This article is part of an ongoing series that began with Fallacies and Cognitive Biases.
The above picture is a detail from "50 Cognitive Biases to be aware of so you can be the very best version of you"
"We favor people who are in our in-group as opposed to an out-group."
This cognitive bias occurs when we give preference to people in our in-group over someone equally capable (for the situation) but not in the in-group.
This is another risk management tool. That it is considered a cognitive bias tests credulity but since we are expected to view the world as if we were disinterested, non responsible, and fully informed, it is worth addressing.
To discover the value of this cognitive bias (and why even classifying it as one is dodgy) let us start with examining the in-group.
What is an in-group?
The in-group is your people. The in-group is the part of your social network that persists, reciprocates, and polices itself according agreed-upon rules -- formal or informal. The in-group is your 'us'.
The in-group is composed of proven relationships. Its principles have been demonstrated to work, at least in the situations encountered up to now.
Perhaps most importantly, the in-group is valuable to you because, if it wasn't, you would have a different in-group.
In a world of hard reversals and unproven strangers the in-group reduces risk in at least two ways:
1) The in-group provides a network of people with a demonstrated interest in ongoing collaboration. Cheating is disincentivised. Investment and long-range planning have a lower expected costs.
2) The in-group provides access to more resources with lower friction by acting as a market for social goods that have no value to outsiders.
It is rational to favor the members of your in-group not only because they come at lower demonstrated risk but because the interaction is an investment in the future and not just a one-off transaction.
Who constitutes your in-group will vary based on the situation and in-groups will often be nested inside of larger & looser in-groups. America is a looser in-group than my church, but tighter than all English-speaking peoples.
Errata: When people say we shouldn't favor our in-group they are really saying that we have the wrong in-group, that the real in-group is much larger. Note that the 'better' in-group set is INCIDENTALLY larger but DEFINITIONALLY operates under different rules -- the 'larger' is just marketing to sell the 'different rules.' Closely consider who stands to gain and who stands to lose by changing in-group frame.
Comments
Post a Comment