84%, and the effect persisted for months afterwards.
[00:44:21] Speaker C: And when a society organizes itself around conflict, a psychology can become self reinforcing.
Here's a quote from Sociopsychological Foundations of Intractable Conflicts by Daniel Barthol in American Behavioral the evolved social psychological infrastructure becomes a prism through which society members construe their reality, collect new information, interpret their experiences, and make decisions about their course of action.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: It's the superorganism organizing itself for conflict with outside forces.
And I have to say all of this is a bit hard for me to digest. And it can feel pretty discouraging because so often we are being triggered collectively without realizing it, and then the conflict can feed on itself.
[00:45:17] Speaker C: So by now we've covered a lot of ground and I'm wondering, what is our takeaway?
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Well, for me, first of all, it's impossible to ask if humans are instinctively violent or peaceful because culture plays such a huge role in regulating human behavior.
Here's a quote from the late primatologist Franz which do we value most, harmony or competitiveness?
This is the problem with the human species.
Somewhere in all this resides a true human nature, but it's stretched in so many different directions that it's difficult to say whether we're naturally competitive or naturally community building.
In fact, we are both. But each society reaches its own balance.
[00:46:06] Speaker C: So I am optimistic.
I think this means that because human nature is deeply cultural, we can keep learning, we can try new ideas, we can create new forms of social organization.
We can find things that will move us away from conflict and towards collaboration.
[00:46:27] Speaker B: And I think that's what we want to do here. So let's keep working.
And that's about all we have time for today.
So here are some of the sources we referred to.
The Jane Goodall quote came from her 1999 book Reason for a Spiritual Journey, co written with Philip Berman. You can find the documentary Chimp Empire on Netflix. The research findings were reported in the article Lethal Conflict after Group Fission in Wild Chimpanzees in the journal Science.
[00:46:57] Speaker C: The statistics on violence came from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and from the ACLED project.
That's the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.
And finally, the quote about harmony and competitiveness comes from Our Inner Ape by Franz de Waal.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: The Deep Culture Podcast is sponsored by the Japan Intercultural Institute, an NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research.
If you're a regular listener, you know that JI offers a masterclass in the psychology of Intercultural Understanding. It's an online learning experience for educators, trainers, anyone working between cultures. It is facilitated by Ishita Rai and me. We are starting a new round soon and you can get a discount if you sign up before October 20th.
[00:47:48] Speaker C: So please, people do that sign up because let me just say as a masterclass graduate, it's a great experience. It's a fantastic learning community.
It's a group of people who want to dig deeper and JII is a non profit. The cost is really reasonable. Just do a web search for Japan Intercultural Institute and look for masterclass or send us an
[email protected] A special thanks
[00:48:19] Speaker B: to co producer Leah Torhudliana, Har Skarnes and also team members Vanessa Eisenberg, Emre7, Graciela Harb and Jessica Janda for sharing their stories with us. Also thanks to sound engineer Robinson Fritz and JIIS administrator Ikumi Fritz and everyone at jii. And of course thanks to you Sani. We're talking about conflict, but it was a lot of fun.
[00:48:43] Speaker C: I felt it was a like a deep discovery into human nature and culture. I loved it. Thank
[00:48:52] Speaker E: you. Sam.
