-There's us, and there's them.
You're either part of the us or you're part of the them.
♪♪
Most of us inhabit a social world
that's filled with a lot of ambiguity and unknowns.
We interact with other people all the time,
some of whom are very familiar to us
and others of whom we've never met before.
And we're constantly making decisions
about how to act towards these people
and how we think that they would act towards us.
For most people, you can define your in group
as people that you know well,
that you interact with frequently,
and who may share different features with you.
So they might be members of your own nationality,
of your religious community, of your family.
And it's really normal for people to act differently
towards members of in group and out-group members.
-Dream big!
-Fight hard!
-Dream big!
-People tend to believe that their in group is better
than members or people who are not in their in group.
Really cool research that's been done
by Jonathan Haidt and others
has shown that there are some moral values
that differ a lot more
as a function of your social and political views.
Whereas both liberals and conservatives
tend to dislike harm of innocent people
and they tend to prefer fairness rather than unfairness,
for political liberals,
that's kind of where the moral equation stops.
The universe of other moral values matters a lot less.
If you compare them to people
who are strongly politically conservative,
they care about three additional moral values.
So it's not that they don't care about harm and fairness,
but these other values also matter a lot.
And those values are caring about authority,
so viewing deference to authority figures
as a good thing.
Purity or sanctity,
and it tends to be related to religious views
on behavior that's viewed as sort of pure or impure.
And the last one is loyalty to one's in group,
so caring more about whether somebody
is a member of your in group or not
when deciding on how to treat them
and how to value behavior toward them.
[sour notes play]
It's really easy to get people
to treat members of in groups and out groups differently.
-I draw the line in the dirt
and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny,
and I say segregation now,
segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.
[cheers and applause]
-There's sort of a plumb line through history that we can see
that when a leader wants to get
the group that they're in charge of,
first of all, to make very strong distinctions
between the in group and the out group,
make it very clear that there's us and there's them,
and you're either part of the us or you're part of the them.
[crowd booing]
-Your neighborhood, your village, your children's school,
your life, your wages
will be inevitably impacted by immigration.
-Let's speak clearly, Hungary is going to be condemned
because the Hungarian people have decided that
this country is not going to be a country of migrants.
-The right-wing government is in danger.
Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls.
Left-wing organizations are busing them out.
-They paint members of the out group
as threatening to the in group somehow.
-We are going to come together as one people
to tell the corporate elite they will no longer get it all.
-We all know that AOC and this crowd
are a bunch of communists.
They hate Israel. They hate our own country.
-And, also, less than human,
describing them in terms that connote vermin or other animals.
-But we're taking people out of the country,
you wouldn't believe how bad these people are.
These aren't people.
These are animals.
-Depending on your preference for sort of order and discipline
and your belief that the world is a scary, threatening place,
and only by following this strong leader unquestionably
can we expect to have a good outcome,
you can see how authoritarian tendencies would develop,
especially when a group sees itself as under threat.
-That is an assault on our country.
They hate our country.
They are the enemy of the people.
Because you look at what's marching up,
that's an invasion.
That's not -- That's an invasion.
[cheers and applause]
-In circumstances like that,
if people truly believe in this outside group
as a threat to the safety of the in group,
you can get them to treat members of the out group in ways
that they wouldn't in other circumstances.
[crowd chanting "Send her back!"]
[cheers and applause]
-Forming groups is part of human nature.
[cheers and applause]
-This is what democracy looks like.
-The issue is not eliminating groups,
and let's pretend that they don't exist
and that they don't matter anymore.
That's not possible.
The important thing is making sure that we never forget
about those other two really important moral foundations,
which are compassion and fairness.
So maybe somebody is not a member of your group,
but they're still a human being still worthy of compassion,
still worthy of being treated fairly.